There’s one tidbit from the national semifinals that it would seem appropriate for us to address before we move on to the Oregon-Ohio State National Championship Game.  That would be the matter of learning how to pronounce the name of the Buckeyes starting quarterback, Cardale Jones.

Throughout the early stages of the semifinal game, play-by-play man Brad Nessler kept pronouncing Jones’ name as “Core-dale” or “Car-dell” or even “Core-dell.”  You can check the game footage here.  After watching back through the first quarter, the 24:06 mark is one of many occurrences in the early going where Nessler has an alternate pronunciation for Jones.  Of course, it’s exactly how it looks – “Car-dale.”  OSU Twitter certainly noticed.

https://twitter.com/WordTalkPro/status/550842323190689792

https://twitter.com/akimPez/status/550841256746971137

And in an interesting tidbit, Richard Sandomir’s recap of the CFP semis at the New York Times mentions that a Buckeye official apparently had to correct Nessler during the game.

Nessler also made mistakes. He mispronounced Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones’s given name — it’s car-DALE, which sometimes sounds like car-DELL, but definitely not Kordell — until late in the first quarter, when a Buckeyes official informed ESPN otherwise. Nessler also declared a first down for Ohio State after a 12-yard gain on a third-and-20 play and seemed overly enamored of the phrase “off to the races.”

Jones was a relative unknown just over a month ago, but with him bursting on the scene in the Big Ten title game, one would think broadcasters would be able to get his name right.  It’s best to learn it now, because in 20 years there’s going to be a lot more football players named Cardale coming out of the state of Ohio.

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