YAC & RAC; Heronner; Gen. Tso

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:46 PM -0500 1/14/02, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>--------------------------------------------------------
>YAC & RAC
>
>    I was watching the Jets lose a football game to the Raiders last
>Saturday.  ESPN Sportscenter said that wide receiver Jerry Rice was
>piling up the "yak" yards.  Jerry Rice, a yak?
>    A bit of web searching shows YAC (yards after catch), RAC (run
>after catch), and Y at C (yards at catch) on some football web sites,
>such as www.allmadden.com.

Mebbe so, but I usually hear it explicated as yards after *contact*,
especially for running backs, who are usually not catching passes
first.  The idea is that they don't go down after someone tries to
tackle them.  Maybe it really is yards after catch for receivers and
yards after contact for running backs--if so, a nice reanalysis, sort
of like NELS starting out as the New England Linguistic Society and
then (after its first meeting in Montreal) turning into the North
Eastern Linguistic Society.

>    YAC yards?  _Yards_ after catch _yards_?

Why not, if we have PIN numbers and HIV viruses?  What's a little
loss of transparency among friends?

>GENERAL TSO
>
>    This continues the typing of this item.
>    Perhaps someone at Yale can forward this to the Yale branch in
>China?  Surely, they would know something.  Maybe something's even
>been written by them?

I'll try to check, assuming I can get some info on Yale in China's
e-mail address.  A colleague in Chinese linguistics (who's also a
Chinese food aficionado) might know more.

L