After all these years of playing sports... reading about sports... watching sports... listening to people talk about sports... I realize that sports fans, like any other members of a culture/demographic, borrow from one another. Borrowing leads to repetition, and, finally, laziness.
Listen to sports radio casually over the course of a week, and you'll hear Something That Must Be Stopped. This Something is destined to burn brightly in our language for a few years, and then become annoying. Kind of like the word slammin'.
It's not even proper to call this Something a word. It's both a word, and a phrase in the form of a question. And that phrase is Really? As in Did you really just say that?
Someone saying this word to you, in that manner, is insulting you. I probably don't need to point that out...
Whether pop culture borrowed from sports talking heads or the reverse... "really?" is a monster in some circles. I usually hear teenage boys using it to deride their friends. They just repeat the word, adding more astonishment each time.
It's actually replaced the previous Overused Champ: Tremendous. That game was tremendous. His talent is tremendous. [Related: Seriously? ]
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