A Pox on Collective Nouns

I have a major peeve with soccer announcers…not football/fútbol announcers, but soccer announcers (you know, the American kind). Almost every soccer match I watch is infected with a grammatical irritant that I’ve tried to scratch, but the itch persists. What bug is annoying me this time? The inappropriate application of verb agreement with collective nouns.

“Before the Civil War, it was customary to say ‘the United States are.’ After the war, we began to say ‘the United States is.’ That’s what that war did. It changed us from an ‘are’ to an ‘is.'”

— Shelby Foote

One of the linguistic quirks of the United States revolves around how we settle on using verbs in connection with, say, sports teams. Let’s say we’re talking about the Anytown Mascots. If they are playing any sport but soccer, the announcers would say something like: “The Anytown Mascots have [plural] the best record. Anytown wins [singular] unconsciously. The Mascots possess [plural] the ball better than any team in the league. When Anytown possesses [singular] the quaffle, no one can stop them.” You see the pattern, right? When we speak of Anytown, we are talking about the team as an entity, but when we refer to the Mascots, the entity becomes a collection of individuals. It’s a subtle distinction, but one no less profound than the one in the Shelby Foote quote.

But then comes soccer. The announcers…American announcers…change the phrase to: “The Anytown Mascots have [plural] the best record. Anytown win [plural] unconsciously. The Mascots possess [plural] the ball better than any team in the league. When Anytown possess [plural] the quaffle, no one can stop them.” Have they all gone batty? Don’t they know their own language?

I discussed a similar topic with Jim Lampley during a Summer Olympics. His response was basically that it was the way all of the international people did it, so that’s how NBC’s broadcast team was going to do it.

AUUGGGHHHH!!!!!

What’s next? Are we going to start calling delivery trucks “lorries?”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Brit English, Cockney slang, Aussie Strine, and other varieties…English in all its forms is a fun little language. I just object to the breaking of America’s own rules/conventions of English for no good reason. I’ve even heard it start to seep into commentaries of sports other than soccer. That’s not good. Nope. Not at all.

For me, during this World Cup, if the possession of the ball rests with the USA, I’m saying, “The United States has the ball,” and not that other silly thing. I can only hope that some of our announcers eventually follow suit.

Photo credit: Dan Kamminga