Mushnick of NY Post:Ct Taxpayers/others worried about Ollies grammar

[The Viking]

As a CT taxpayer I'm more concerned we haven't hired a goon to punch this attention seeking Wh0re in the nose

 

[WestHartHusk]

The NY Post, like any media outlet caters to its audience - in this case, racist, older white people. He uses the word grammar, but what he means is black.

 

[upstater]

Ollie is an educator and part of his job is PR. Written and verbal communication is critical in any job. No one is asking him to be F. Scott Fitzgerald or speak like a seasoned politician, but I would like to see the subject and verb agree a little more often when Ollie speaks.

This is not that hard to fix. It is very common for companies to send employees to writing and speaking seminars for communications training. That is all Ollie needs here.

Are we saying that in a university setting, Ollie's English is inappropriate?

Not in any English Dept. I know.

People use colorful language too at universities, they swear. Why is that appropriate? Southern whites use all sorts of colloquialisms. My Pitt friend sometimes slips in a yinz. I drop in a youse sometimes.

I wouldn't dare tell Ollie how he needs to speak in a university setting.

Mushnick is making all sorts of assumptions and really, at the end of the day, this is racial.

 

[upstater]

The NY Post, like any media outlet caters to its audience - in this case, racist, older white people. He uses the word grammar, but what he means is black.

Precisely.

 

[upstater]

The timing on this is very suspect, and rude. Kevin is having his finest moment and this guy brings it up now? .

That said, it isn't just a dialect as Calhoun's speech is. I think Kevin knows it and is likely working on it.

It is a dialect. He's dropping his verbs of to be. That's dialect. It's not incorrect grammar. Hell, we had a President back in 1990 that was also averse to verbs. And his son, when he used them, got into trouble... So be it.

 

[UConn Hoops1]

"Ollie is an educator and part of his job is PR...This is not that hard to fix. It is very common for companies to send employees to writing and speaking seminars for communications training. That is all Ollie needs here."

It's too bad you weren't there last night. I think what might be going on there was some world class PR for the University of Connecticut(athletically AND academically). How long do you think that you would have lasted if you had the nerve to stand on that stage and share your opinion with them about their Head Men's Basketball Coach AND their university?

KO YOU DA MAN!!!!

GO HUSKIES!!!
BEAT THE WILDCATS!!!

 

[J-dog]

Apparently the North Carolina tax payers/others aren't as concerned about Roy Williams made up words (i.e. daggum, goddern, dadbern, etc.)? I heard Roy attended an online class to fix this problem… Got an A.

What a MushD!ick….

 

[Scot-e]

What an a$$hat. Is the dude a rasisf? Can we run him out of town?

Oh let's forget about it until after Monday and he may not have a job anymore,

 

[storrsroars]

It is a dialect. He's dropping his verbs of to be. That's dialect. It's not incorrect grammar. Hell, we had a President back in 1990 that was also averse to verbs. And his son, when he used them, got into trouble... So be it.

One of the more amusing language affectations of Pittsburgh is construction of sentences like, "the lawn needs mowed" or "my shirts need washed". And yet Mark Cuban is a billionaire.

 

[Inyatkin]

Mushnick is making all sorts of assumptions and really, at the end of the day, this is racial.

The beginning, the middle and the end of the day.

 

[cheech63]

First of all, this a-clown should be careful criticizing someone else's English when his column is a rambling, incoherent mess.

That said, Ollie needs to clean up his grammar. It undermines him as a speaker and does reflect a little poorly on the school. A simple public speaking course over the summer should do the trick. I suspect there is a professor or two on campus that can give him some 1-on-1 training. To be honest, I would not be surprised if Ollie is working on it already because I feel like he has improved his grammar since last year.

I have to agree.This is 5'th grade grammar here.Basic English.This goes for the student athlete as well.

 

[caw]

Lol. This guy thinks CT taxpayers care.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

You drama queens literally live on being indignant, don't you?

 

[SirTravKnight]

phil, you work for the NY POST and you wrote an article about proper grammar (and it was all run on sentences)......

I got a headache reading that word jumble he threw together in 30 seconds that made no sense. I feel dirty that I contributed to adding a hit to that webpage.

Get a real job d bag! There is a reason a REAL media outlet wouldn't hire you!

We need more Kevin Ollie's in the world, we're overflowing with Mushnicks

 

[UConnDan97]

Funny, when southern football coach, like Houston Nutt or Dabo Swinney open their mouth, you never read comments like this.

