In sports, metaphors are used to playfully describe the action witnessed at a sporting venue. The use of metaphors keeps the reader entertained and provides the reader a laugh every now and again. Sometimes they turn sportswriting into an exercise in which people like Rick Reilly are allowed to flourish and continue a career despite making pop culture references to things that have long lost their cultural currency. And there are also moments when metaphors are met with confusion and, in the case of Les Miles, anger.

After a reporter attempted to ask the Mad Hatter a question that involved a “hammer and nail” comparison with the LSU – Florida relationship in the last year, this happened:

Miles has a point. There are no hammers and nails on the field. There is a football, 22 players on the field and an officiating crew. No signs of anything you could pick up at a TrueValue. But could you argue in the figurative that there were hammers and nails? Yes, you could, though you would be arguing against a man whose brain seems as if it is wired like a Roomba designed to spin in circles.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the virtue of what Miles was getting at here. There were plenty of “hammer and nail” relationships that happened this weekend that I think we can safely talk about without the head man down in Baton Rouge unleashing Mike the Tiger on my apartment (I think).

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