Some Words

I don’t look to sports writing for the best that the language has to offer. These people have to churn out text, frequently after a late night game, with the bed calling out to them. Often they got into the industry through the sport, rather than a background in journalism. So I’m pretty forgiving when a place like ESPN has a poorly constructed sentence, or a weird metaphor or simile. Sometimes though, I can’t pass it up without comment. Today, I saw this:

“It was like a post-graduate course in Leadership 101.”

I just sat there for a moment. I mean, sure, you could have a school where they renumbered the graduate courses to start in the hundreds again, maybe some of them even do. But everyone uses 101 for the basics. Why would you try to fight that? Why add 101 to the end of that sentence?