The Futon Report

The Crime: Using the word Favregate.

One of my pet peeves among writers covering ongoing news is taking some kind of scandal or complicated, drawn out story and adding the -gate suffix to it. (See: Gate, Spy). Scandals imply lying, dishonesty, corruption, and/or general fuckupery. This Brett Favre story has none of those qualities, which might be why it’s such an annoying story. Yet, here we are. Favregate. People are saying it.

For the crime of misuse of -gate in a major sporting event story, I hereby ask that the following writers be suspended from their publications for 24 hours:

• Fred Richiani, The Bleacher Report — He’s absolutely right in 99 percent of what he says. That 1 percent though?

People wanna talk about Nipplegate. How about Favregate? You know, the event that has occurred this summer. Oh wait, you HAVEN’T HEARD?!

• Dave from Canal Street Chronicles — SB Nation ought to let a temp run the New Orleans Saints fan blog while Dave, a.k.a. Saintsaitional, thinks about this line:

The latest gossip amid Favregate is that Carolina is the most likely landing spot for Brett.

• Eric Garguilo of Phillyburbs — Dude, what are you thinking? You’re the sports content editor. You approved this:

Favre then faxed the Packers asking for an unconditional release. The Pack said no and here we sit with yet another week in Favregate.

• Dan Arkush, Pro Football Weekly — I’m going go request a 48-hour suspension on the Mr. Arkush, not because of:

In any event, it would hardly be surprising at this point if another big-time bombshell is driopped in the “Favregate” saga within the next 24 to 48 hours.

But because two whole days later:

The price another team would have to pay for Favre has become a key factor in the continuing “Favregate” saga.

That’s also a misuse of the word Favregate. the -gate suffix implies saga quality. There’s some redundancy that could be swept clean from these two articles. But, if there is justice in the world, he’ll have time to write “Favregate” 1,000 times a day until the “word” either loses all meaning … or he loses his mind and slips into an alternate reality where he becomes the word.