Your View: Editing, writing in Plainsman not up to where it should be

Editor, The Auburn Plainsman

I am a 9th grade composition teacher, a former journalist and the son of an AU journalism alumnus, and I would flunk any student (including those I taught in a Third World context) who submitted anything as egregious as The Plainsman's account of the West Virginia game.

Only my love for Auburn football saw me through a painfully ill-considered monstrosity that reminded me of the semi-literate ramblings of ignorant ex-jock sportscasters who want to sound important.

Get over yourself, son, and learn to write a decent sentence.

Why tell us that the kicker "would miss" the extra point?

Just tell us he missed it - and while you're at it, do away with "would connect" and "would rush."

I was especially, ah, impressed with the riveting passage in which we were informed that the AU "running game...were held to 100 yards rushing (missing comma) causing the passing game to have a big night." It were?

And do running games no longer specialize in rushing, so that they may be held to 100 yards of something else?

And does a weak ground attack guarantee a strong passing game?

Gosh, I'll have to tell my colleagues who coach football.

I also read with great interest that BOTH Auburn and West Virginia combined for 900 yards of offense instead of just combining with each other in the normal way.

With whom did each combine for this impressive total?

The writer's way with words also results in our being informed that the Tigers not only will play Ball State next Saturday, they will "finish the month of September" in that fashion.

We never would have figured that out on our own, and it was a great clincher sentence for a brutally incompetent article notably under-equipped with punctuation and over-equipped with the stale colloquialisms of bad sports journalism and kid-speak.

But I don't wish to single out the writer, Mr. Van Der Linden, who somehow has managed to be named Assistant Sports Editor; surely there is a proofreader somewhere who deserves to retake English 101 with him (assuming he has indeed taken it).

This is not The Plainsman I grew up reading, and it is a gift to anyone who wants to perpetuate the jokes about Auburn people being hicks.

Paul Culp

Tempe, AZ