thank goodness or thank God?

Congratulations to the MSU women's basketball team for winning the NCAA Division II national championship last week. The media around here has been full of it. We all needed something positive to focus on in this bleak news era we're currently inhabiting--floods, economic meltdown, etc.

One quote especially got my attention. In The Free Press, Mankato's newspaper, the coach Pam Gohl is quoted:

"What a great game for the advancing of women's basketball," Mavericks coach Pam Gohl said. "We couldn't figure out how to stop them. Thank goodness, we scored more points than them."

I was so amused by this last line that the Free Press used as a pull quote in its print edition on Saturday morning that I pointed it out to others around the breakfast table. But that same sound byte was rendered differently in The Reporter, MSU's student newspaper:

"What a great game for the advancement of women's basketball," said MSU head coach Pam Gohl, who won a national championship in her first year heading the Mavericks. "We couldn't figure out how to stop them, but thank God we scored more than them."
Hmm... there are a couple of other differences between the two versions, but they didn't get on my radar until I noticed the Reporter's use of "thank God" instead of the "thank goodness" quote the Free Press used.

Is is sloppy reporting? (if so, whose version is correct, and whose is sloppy?) Or is it an editorial decision to not use the name of a contested sovereign?

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