A Bleeping ACCident

College football has the FBS, the FCS and, now, the FTS.

Professionally and personally, I’ve thumbed through many football media guides over the years. I’ve seen typos. I’ve seen inaccuracies. I’ve never seen vulgarities.

Never say never.

Media guides are often hundreds of pages long, chock-full of sports minutiae: stats, records, results, rosters, previews, reviews and so forth.

If you had access to the 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Football Information Guide, for example, you’d be able to find out all of the following:

What are the names of the ACC commissioner’s grandchildren?

What is the fax number for the Camping World Independence Bowl?

What year was Virginia Tech founded?

Who won the 1942 Boston College-Wake Forest game played at Fenway Park?

Who has the longest non-scoring run in league history?

You’d also discover the following:

What does an employee, perhaps one having a rough day, input in a moment of unprofessional frustration?

The answer to that question appears on page 145, in the wake of the 2014 Wake Forest schedule. The NSFW material was discovered last month, when the “cursed” guide was distributed at ACC Kickoff (media days).

I’ve blurred a pair of dirty four-letter words in the image above, but they’re there. I, ahem, swear. (Click here or here to see the original @#$% version.) In fact, they are easier to spot than the rather inconspicuous vulgarity that popped up a couple of weeks ago on a promo image marking the 100-day countdown to the last installment of The Hunger Games. See it? (Hint: Look at Jennifer Lawrence’s right cheek and nose.)

F*CK THIS SH*T is a common refrain, uttered when a person is frustrated or annoyed to the point he doesn’t want to complete the task at hand. An ACC employee at the end of his rope, it seems, placed something obscene at the end of his lines.

UnACCeptable.

Buyers Beware

I have my reservations about this “reserved” sign.

Rachel Grace of the lifestyle blog Heart of Light walked past this sign next to outdoor tables at a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut restaurant in Westwood Village (Los Angeles) for months before finally stopping to take a photo. I’m glad she did!

Photo courtesy of Rachel Grace

Those fast-food chains would be wise to whip up a fast-food change, because the spelling of one of the sign’s words is crazier than a Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco.

A person who buys food at Pizza Hut or Taco Bell is a customer. A person who makes or supplies outfits is a costumer. It’s customary, therefore, to run the u first, then the o. A costume change is in order.

Customers is right. Is that surprising? The customers are always right. Or so I’ve heard. You’d be hard-pressed to convince me these consumers are correct:

• Customers who take up two spaces in the parking lot

• Customers who follow closely and push their cart into your heels

• Customers who leave their cart in the middle of the aisle as they peruse the shelves

• Customers who don’t move up after placing their items on the conveyor belt

• Customers in the “10 items or less” line with, oh, 76 items

• Customers who hold up the line to go grab one forgotten item

• Customers who wait to hear the total before pulling out their wallet or, worse, fishing for their checkbook

• Customers who dig through their purse for “exact change”

Those shoppers pale in comparison to the worst customers I’ve ever seen, on a sign near the UCLA campus.

Thank you, Rachel, for sharing. Your customers service was excellent. Five stars.

I Spy

I spy, with my little editor eye, something beginning with I in the Sports Illustrated sentence that starts “I think I owned...” Any guesses? Hint: It’s intrusive, idle and itty-bitty. It is I. Not I as in Owen. I as in I, the one-letter personal pronoun.

One need not be four-eyed to see that four I’s are one too many. Despite what poker has taught us, three of a kind beats four of a kind in this deal. Why the third I? It needs to make like a disoriented hiker and get lost. That quartet would play better as a trio. Everyone agree? Aye, aye.