From athletes, there really are no guarantees

Words are the stock in trade of people in newspapers, and from time to time I can't help talking about them - or, in today's case, one of them. At issue, guarantee.

With the run-up to the Super Bowl media frenzy upon us, a radio sports columnist this week offered an entertaining rumination on the theme of athletes who "guarantee" their team will win the big game and his hopes to avoid such public displays of hubris this year.

But he overlooked the most important problem with the athlete's "guarantee." It is never a guarantee at all. A guarantee requires that something happen if the conditions aren't met. If my new iPad doesn't work when I get it home, Apple's guarantee ensures that I'll get another that does work or get my money back. The three-year, 30,000-mile guarantee on my once-new car ensured that if anything went wrong, I could take it to the dealer for free repairs.

But if a player "guarantees" his team will win the Super Bowl or any other game, he never tells us what will happen if he proves to be wrong. Will he surrender his multi-million-dollar contract, or at least his paycheck for that particular game? Will he perform some community service that would repay all the faithful fans who took him at his word and ended the day disappointed? Will he at least publicly genuflect before his opponent's captain in a gesture of apology and humility?

No, none of these things or anything like them will occur. The game will be played, the team at issue will lose and the most anyone will get from the athletic guarantor is an embarrassed refusal to talk to the press about what went wrong. I readily acknowledge that not having to listen to a professional athlete's barely lucid apres-match clichés is a reward of sorts, but it is hardly a return on a guarantee.

Indeed, it is this lack of reaction that has always made me as an editor wonder why any of us make such a big deal about athletes who guarantee victory. They're not going to do a single thing different if they lose than they would have done had they not issued the guarantee. No, I heartily wish that the next time one of them issues such a guarantee, the reporter's next question will be, "And what will you give back to the fans if you lose?" Just once, I'd like to hear the response.

The misuse of this word is not limited to sports, of course. In fact, I listen to a radio commercial several times a day in which the announcer makes a huge deal about his television network not just promising me I'll laugh at the evening's entertainment fare, but guaranteeing it. Over the course of the next 30 seconds, he repeats the phrase, loudly, several times, and includes some outtakes from the network programming that, to my way of thinking, pretty much indicate that I'm going to make it through the night without so much as a light chuckle. Yet never once does the announcer tell me what I'll get if indeed I end the evening disappointed.

Yes, it's only a word, and it's only one word, but none of us - newspaper people above all - should accept lightly the careless abuse of the fundamental tools of communication. So, I want to add my voice to those of the sports writers and broadcasters loath to confront some gladiator's over-exuberant guarantee of victory this Super Bowl season.

But if we are subjected to such a promise, can we at least follow up to find how the player will make it up to us if he's wrong?

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald.