The Seven Unintelligible Grunts You Can't Say On Television

There's something I've noticed while watching football.  I don't know if it's the "miked up" players, or maybe a new breakthrough in parabolic microphone technology, but it seems like we're catching snippets of the players swearing more often.  This might be evidence of society getting a little more comfortable with profanity; in the past few years we've become less scared of The Finger, so spoken offence must be the next taboo.

Maybe football's background swearing is on purpose: the networks could be softening us up so that they have more freedom to use strong language on their other shows.  Reality shows would be much easier to edit. Swearing would make for easy cheap jokes on sitcoms.  And to think those cultural puritans thought the Janet Jackson Wardrobe Malfunction scandal at the Super Bowl a few years ago was the worst effect football ever had on popular culture.

Purposeful or not, it could be a redefinition of what is acceptable on TV.  I feel like George Carlin must be smiling down on us...

...or not.