Published December 15, 2025
Every time someone says “career long field goal,” I hear it with a hyphen between “career” and “long,” as in “month-long” or “week-long,” which was AP style before AP changed to “monthlong” and “weeklong.”
And then I think, “Wow, I hope his career ends soon so we’ll know if his career-long field goal is good or not! This could take years!”
No one laughs, of course, because “his career long” is such a part of American sports jargon, it’s mostly understood. Except maybe at clothing stores where he might buy a 42 Long.
But seriously? What’s his career short? And how did we get here?
Let me back up
You may have no idea what I’m talking about.
In the language of American football, “his career long” means “the longest field goal (or whatever) of his career.” No one ever says “his career short,” but if they did, it would mean “the shortest field goal (or whatever) of his career.”
Why not just say “the longest of his career” then? I think I know.
A long, long time ago, someone designed stat sheets to be filled out after each quarter and again after the game. It was a standard form, although handwriting was hardly standard. You’d get neatly printed letters and numbers, and you’d get some quick scribbling.
Here’s an example from 1979.
Do you see “Long” in several places? It means “the longest,” but there wasn’t room to print “Longest.” The longest run, pass, pass reception, punt and field goal was the “long.”
And that’s the language announcers adopted. “His long this season is 52 yards.”
This is not a crime against the English language, but it took some getting used to at first. Now, it’s part of the jargon.
It’s also part of why I don’t get as excited as some editors who yell, relative to a lot of the language of sports, “There’s no such thing!”
Anyway, I’d bet you a baked ham I’m right about why they say “long” and not “the longest.”
A quick ABBA break
First, a song.
It’s often not word people who create these templates and standards. My guess is a football person or tech person came up with “Strength of Schedule” when “schedule strength” would have sufficed, causing me to do a “roll of eye.”
In tabular material, it’s often presented as — you guessed it — SOS.
The AP provides sports agate showing how its Top 25 fared over the weekend, or how the NBA teams fared, or NFL teams — otherwise known as the NBA standings or NFL standings. But in wire language, it always came over as “Top 25 Fared” or “NBA Fared.” I suppose it still does, but I haven’t worked in the sports department of a paper that had an AP agate subscription since 2008.
Agate clerks in a hurry used that as a headline, so readers had to make sense of what “Top 25 Fared” meant. They probably figured it out.
If I had more energy, I’d do a deeper dive into newsroom jargon, including “deep dive,” perhaps. But I wanted to clean “career long” off my plate after the reminder Sunday.
A career-long 60 yarder from Blake Grupe to give the Colts the lead: pic.twitter.com/Jf3b1LWP5H
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 15, 2025
I’m sure there are editors who are bothered by this, but the abuse — some would call it fair use — of the English language by the sports world began a long time ago and is never going to cease.
There are more important things to worry about.
If you don’t believe me, you can check out my “career long” blog post from last month.
Sending love. Protect your peace.
Featured photo by Richard Paul Kane via Shutterstock.
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