Sometimes a cliche just spins out of control

	A standard Bill Belichick cliche is now everywhere in football. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

The influence of Bill Belichick across the NFL is as obvious as it is widespread. With three Super Bowl wins in four years, he became the model for many in the league. His top assistants become immediate head coaching candidates. His pool boy has even made a few short lists.

A subtler sign of Belichick's influence is that he has given the football world the cliché of our times. Once he started saying it, then everyone starting saying it. Everyone.

The ubiquity of Belichick's phrase was made evident to me last week, while I was working on a story for Sports Illustrated about the NFL's two prime time football shows. At the end of an interview, I asked a producer for Sunday Night Football to assess the work being done at Monday Night Football. He sighed and said, "It is what it is." How funny he would give that answer -- because when I had asked a Monday Night Football producer the reverse question, he also sighed and said, "It is what it is."

Reaffirming not only that both shows are what they are, but that "it is what it is" is the thing to say in the football world when you want to say nothing at all.

I did a quick Nexis search an confirmed my sense that players and coaches are at all leagues and levels are employing this phrase. What follows is an extremely partial review of the season that was what it was:

• Dolphins coach Nick Saban, Sept. 14, on lineman Dan Wilkinson missing practice for a personal matter: "It is what it is. It's not a problem from our standpoint."

• University of Miami center Anthony Wollschlager, Sept. 17: "The fact that we're 1-2 sucks, but it is what it is."

• Colorado State defensive end Jesse Nading, Oct. 8, on a fumble return of his that was nullified by an inadvertent referee's whistle, which he never heard it because of the fan noise. "It is what it is. The fans were great."

• Miami Dolphins kicker Olindo Mare, Oct. 10, after describing the shortcomings of the turf at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough: "I'm not complaining. It is what it is."

• Patriots fullback Heath Evans, in the same Oct. 10 story: "No one is happy with the situation regarding the field. It is what it is."