A Plea for Sanity

The Kobe-vs-LeBron finals that never was---the overhyped-by-the-sports-media, desperately-hoped-for-by-the-NBA, fetishistically-envisioned-by-those-who-flatter-themselves-to-think-that-they-are-witnessing-history matchup that was basically a foregone conclusion all season long (I mean, Lakers-Celtics happened last year in the same situation, right?)---has, most improbably, brought our long national nightmare of grammatical prescriptivism to the fore.

I'm talking, of course, about subject-verb agreement with the Orlando Magic. Media outlets all over the country, undeterred by the otherwise exceptionless generalization in American sporting grammar that teams control singular agreement when referred to by their city name (Boston is trailing at the half) and plural agreement when referred to by their team name (seriously, why are the Celtics such a bunch of pussies?), have been tripping all over themselves writing ugly, awkward, and, yes, ungrammatical sentences like "Just in time, the Magic goes back to basics." No one, I think, would dispute that the English noun magic controls singular agreement, though perhaps the NYT has some interest in demonstrating to the American public that it recognizes this workmanlike, if mundane, point of grammar. But of course it's not magic, nor any contextually salient amount of same that could be referred to as the magic, that won game 3. It's the Orlando Magic, the basketball team, and basketball teams are plural, regardless of whether or not they have stupid names based on singular mass nouns. To use singular verb agreement here is to succumb to the same type of braindead prescriptivism that led ESPN to briefly force all of its anchors and commentators to use the form RBI as both singular and plural (like moose), leading to a period of broadcasting idiocy in which you would hear that Pujols had four RBI last night, and so on (I mean, why not RsBI, then?).

Like so many other ills in American life, the scourge of singular team names can be traced to the state of Florida, with the entry into their respective leagues of the Magic and the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning in the late '80s and early '90s (see also: Miami Heat). This subsequently led to an explosion of silly singular names throughout American sports, though the fact that MLB and the NFL have so far avoided the naming malaise (the Devil Rays notwithstanding; Florida again), combined with the fact that the bulk of the singulars are found in the perpetually-below-the-radar MLS, has conspired to keep the agreement issue largely out of the public eye.

But now the Magic are on the NBA's grandest stage, with a river of proverbial ink being spilled about their every move. So, at the risk of sounding like a scone-munching, soccer-obsessed limey like Dork 3, I implore the American sports media to yield to their baser grammatical instincts and use plural agreement with the Magic. We needn't go as far as the Brits themselves and use it for teams referred to by their city name (Manchester are now running aimlessly about the pitch); that just sounds barmy. But if I have to hear one more comment about how the Magic is really shooting well tonight, I might just have to go watch hockey or something.