Containing the NFL Blitz on English

 I have to pick a bone with the NFL and its unrelenting abuse of English.  The egregious offense is the use of contain as a noun.

Here is a recent example from one of the most literate NFL commentators Greg Easterbrook of Tuesday Morning Quarterback: “The Broncos had lined up with an "overload" rush to the offensive right -- surely something Arizona saw in film study -- and had no contain on the outside.”  

Now the definition of ‘contain” here is that a defensive player, especially a Defensive End rushes the quarterback or passer from outside the last offensive linemen rather than by trying to move between the last lineman and the next offensive blocker. This approach is meant to keep the quarterback in the pocket and prevents him from escaping either to run or pass outside the pocket (referred to in the NFL as “breaking contain”). 

This usage during NFL broadcasts is as nails on a chalkboard to my ears.  

One can imagine Chris Collinsworth defending this use by saying that  contain is a term of art in football. True, but it’s a circular argument leaning on the logic that in the NFL we can horse collar our language because in the NFL we have agreed to do so. That leaves only laziness, ignorance or indifference to the language as real excuses. It seems to me that laziness, ignorance and indifference are not really tolerated in football (see Haynesworth, Albert). It is a sport of elite athletes and exceptional coaches. Surely a passing familiarity with English among the games sportscasters is expected?

The suffix ment is not as valuable as a timeout in the fourth quarter and given the enormous number of useless syllables that commentators from Aikman to Wilcots expend even at their best, couldn’t they say “he broke containment?”

I know, nothing is so schoolmarm-ish as being picky about things like grammar and in so testosterone loaded a world as the NFL too – I am taking a risk. It probably seems such a tiny little thing, turning contain into containment, and lord knows part of English’s charm is how nimble and changeable the language has been. Still when you survey the enormity of the blogosphere/ twitterscape/ Sportsnews - Industrial complex that reports on every little thing (Exhibit A: Troy Polamalu has scored two touchdowns off of interceptions in his career and both were passes thrown by his college roommate Carson Palmer).  I think if we can care about that we make some attempt with our language too.