Fair-Weathered Husker Fans

A decade ago, when the Nebraska Cornhuskers were in their prime and winning, their fans were deeply devoted to the team. They loved their Huskers and Coach Tom Osborne became a Nebraska hero. They worshipped Osborne so much that they voted to send him to Washington, D.C., as a state representative.

That got a lot of laughs around the country: Look at those hicks, voting their football coach to Washington!

Even though I lived in Nebraska at the time, I am not a native and I thought the same thing. The maniacal behavior over the Huskers still baffles me.

When Osborne left, Frank Solich moved up from assistant coach to head coach. Solich led the Huskers to six consecutive bowl games and won Big 12 coaching awards. Nevertheless, in 2003, the Huskers fell into a losing streak. The fans became outraged. What was Solich doing to their beloved winning team? It was his fault that the team was losing. “Fire Solich!” became the battle cry of the fans.

For weeks these fickle fans berated Solich, and the University of Nebraska catered to these freaks and fired him.

Enter Coach Bill Callahan. Under his coaching, the Huskers have become a joke. They can’t win. They’re pathetic.

I can say this, because I was never a Husker fan, nor will I ever become one. I’ve always said these things about the team. But now the supposed fans are saying nasty things about their beloved team.

The losing streak this season has been awful, and, predictably, the Husker fans began screaming to fire someone. Fire Callahan! Fire the athletic director! Fire someone! Do it now!

Once again the university caved to the whims of fans and fired the athletic director. The fans cheered. “Bring back Osborne!” they screamed, as though he could fix it all. And the university indeed brought Osborne back as “interim” athletic director.

Well, even Saint Osborne’s presence on campus hasn’t been able to turn the team’s losing streak. They’re still losing. So of course Nebraskans are shouting for the university to fire Callahan — even though he just signed a new contract. There are even rumors that Callahan will be fired.

So now the “fans” are angry with the team and hate the coach. Jokes about how terrible the Huskers play are flooding e-mail inboxes. Radio hosts are relentless. The whole state is turning away from their team.

Now, that’s no way to be a sports fan, people. Granted, I don’t know much about being a sports fan, but I do know that if you love something or someone, then you stick with them through thick and thin. You encourage them when they’re down, and you cheer them even when they’ve pissed you off.

You don’t just dump them and start talking shit about them.

The “fans” acted so hurt and upset when Husker wide receiver Maurice Purify said during a press conference that he was looking forward to playing an away game because he was tired of the fans’ booing, catcalling and making rude comments to the team.

“They put on their Nebraska shirts, sweaters, their hats,” Purify said, “. . . and then when we’re down by seven or 14, they come down to the sidelines and say, ‘You guys suck. You guys take your Ns off your helmets.’ If you're going to support us when we win, why can’t you support us when we’re losing?”

And he makes an excellent point. Instead of standing by their team and supporting it, the fans exhibit rude behavior and leave during halftime. No wonder so many marriages end in divorce; people are fickle and intolerant.

My prediction is that Callahan will indeed be fired. How unfortunate that the University of Nebraska allows whiny fans to determine the future of these men. Just as unfortunate is how quickly the fans abandoned their team and how accurate a statement this action makes about people today.

(Update: Bill Callahan was fired on 11.24.2007 after losing against Colorado on 11.23.2007.)

A Curmudgeon Talks Grammar

Today the New York Times reported that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is eliminating some 16,000 hyphens from the sixth edition. The reason? Most people don’t understand the proper use of a hyphen.

With this change, cry-baby becomes crybaby, pigeon-hole becomes pigeonhole, and a host of other formerly hyphenated words become either one word or two words. There are, of course, many words that will retain their hyphens.

As an editor and a grammarian, I do know the proper use of a hyphen, but I agree with Oxford that most people don’t and eliminating it when possible is a good idea. My boss, for example, has some bizarre aversion to hyphens and eliminates every one of them from any text she reviews. Not only does she make sentences grammatically incorrect, but she also obfuscates the meaning of sentences, for there are indeed times when the little hyphen is necessary.

Consider, for example the following sentence:

I went to a conference with small businessmen.

As the sentence stands, I went to a conference with tiny little businessmen. The correct sentence is I went to a conference with small-businessmen. This sentence means that I went to a conference with men who own small businesses. Thus, the hyphen is necessary to avoid confusion. There are many other instances of proper hyphen use, but you probably don’t care.

Hyphens are not a substitution for the em dash, or the long dash. Dashes can act like parentheses, and they are much easier on readers than parentheses. Parentheses force the reader’s eye to do the equivalent of stutter. A dash smoothly leads the reader’s eye to the next idea. The em dash is made by keying ctrl > alt > Num- on PCs and option > shift > - on Macs.

There is also the en dash, shorter than the em dash but longer than the hyphen. En dashes aren’t used very often, most commonly in dates: June 13–16. The en dash is made by keying alt > Num- on PCs and option > - on Macs.

I’m not one of those grammarians who is complaining that Oxford’s decision to minimize hyphens is contributing to the demise of the English language. Frankly, if they want to simplify things, great. And hyphens are a sensible place to start.

A wonderful example of the confusion improperly used punctuation can cause is an example found in a wildlife book, in the definition of panda. The definition begins, “Eats, shoots and leaves.” Funny how that one misplaced comma after “eats” can grossly change the meaning of the sentence and make the panda a gunman. Basic grammar and punctuation are important for anyone who ever has to write a presentation, a white paper, a business letter or anything someone else is going to read, and I highly recommend the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss. Truss has a delightful, engaging, entertaining way of defining basic usage and grammar.

What I’m concerned about is the fact that college-educated people don’t know even the basics. I edit documents that are supposed to be written by extremely knowledgeable people. However, when I find that one of these geniuses has used the word decision as a verb — Companies need to make sure they are decisioning in their best interest. — I shake my head, then I laugh. This was in a document from an Englishman. Strangely, the English are some of the worst offenders of mauling the language.

Other favorites are electronificate (and its cousins, electronify and electonification), incentivises, facilitied, and strategery. These are not words, folks. You won't find them in any dictionary. I keep a running list of these made-up words on the white board in my cubicle, and I read the list when I need a good laugh.

Another punctuation mark that confuses people is the semicolon. The semicolon is my favorite punctuation mark — has been ever since I learned to correctly use it in junior high.

I can understand people confusing when they should use a comma and when they should use a semicolon. I cannot understand when people use a semicolon in place of a colon. I always thought the colon was one of the easy punctuation marks. But if I see The list includes the following; one more time, I just might start hunting the offenders.

I don’t expect everyone to be a wonderful writer or know all the rules of language and grammar. If they did, I’d be out of a job. I do, however, believe people ought to know better than to use made-up words in professional documents and to understand basic punctuation. When someone who does know proper usage reads your written document, they do notice, and they do think you less intelligent than they did before reading it.