As I was watching basketball players the other day, I was staring at their numbers and began to wonder why we can’t use letters too. What’s wrong with putting a big Q on the back of a jersey? Or using two letters, like AZ, SJ, LY? They’re certainly faster to say than “twenty-three” or “fifty-seven.” After all, the only letter with more than one syllable to pronounce is W, whereas most two-digit numbers are three syllables. So in terms of efficiency, it makes more sense.
It’s not like we use numbers because we somehow need to put athletes in order of number. And even if so, we can alphabetize letters! Plus with two-digit numbers, you can only have 100 possibilities, versus 676 if you use letters, so it’s far less likely to repeat. That way when a certain person’s is “retired,” there are still plenty more to choose from. It all seems to make sense, yet, it’s not how the sports world works.
Perhaps the concern is over being able to remember who’s who, but isn’t it the same with numbers? After you see them enough, you learn the association and number so-and-so just becomes letter this and that. Besides, this works nicely with the whole “lettering in a sport” idea. I don’t see why it wasn’t ever adopted. If I were to start a team of any kind, I’d get us jerseys with letters on them. Why not question the norm and stand out a bit?
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February 3, 2011 12:32 pm
I think this is a great idea- a way to make sports jerseys a bit different and maybe even personalize them a bit since numbers sometimes don’t seem too unique.
However, numbers do make it easier to call out a player. I remember when I was a basketball manager/scorekeeper and when a player fouled someone, the referee would point to the specific bench and say as well as hand gesture the number of the player. Each digit only went up to 5 so that they could easily show the player number through their hands. In this way, there is no misunderstanding of who the specific player called upon was.