View From the Phlipside Radio - Phrase of the Century!

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

I would like to discuss a commonly used phrase in the media.  A commonly used phrase that I would like to see eliminated once and for all.  The phrase is “...of the century”.  The game of the century, the match of the century, the trial of the century you know the drill.  Any time we want to hype something, usually WAY beyond any level of reason, it gets called the whatever of the century.  

The latest violation in my opinion was this last weekends college football game between the number one ranked Louisiana State University and the number two ranked University of Alabama.  Now logically this should be a good game.  Maybe even a great game because they were both very good teams coming into the game.  What we got was a game with very little offense from either side, lots of missed field goals and a final score of 9-6 in overtime.  Maybe if you really love defensive football this was a great game but the game of the century?

You see the real problem here is the question - of WHAT century?  This is the part that makes me crazy.  It’s the football game of the century.  The 21st century?  We are a grand total of 11 years into this century (let’s skip the whole argument about when centuries start shall we?  For the sake of argument let’s call it 11 years)  So in the next 89 years we are confident that NO football game is going to be better than this 15 total point contest.  Seriously?

Or is the best game of the past 100 years?  I’d be willing to bet that you can probably come up with all kinds of games you’d rather nominate.  Hey Bills fans you want this game to out rank the Comeback Game?  Remember?  1993, playoffs against the Houston Oilers.  Frank Reich leads the Bills back from a 32 point deficit to win in overtime.  But hey, that’s not the game of the century.  It’s ‘Bama and LSU failing to score a single touchdown.

The reality is that you never know in advance what the anything of the century will be.  The phrase itself is actually totally without meaning as it is commonly used.  It’s an attempt to emotionally manipulate us that relies on the belief that we’re really not very bright.

And that’s an assumption that we can leave in the last century as far as I’m concerned.

Call that the View From the Phlipside