For many Americans, November can be summed in turkey, the color orange and football. Some put the greatest emphasis on the last item; thus, their fall season is spent commentating on offense and defense and all that business. And while it is already stressful for yours truly to listen to this daunting, incomprehensible chatter, it all-out destroys me when people cannot do it properly — that is, in a grammatical sense. This holiday season, I encourage you and your loved ones to make merry, drive safely and speak correctly. Here’s how.
“Man, I hope that team wins all their games this season.”
“Yeah, but they have a terrible defense.”
And so forth. (Obviously, I am not a sports person.)
The mistake here, which is also one of my pet peeves, is that the quote refers to a team, a singular noun, as “they,” a plural noun. The team consists of various players, yes, but the team itself is a single unit. Therefore, it and its pronoun must be singular too.
If you want the players to win all their games this season, by all means say so. Or say that you want the team to win its games. The same pronoun rule applies for any other group, club or organization. For example, One Direction didn’t release their latest single; One Direction released its newest single.
Sometimes, style rules trump grammar, though. This explains why the Daily Cal refers to Stanford’s football team, the Cardinal, as a plural noun, indicating the players rather than the team. For instance: “The Cardinal cried after their loss against the Bears.” (Wishful thinking, I know.)
Figures that our rival school would provide a grammatical nightmare for our sports page. Oh, Stanford.
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