In the early 1980s when I was studying for my SATs - I read all sorts of stuff I’d never read otherwise to test my vocab abilities. Tmost difficult thing I came across was - by far - Sports Illustrated. At first I was crushed. I thought to myself “What the fuck! Sports Illustrated is kicking my ass article after article!”

If there was an article about horse racing - whenever possible they’d eschew such mundane constructs as “It was a rainy, dusty, and windy day.” I can’t even parody it. Not only was that so many decades ago - they surely went down thesaurus rabbit holes I’d struggle to find even with the help of the net. They went from rainy to inclement to some word that appeared a handful of times since the 1800s.

I made a list of 10 most perplexing words and I asked my mom about them. She was a doctor. I figured she had to know at least half. I think she guessed at two and said she simply didn’t know and couldn’t even guess the rest. Then I brought in the magazine and she scanned it and she really laughed. She told me the writers probably didn’t really know the words either and they were probably using a thesaurus like crazy.

I don’t know the details at all but I have to assume that the editor at that time was an insanely pompous prick so everybody created the most ridiculous phraseology to please him. As time went on - I noticed that a lot of sportswriting is heavily thesaurus-based. It’s like Frank Zappa’s quip about music journalism: “Rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, in order to provide articles for people who can’t read.”