Gate This

Okay, rant time!

Today Mike and Mike spent nearly half their show discussing what you hate about sports. Well, it got me thinking, and I have come up with one of my all-time favorite pet peeves:

Adding the syllable "gate" to the end of any word to represent a controversy.

By no means is this phenomenon limited in any way to sports, but sportswriters are particularly prone to fall prey to this problem due to the defective pun-gene each has indelibly written into their genetic code.

Look people, Watergate was a place. It is the location of a crime which eventually brought down a president (Richard Milhouse Nixon, for you younger readers). Besides for referring to this geographical and historical nugget, using "gate" is the most overdone, unoriginal and lazy way to describe any uproar. Besides, is every maesltrom that is kicked up by some unpolitically correct comment worthy of being compared to the impeachment of a president? Can we please use some restraint and an ounce of brain power to come up with an original metaphor?

So, let's make an agreement. Unless any other controversy occurs either on, near, around, over or through a gate, P-L-E-A-S-E stop using "gate" to represent turmoil. It is done!