Okay, I’m glad that Women’s Basketball magazine exists. Really, I am. But man oh man, does it ever have some bad writing. Check out this recent article opener:

As the 2009 NCAA women’s basketball campaign gets under way, “change” is in the air.

Yep. That theme is not limited to aspirants who have been seeking residency at a house bathed in white at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, in Washington, D.C.

“A house bathed in white”? Such a poetic turn of phrase, but whatever do you mean? Oh, I see, you’ll be qualifying that further. But wait, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave [That’s “Ave” as in “Ave Maria”, given that the abbreviation for avenue has a period at the end] in what city? You could mean any bathed-in-white-house that happens to have that address!

Or how about this one:

“You can’t turn it on and turn it off. You have to play your best all the time.”

That coaching cliché has been accepted as gospel truth since the first Olympics back in 776 BCE, if not the first mammoth hunt, and every player has heard it pronounced over and over again as though it is written in stone in some secret, sacred cave.

I love how the mammoth hunt part is presented as conjecture but the 776 BCE part comes across as straightforward fact. Thanks, time-traveling reporter! Oh, and I cheer for “secret, sacred cave”, not just because of the wonderful sound of it, but because it’s just the sort of place you’d expect to find something that’s repeated over and over again to everyone.

This article also goes on to explain that the Detroit Shock have definitively disproven this eternal gospel truth. Talk about making history!

These articles remind me of nothing so much as some of the lamer student papers I’ve received. I’m just waiting for one to begin, “Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘winning’ as…”