Don't Say "Extreme" Unless You Mean It

WWL-870 has dubbed its coverage of the Saints' preseason "X-Treme Camp Coverage." If nobody's on a skateboard or spinning a bike in the air, calling yourself "extreme" simply draws attention to how old and not-extreme you are.

For me, the only thing extreme about WWL's coverage of the Saints is the extreme rage I feel listening to Deke Bellavia ramble. As someone who conducts interviews, I'm irritated by TV and radio sports reporters' tendency to ask a question and feed the athlete the answer in the question. A typical question might be, "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent?" The Deke version takes that to the "extreme": "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent? Because I know you're sort of player who just tries to give it his all every day, every snap, and you know that you can't look down the line and overlook any opponent in the NFL. Are you just trying to work on your game and contributing to your unit and letting the chips fall where they may? Because one thing we know about the NFL is that nothing goes as planned, and as soon as you think you know what's going to happen, everything changes."

Needless to say, the cavalcade of inanity prompts cliche-prone interview subjects under the best of circumstances to pull the cliche shell up higher than ever as they address the general subject of training camp, the only thing they could hang on to out of all blather.