It's funny, but this analogy was the absolute first thought that went through my mind when hearing about this article. The absolute first. If you hear a football coach (cough...white!...cough) with a heavy Southern drawl, saying things like "ain't" and "daggum" and "ya awhta", etc., nothing gets written about it. And as others have already mentioned, the timing of this article is ridiculously rude at best, and perhaps some other things at worst...

 

[nelsonmuntz]

While several of you do not seem to believe that someone from South Central LA is capable of or should be expected to speak properly, I will disagree. I have also found Ollie's problem to be very common among GenX'ers, the last generation to grow up without widespread access to PC's. I think communications skills, and written communications skills in particular, are better with younger people, possibly because of the ubiquity of email.

Many companies do communications training for new employees, and I think something like that would be helpful for Ollie. It is not a big deal.

As for other coaches, most of them speak pretty well, and everyone knows that Roy Williams' and Steve Spurrier's nonsense is an act and that both of them are completely full of s*.

 

[Milo65]

...Stick to covering St. John's and Fordham.

 

[mauconnfan]

You drama queens literally live on being indignant, don't you?

Drama queens? Indignant?

UConn is going to the National Championship game Monday night and your worried about the integrity of the school because the coach doesn't speak like a professor? Yet I promise you he has a bigger impact on the sudent-athletes that he "teaches" than most of the professors do during the every day campus life………..

I like the way he speaks, those who don't need to check the mirror while looking at his results on and OFF the court!

 

[Nostical]

I've always been a big believer that communication skills are a critical gauge of future success for most people and the reality is there are lots of athletes who don't possess them. That's the reason you often see certain players identified as "very well spoken" (There's a thread on the BY on this very point about Patric Young). So what are we to make of KO's grammar? It could certainly use improvment but I'm not sure it really matters. While a corporation would never hire a grammatically challenged marketing rep nor would there ever be a newscaster with similar verbal skills, this HC job may not require it. As someone said, what he says is more important to these kids than how he says it. And while a public butchering of the verb "to be" can provide easy fodder for the bigots and provocateurs like Mushnick, as long as Susan Herbst is OK with it--so am I.

 

[UConnDan97]

Just like Nelson, I also share a love for high academic standards and a good representation of the University of Connecticut. That's why I'm sure Nelson will be more than happy to read the title and substance of this article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/co...31011/uconn-academic-progress-report-ncaa.ap/

 

[noeynox]

It's funny, but this analogy was the absolute first thought that went through my mind when hearing about this article. The absolute first. If you hear a football coach (cough...white!...cough) with a heavy Southern drawl, saying things like "ain't" and "daggum" and "ya awhta", etc., nothing gets written about it. And as others have already mentioned, the timing of this article is ridiculously rude at best, and perhaps some other things at worst...

I really hate to make it about race, but how come as others have said, Roy Williams never gets taken to task for the way he talks? Bobby Bowden? The youngish black coach from south central LA doesn't speak with perfect grammar, and it has to make papers? I'm sorry, I don't know what else to make of it, other than it is racial.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

An English teacher would have a field day red lining his columns.

 

[Husky25]

Ollie is an educator and part of his job is PR. Written and verbal communication is critical in any job. No one is asking him to be F. Scott Fitzgerald or speak like a seasoned politician, but I would like to see the subject and verb agree a little more often when Ollie speaks.

This is not that hard to fix. It is very common for companies to send employees to writing and speaking seminars for communications training. That is all Ollie needs here.

I can't dislike this post enough. UConn was coached, educated, and marketed for the last 28 years and counting by a marble mouthed Bostonian with only 25 letters in his personal alphabet and who talked too fast.

To say anything about Ollie's grammar is transparently ignorant.

 

[babysheep]

Apparently the North Carolina tax payers/others aren't as concerned about Roy Williams made up words (i.e. daggum, goddern, dadbern, etc.)? I heard Roy attended an online class to fix this problem… Got an A.

What a MushD!ick….

Yeah I wonder what he thinks about how grammatical the UNCheat players' "essays" are.

 

[tykurez]

I can't dislike this post enough. UConn was coached, educated, and marketed for the last 28 years and counting by a marble mouthed Bostonian with only 25 letters in his personal alphabet and who talked too fast. To say anything about Ollie's grammar is transparently ignorant.

It's not transparently ignorant. It's transparently douchy.