What is a “linebacker”?

Are sports scholarships a good idea?

Did this man graduate from college?

From high school?

Another fine product of our educational systems.

Professor Higgins might have agreed with him.

No dowt abaht it, ‘e’s go*a poi^, doncha fink?

(* = glottal stop; ^ = plosive)

One rarely hears English spoken in London nowadays.

As one of the commenters for the article pointed out, this player was a member of the National Honor Society in college and graduated from U of FL with a 3.5 GPA.  He also scored very highly on the NFL intelligence/critical thinking/personality test (“the wonderlic”).  It’s possible that he’s this ignorant, but more likely that he is joking.

—Scott K, who used to room with a future NFL running back who had a 3.8 GPA and an electrical engineering degree from a prestigious private univeristy

That’s alright - Americans don’t speak English either…..

England and the United States—two countries divided by a common language.
(I forget the source)

Slaintè
Jim Elliott <><

#9 some question as to whether it was George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill

What Peeps+ said.

I have been to London.  They speak a difficult-to-understand dialect of the American language.

I remember in college, I was out with a group that included a lady who was dating a member of the football team.  Her boyfriend came by the table and we started to talk.  He was articulate, well read, and well spoken.  I was very impressed.  But then some of his teammates came by and you could almost see the forehead slope back and the arms lengthen as we went into “jock” mode.  For the rest of the evening he behaved and talked like a dumb jock.  I wonder if there aren’t more “smart” jocks that pay dumb because people expect them to.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

What #13 said. Outside London, especially in places like Yorkshire and Cornwall, you for-real may need a translator. The dialect is as different as Spanish from Portuguese, maybe more so. Think SchwitzerDeutsch vs. High German, or Cantonese vs. Mandarin Chinese.

This is a disarming style of humor. I once worked with a very bright guy from the sticks and humble circumstances. He spoke of the “rich girl down the street. Her daddy had a looong paved driveway and an in-ground pool”—kind of like the “cement pond” of the Clampets. And to the cyclist with his fancy bike—“shoot, what kind of bike is that? It don’t even have a kick stand on it.” He missed nothing and charmed everyone. Perhaps in print it is easy to jump to less than charitable conclusions…