One less undefeated team.

Submitted by mooseman on October 20th, 2021 at 11:01 PM

App St. takes down Coastal Carolina.

VicTorious1

October 21st, 2021 at 11:02 AM ^

I believe you need some additional context regarding singular nouns.  From the CMOS:

If the countable noun is plural, choose fewer; if it’s singular, choose less. (When CMOS says to reserve fewer for countable things, it’s talking about plural countable things. When it says to reserve less for mass nouns, it means singular mass nouns.) One is always singular: there is one less food group in the new pyramid; there is one less number in this column. Two (or more) is plural: there are two fewer food groups in the new pyramid; there are three fewer numbers in this column.

Robbie Moore

October 21st, 2021 at 4:25 PM ^

The grammar police is out in force today. Or is it are out in force? 

So, since the police are making a house call, a few questions:

1. What's up the the Brits (and Canadians) dropping "the" from such things as university or hospital? Such as "If I have to watch Jared Goff anymore you will need to take me to hospital."

2. So when referring to a team, is it "State is (or are?) a joke?

HighBeta

October 21st, 2021 at 10:13 PM ^

Oh hell, I might as well jump in here.

The Brit tendency to drop"the" is known as a regional affectation. An example of an American (USA) affectation is the dropping of words like us, me, you, etc. when discussing accompanying someone: "hey, why don't you come with". 

Regarding singulars (that's fun to type) and plurals? The Spartans (as a multi member collection, (underscore the plural members of singular noun, collection)) suck - is grammatically correct. When contemplating the various members (note the plural), then it's grammatically correct to indicate that the Spartans are morons, etc..

English is considered the hardest language to learn because it is mostly contextual, that is, it lacks the highly formal rules of ancient Latin or even its romance language children like French.

Okay, I'll stop now.

- Rackham '75

 

 

G. Gulo of the Dale

October 22nd, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^

I'm honestly not trying to be snarky or difficult, but what is the "additional context" added by passage that you quote.  It simply repeats what I said in the original post:  in the case of nouns that are both countable and plural, the use of "fewer" is correct, while "less" is incorrect.  In the case of countable nouns that are singular, "less" is acceptable (just as is evidently the case in describing a portion of a continuous whole).  So the language of the OP is just fine. 

HighBeta

October 22nd, 2021 at 9:11 PM ^

Understood you are disagreeing without snark, but the OP is grammatically incorrect. OP is discussing a multi-member group comprising defeated and undefeated teams. The context? One of those groups now has fewer members, not "less members".

This language is borderline impossible ...

Supermarket checkout line outrage: ten items or less.

Blue Vet

October 20th, 2021 at 11:17 PM ^

As this was the second ranked team App State has beaten, the announcers just had to keep mentioning App State's first win against a ranked team.

I still have bad memories of watching that game at the Big House.

Blue Vet

October 20th, 2021 at 11:21 PM ^

Good point. I was just thinking that I'd been on vacation with my family and made a special effort to get us to the game, so it's always felt a little personal.

[Thursday morning EDIT]: also, the last minute decision to attend meant we stayed in a hotel full of App State fans and sat surrounded by App State fans, so I already felt like an outsider at a Michigan game. Fortunately, after their team won, they were happy but very nice, both exulting with each other and commiserating with me.

It was a bizarro world that day.

 

snowcrash

October 21st, 2021 at 12:54 PM ^

I was at both of those. The FSU game wasn't *that* bad. We were down 31-23 at half and we were still in it with 4 minutes left, down 44-31 with the ball in their territory. Now the Cuse game was a complete fiasco, we could do nothing on either side of the ball and were down 38-7 before Cuse called off the dogs and let us score a bunch of garbage time TDs to make it look a lot closer than it was.

LSAClassOf2000

October 21st, 2021 at 8:27 AM ^

It was the first year for BTN, and actually, that game was the very first college football game that BTN aired live, so in essence, our humiliation was their inauguration. 

Fortunately, it was largely unavailable in southeastern Michigan at the time - BTN didn't appear on Comcast here until early 2008, I think. UNFORTUNATELY.....I was there in person. 

As others have mentioned, the Oregon game was one of the first times I had - to that point - ever seen Michigan not even be on the same plane as their opponent. As I recall at the time, the 32-point margin of loss was their worst margin of loss since 1968. Obviously, we've outdone that since then. 

BuckeyeChuck

October 21st, 2021 at 10:08 AM ^

Both Michigan & OSU (vs. YSU) played that day to kick-off the network. By the second half I was watching more of the Michigan game than OSU.

Also, that Oregon game the following week...I am convinced the team was still numb and had a numb week of practice, not believing that what happened had actually happened.

Then in the presser after the Oregon game, "Blake Corum but slower" spoke up with some fire & intensity and I bet Michigan had an angry week of practice, the best week of practice those players ever had, and them came out and whalloped ND. (I think 38-0?)

lilpenny1316

October 21st, 2021 at 10:57 AM ^

As a student, the beginning of the 1998 season was the only comparison. We came out flat in the second half at ND and lost the lead and the game and then Syracuse dominated us the next week. I stayed for all of the game, just because Donovan McNabb played like Barry Sanders, but with an  arm cannon.

Then we caught fire and won all our games until The Game. Almost similar to 2008, except Hart and Henne broke down prior to Wisconsin.

ShineBox

October 21st, 2021 at 2:05 PM ^

Exactly. I was listening to the game in Ypsi with friends and once we got down two scores I drove down and parked at Bush's. I then walked to the stadium and someone literally gave me a ticket.

I was still hung over after hanging with the Ypsi crew the night before and after the horror, I puked in an empty trash barrel. Compared to the game, that was the highlight of the whole event.