Well, they clean up quotes in England

Check out this quote from Don Shula in London's The Telegraph:


Twenty-five years on, with quarterback Trent Green injured and the defence fast becoming a laughing stock, the veteran coach realises the team's seminal match against the New York Giants at Wembley on Sunday could be set against a better backdrop. "It could be a psychological problem," he says. "The franchise have to work out what's happening."

You just KNOW Don Shula did not say "The franchise 'have' to work out what's happening.
The kind writer fixed it for him, putting it into that plural Euro-sports-speak.
I can't wait to see what they'll do when confronted with some of the quotes coming out of the locker room.

 

Reminds me of a story from college. My friend's roommate was from England. So another friend, a coonass from South Louisiana, meets him for the first time and starts asking about the Beatles and stupid stuff like that. Eventually, he says, "So you're from England, huh? Why don't you say something in English for us?"

 

Outing alert: Batman is Nick Saban!!!

 

Bite your tongue, son! That lying sumbitch is dead to me now.

 

Wow. You'd think they'd use brackets.

"The franchise [have] to work out..."

 

The English can't speak no proper English.

"The franchise" (team) is a collective singular entity.

The franchise has to work out what's happening.

"The Dolphins," seperate plural individuals, have to work out what's happening.

And I don't care what the rooty-tooty Brits think. They're wrong on this.

 

um, journalistic standards are "different" in England.

 

Yeah, they're "wrong."

 

I'm with Starman on this one.

And speaking of quotes ...
I covered a high school game about seven or eight years ago in which a key fumble recovery by a team helped it win. Nothing new there.
However, that team's coach used the term "Who'd a-thunk it" when talking about the play.
Our paper's editor (it's a small paper with just one editor) wanted to change the quote to "Who would have thought it" because she said it made the coach (who worked at the school from which she graduated) sound dumb. The quote stayed after much discussion — a fellow writer told her it had to stay because 1) the coach said it, and 2) it offered great color — and it's still a in-office joke.

 

The English speak a different dialect of English. And their descendants, er, created the language.

Quote shouldn't have been cleaned up, though.

 

Who knows? Maybe Shula reads the Rolling Stone and the UK reporter quoted him correctly.

 

Hooray for Captain Absolute!