“Can you believe it!”- FCC Censors Al Michaels for Difficult Words

Sharky Johnson,

GFL Sports Analyst

Washington, D.C. - Veteran NBC play-by-play commentator Al Michaels faces censorship from the FCC. After deftly calling the Giants/Cowboys divisional bout Monday night, they had had enough.
    According to the FCC, that august group of moral superiority, Al Michaels has been at it for too long as the "thesaurus" of sports.
    "Stick to 'Can You Believe It!', Al," says the FCC. "No more ten dollars words like predilection, tenable, propicious, or irretractable," they said. No one understands you, Al. During this Monday's contest, he was recorded as saying ‘prodigious’, ‘disconsolate’ and ‘plenary’." Censors allowed it through, apparently unaware at the time of this wanton egregiousness.
    All broadcasts will be further delayed by an additional 24 seconds for real-time adjustment during live games so that FCC officials can find simpler, more accessible words for the American public from their Roget’s Reverse Thesaurus, published by the Random House subdivision People for Parity In An Intellectually Challenged Society. This bible of major network television studios has been used on the set of PBS Newshour, BBC News, and Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
    "Our job," says NBC and the FCC, "Is to ensure that people are not jarred or otherwise confounded by difficult and challenging language that they haven't seen since the SATs."
    All of the words will be replaced with simpler three to six letter words more readily digestible for an already dwindling American intelligence.
    GFL reached out to Chris Collingsworth for comment, but have not heard back. It was a welcomed non-response.
    "I am disheartened and crestfallen," tweeted Michaels from Sioux City, Iowa while covering an amateur in-line hockey league, "This is a thoroughgoing and unexpurgated shock to me. But I will capitulate to anything that this saturnalian, ignoble, and profligate network requests. Because I’m Al Michaels. And I get along with everybody."
    Both the FCC and NBC were appreciative of Michaels's warm comments.