With poker becoming a cornerstone of modern day American pop-culutre, it is interesting to observe how its terminology has saturated main stream media. From articles about college football to OPEC, poker lingo has been invoked to catch the reader's attention and convey the author's message. Sometimes it works, a lot more times though it doesn't.

Therefore, partly inspired by Jay Leno's "headlines" segment and partly because at 3:30 in the morning it sounds like a good idea, I present "Poker in the Headlines".

The point is to highlight occurences where poker terminology is used that seem out of place. The first candidates are as follows:

From the The Houston Chronicle on Sunday January 02, 2005.

Headline:

Top pairs in title game play like royal flush; How's this for star power: Bush, Leinart, White and Peterson?

A snippet:

Because the BCS is constantly bombarded with criticism anyway, maybe the name should be changed to the World Series of Poker.

After all, No. 1-ranked Southern California and No. 2-ranked Oklahoma will push all their chips into the middle of the table while holding a pair of aces.

Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush of the Trojans vs. Jason White and Adrian Peterson of the Sooners.

Two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks. Two young running backs who virtually defy description.

From the South China Morning Post on December 31, 2004.

Headline:

Opec sole wild card in crude poker

A snippet:

The production ceiling will be on the table at Opec's next meeting on January 30, when members will also consider raising the cartel's reference crude price, currently between US$ 22 and US$ 28 a barrel.

...[snip]...

He may be right, the speculative elements - like wild cards - notwithstanding, Opec is playing its supply card against market forces.

Admittedly, the headlines aren't funny, but the stretch the author's make to link the terminology used to whatever their subject is what is sort of funny. It doesn't really fit, but poker is popular ... so lets do what we can to ride on its coattails.