Heck Of A Guy

In conjunction with the impending NCAA Basketball Tournament, my personal favorite and only must-see sports event (the ticket and CBS Sports cap are from the only Final Four I saw in person), I am presenting the findings from my work on sports slogans, which are the first fruits of my labors in the field of Fallacious Linguistics. OK, technically, I suppose, the very first fruit of these efforts was the belated realization that, on careful examination of the exact spelling of “fallacious linguistics,” one is forced to acknowledge that this area of study has nothing at all to do with oral sex. But the first fruit after that disappointment is a groundbreaking revelation that evolved from extended period, better measured in minutes than seconds, of intensive study; a fearless and perilous exploration into my soul (I finally had to stop and ask for directions); and the consumption of modest amounts of tonic attenuated by a reasonably high quality brand of vodka. My premises, as you will find, are incontrovertible, and the conclusion precisely as profound as it is astounding.

Those of us in the baby-boomer cohort (at least those of us in the baby-boomer cohort who were male and who came into contact with a physical education teacher or coach) have been indoctrinated with certain convictions by repeated exposure to the apophthegm that is the immediate focus of this study:

While this truism is, well, true, and I, for one, eschew the sort of persnicketiness behind those complaints critical of this axiom’s requirement that one accept “U” as an equivalent to “you,” this adage has always generated in me a counterintuitive discomfort, a sense that the maxim, standing on its own, was incomplete. I am now able to transform that ambiguous awareness into concrete terms by invoking the equally true, contrapuntal, complementary clause that has been, thus far, overlooked by scholars and, some would say, supressed by the motivational signs industry, i.e.,

The fastidious reader may by now be muttering (the result of trying to talk while simultaneously chomping on sour grapes), “Shouldn’t the statement be ‘The difference between champ and chump is that champ is spelled with an “a” while chump has a “u” in that same position?’ ” On considering the philosophical merits of that query, I have this response – Well, lawdy-da (or, since I’m feeling a tad nihilistic these days, lawdy-dada); that kind of stupid-head thinking is exactly why you’re stuck with fastidiously reading the stuff those of us who recognize the value of pith less fastidiously produce.

Returning to a consideration of the slogan itself, if “U” can represent “You,” why cannot “A” represent, for example, “Asshole” (or, in the vernacular “A-hole”)? Or perhaps the “A” has to do with the grade for academic excellence or even the seemingly trivial indefinite article used metaphorically as a linguistic version of “For want of a nail … .” In any case, “A” is certainly as significant a factor as “U” in determining the variation between champ and chump, yet only the “U” is featured in the original catchphrase; consequently, the validity of this shibboleth must be called into question.

The “A” Vs “U”/Champ Vs Chump theorem is not one I set forth cavalierly, aware as I am of the consternation this new complexity will cause among middle school and high school coaches and the alterations thus necessitated on thousands of posters. Yet, intellectual integrity permits no other action.

I have also begun work with the related aphorism, “There Is No ‘I’ In Team.” Personal communication with the Language Arts & Small Internal Combustion Engine Mechanics Team at McHenry Community College reveals unconfirmed, sporadic sightings of an “I” located between the “a” and “m” of team. It turns out that this “I” has been undetected for lo these many years because

1. Researchers had, for reasons that are unclear, historically assumed that if an “I” existed in “team,” it would be located between the “e” and “a.”
2. The “I” is written in very tiny script (a font-size known technically as “itty-bitty teeny-weeny” or “smaller than the heart of an HMO Financial Director”).

My own modest contribution to this nascent project has been the development of the corollary that even if there is no “I” in “team,” a simple rearrangement of the letters in “team” demonstrates that there is indeed a “me” in “team.” Additionally, I have previously noted that “There may be no ‘I’ in ‘team’, but there are two ‘I’s’ in ‘idiot.’ ”

This is heady stuff with the potential to place the entire belief system constructed on the argument that “There is no ‘I’ in team,” in jeopardy. One can all too easily envisage the havoc wrought when hordes of run-and-gun athletes, no longer restrained by this team-building motto, revert to their native ideology (e.g., “Passing sucks; I’m taking the shot myself”) and consequent self-serving behaviors.

Finally, I am pondering the still speculative link that may exist between these idioms and the wisdom country-western lyrics attribute to linguistic events. The prime example of this genre is doubtless the famous Eddy Arnold tune, “The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me.” My parallel, equally heart-rending yet, inexplicably enough, less famous and currently unpublished, offering is “The First Word In Mess Is Me.” I also note that

• Arguably the worst of the versions of Microsoft Windows is “Windows Me.”
• The abbreviation for the state of Maine is “Me.”
• Missouri’s nickname is “The Show-Me State.”
• The middle word in “someone” “someplace” and “somehow” is “me” and, thus, the middle words of “someone, someplace, somehow” (which was my dating mantra during medical school) is “me me me.”

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