Catch phrases are part of the toolbox of the human mind. Such phrases blurt out unconsciously when the blurter is either not clever enough to be more "contemplative" about thinking before speaking, or not relaxed enough in his job so as to be slightly hysterical about filling airspace with noise. They are similar to the "you know"s or the "you understand what I'm saying"s that are equally obnoxious in "normal" speech.
These things tend to disappear or at least moderate with the professional maturity of the person in the particular job/activity which requires a lot of fast remarks. Catch phrases will continue to be used because they are also a form of mental laziness. They replace actual thought and relieve the mind of doing any work at the moment.
I have at least a little sympathy for the announcers who employ these stale tools. The inhuman medium of continuous-noise television commentary requires them to fill every second with verbiage whether worth listening to or not. Those who can do it get a new contract; those who cannot get fired. Some phrases will be convenient and stick, and in fact comfortably dim into the consciousness as "normal" to the game. We have huge numbers of these: TD, Upset, Sack, Hail Mary [imagine up-tight protestants when THAT first came up], Home Run, Blitz [vs. the now-defunct "Red Dog"], etc etc to infinity. "Pick Six" is going to join those phrases, as it is descriptive and almost poetic in sound. "Getting behind schedule" is more awkward and probably won't.
My biggest puzzlement is how anyone can work themselves up into an emotion where they actually care much about such things? They are not prejudicial to Notre Dame nor anything we care about and appear to have no agenda of any kind. Is our National Cultural Psyche this intolerant of "being disturbed"? Maybe this is merely the product of too much time on our hands as we wait for the game to start. Or... could it be a CIA conspiracy? {"They", as we know, don't even HAVE to have a reason}.
