malarkey mə-ˈlär-kē noun
: empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk
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The word malarkey has appeared in 32 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 25 in the Opinion essay “College Football Players Should Threaten to Boycott” by Buzz Bissinger:
Out of catastrophe can come opportunity. With the season fundamentally half-canceled by the decision of the major conferences of the Big 10 and the Pac-12 not to play, now is the time to recalibrate the college football industry and confront the issues that players, previously shunted into silence, have brought up because of the repercussions of Covid-19: not just obvious health issues but compensation issues and racial issues and exploitation issues. None of this happens when the status quo of the season ticks on year after year. No one listens.
There are those who think the effort to fix college football is malarkey and sanctimony. It’s just sport. It’s just a game. “Game” implies something fun and benign. College football is a huge industry. The five major conferences bring in at least $4 billion in revenue annually.
Yet those who make the game, play the game, are the game, expose themselves to possible brain injury and crippling arthritis and now the pandemic, don’t receive a dime of revenue…
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