I WAS ABOUT to wake up this morning, but first I had a dream about writing (or, in this case, rewriting) a headline. It wasn't just any headline; it was one we originally wrote probably 22 or 23 years ago.
Some university (I won't say which, but its mascot is the Gamecocks) had just fired its offensive coordinator, and we had written a generic headline "So-and-so fires offensive coordinator."
A few minutes later, an editor from news side came roaring over and said it was a company policy; we couldn't run an "offensive" headline. I told her that the headline wasn't offensive; if the coordinator had been more offensive, he'd still have a job.
She wasn't amused. We rewrote the headline to something like "So-and-so fires assistant coach," and that was that.
Then this morning I thought of "So-and-so sacks assistant coach." Sacks is a perfect verb here, since defensive people like to sack quarterbacks. And this guy certainly got sacked.
But why would I dream about it? It's not that great a headline.
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