Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Saying "The Whole Nine Yards"

What the fuck does that even mean?  A first down is ten yards, not nine.  Shouldn't it be "the whole ten yards?"  Doesn't saying you went "the whole nine yards" mean "yeah, I went riiiiiiiiight up to my goal, but stopped just short for no reason"?  Wtf?

1 comment:

Pops said...

wikipedia has an article on it. Exact origin is unknown, though earliest reference to it was from the early 60's.

If it is football-related, I can see if it was 3rd and 9, you'd have to go the whole nine yards to get the first down, but 4th and 10 would be worse than that, so scratch that theory.