“I Didn’t Do So Good,” says NFL Announcer About Repeated Grammatical Gaffes

By Steven KoprinceAt an emotional postgame press conference, Fox NFL announcer Greg Olsen took “full responsibilities” for a series of grammatical gaffes during Sunday’s nationally-televised Buccaneers-Colts showdown. “It’s on I,” Olsen said. “I needed to go out there and execute our game plan by announcing grammar-mistake-free football. I didn’t do so good.” Olsen’s broadcast partner, Kevin Burkhardt, tried to deflect some of the criticism lobbed at his teammate. “NFL announcing is a team pursuit,” Burkhardt said. “We let the fans down today, but you can’t blame one announcer for the team’s failures.” After a pause, Burkhardt added, “although only one of us had trouble with simple subject-verb agreement.”Olsen’s grammatical miscues began shortly after kickoff when Indianapolis cornerback Xavier Rhodes deflected a Tom Brady pass intended for Mike Evans. “Great play by Rhodes!” Olsen enthused. “He isn’t letting nothing by him today!” Viewers immediately took to social media to deride the analyst for his use of a double negative. “Your initials are G.O., which apparently stands for ‘GO back to fourth grade!’” wrote one irate fan. “What’s next, a double superlative?” groused another. “You’re a highly-paid broadcaster; you should know better!” Olsen’s errors mounted as the game progressed. In the second quarter, Buccaneers' tight end Cameron Brate whiffed on a block, allowing Brady to be sacked. Olsen, a former tight end for the Bears, Panthers, and Seahawks, didn’t like what he saw. “Come on, Cameron!” Olsen said. “Me and Kevin could have blocked better on that play!” “Um, yes, I think ‘me’ could have,” Burkhardt said. His off-the-cuff sarcasm appealed to viewers disappointed with Olsen’s grammatical lapses and the exchange quickly went viral. Later, it generated intense debate on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” where co-host Michael Wilbon produced an ice pick and declared that he would stab himself through the eyeball if he was forced to listen to any more of Olsen’s “heartless desecration of the English language.” In total, as confirmed by a detailed postgame film review, Olsen committed 367 grammatical blunders during the broadcast. His errors included incorrect pluralization, dangling modifiers, misused pronouns, incorrect article usage, preposition/object confusion, the usage of double comparatives and superlatives, and many others. Eric Shanks, the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Sports, shot down rumors that Fox would replace Olsen. “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” Shanks said, “so we’re all to blame for Greg’s tough game. Of course, there shouldn’t be an ‘I’ in ‘it’s on I,’ either, so we’re going to have to work on that.” “We’re going to get back to the fundamentals with Greg,” Burkhardt confirmed. “And by the fundamentals, I mean the basic, grade-school rules of spoken English.” For his part, Olsen said he is committed to justifying the one-year, $7 million “prove it” deal he signed with Fox in the offseason.“Now I wish I would have went to those English classes at the U,” Olsen said, speaking of his alma mater, the University of Miami. “But it’s not too late for I to learn.” Fox plans to have Olsen spend extra time at the practice facility, where he will engage in intense film study. Specifically, Olsen will spend hours watching clips of people speaking English correctly. Then, Olsen will take some extra reps in practice, such as by saying, “he played well” instead of “he played good,” hundreds of times until—hopefully—he learns the spoken-English playbook. “I know I done bad,” Olsen said. “But I promise to do better next week. Or is it ‘do gooder’”?