The Associated Press Is Getting Absolutely Roasted By Sports Fans And Journalists

For some reason on Friday, the Associated Press’ AP Stylebook decided that it doesn’t like the way sports journalists are writing their articles these days.

In fact, the AP Stylebook thinks that some of the terminology that is currently being used by sports journalists is “hackneyed.”

So, on Friday, they decided to share on X (Twitter) some of the guidelines that they would like to see sports journalists follow in the future.

Get ready to take notes.

Firs of all, “A team losing a game is not a ‘disaster.'”

The AP Stylebook also says home runs should only be referred to as “homers, not ‘dingers,’ “jacks’ or ‘bombs.'”

For all the hoops writers (Can I call them that? Is basketball writers better?), “A player scored 10 straight points, not 10 ‘unanswered’ points.”

And “if a football team scores two touchdowns and the opponent doesn’t come back, say it ‘never trailed’ rather than ‘never looked back.'”

The AP Stylebook then concluded, “In short, avoid hackneyed words and phrases, redundancies and exaggerations.”

As one of our BroBible writers who often writes about sports replied after seeing the AP Stylebook’s post, “AP needs to get shoved in a locker imho. Use of hackneyed is also hackneyed af.”

He, however, was FAR from the only sports fan and/or journalist to take issue with the AP’s suggestions.

And on and on and on it went. It got very ugly.

“We heard you and we are updating the cliches entry in the AP Stylebook’s sports chapter to remove the reference to ‘unanswered,’ which does fill a unique role in writing about sports,” the AP Stylebook replied, trying to defend itself.

“It joins many other sports terms that began as jargon but become accepted as the best way to explain what’s going on, such as blitz, hat trick and walk-off.

“Our general guidance still stands: Avoid hackneyed words and phrases, redundancies and exaggerations.”

That didn’t help. They still got stuffed into a locker.

The internet is still undefeated.