Lake Superior State University Has Banished The Word GOAT

With the Super Bowl coming tomorrow, this news hits just in time. Lake Superior State University of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan makes a list every year of words they think should be banished and for 2023, they have added the word GOAT.

Patrick Mahomes will be playing in the big game tomorrow as Tom Brady has just recently left the building and GOAT is very much a part of our vocabulary, thank you very much. With LeBron James recently becoming the all-time highest NBA scorer, the debate still rages between Michael Jordan and James over who the actual GOAT is. This word isn’t just going to go away.

The Greatest of all Time is actually hard to nail down. There is always going to be a long list of names that have all accomplished great things. No one is in agreement about Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Everyone pretty much agrees that Tom Brady is the GOAT…for now. Patrick Mahomes is on his way. But if Lake Superior State University had its way, we would have to find a new term to use to label the one person who has made the greatest contribution to the game or whatever field they’re in.

That wasn’t the only word or saying that was banished by the way. The list also includes Inflection point, Quiet quitting, Gaslighting, Moving forward, Amazing, Does that make sense, Irregardless, Absolutely, and It is what it is. Rodney S. Hanley is the university’s president who defended the list by saying that they fit a certain set of criteria that includes, “misuse, overuse, and uselessness.”

I agree with the list to a certain extent. “Irregardless” is just a silly word that serves the same purpose as regardless and makes the speaker sound uneducated. “It is what it is,” explains nothing, and “amazing” is an extreme word that is used way too much. Your dinner was not amazing. Throwing your water bottle into a trash can five feet away is not an amazing shot. A dancer really has to stun me into disbelief before I will call their performance amazing. Very few things in the world are amazing and that level of description should be kept for those things that actually are.

But I’m keeping GOAT. In fact, I might say it now more than ever, and speaking of the GOAT, Patrick Mahomes has a particularly interesting curse to break tomorrow. The last nine quarterbacks to be awarded NFL MVP and go to the Super Bowl in the same year have lost the big game. Mahomes is looking to break that streak and bring home the win tomorrow, but he’s up against the Philadelphia Eagles and they aren’t too shabby either. Plus, we don’t know how he looks yet since suffering an injury to his ankle earlier in the playoffs.

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