other words for zero

UPDATED TO ADD:
It turns out, even talking about sports math is confusing!! I referred to the "O" phenomenon below as mentioned in a "score" when it turns out what I meant is a "win-lose record," as in, that team is Oh-and-3. 
Carry on.

As anyone who has every entered in a confirmation code knows, "O" and "0" are not the same. They can look so very alike, but one is a letter and one is a number. I'm an English major. You can trust me.

And yet, in sports, a score of "zero" is often referred to as "O."
Why is this?

**Sidebar: This is a case of using different terminology when it's not really warranted. That complicates things unnecessarily, but does do quite a nice job of humiliating the uninitiated, which is part of what sports is all about.**

I'm considering the possibility that it's because it has one syllable instead of two, thus further bearing out my theory that sports requires that we limit our syllables when we can, either for the purpose of sounding bad-ass or for simply saving time and energy. This would explain yet another sport, tennis, where the term for "zero" is "love."

By the way, that's adorable. More sports should consider using sweet terms...they draw the women in.

Tennis also uses another common one-syllable word for a different purpose: "all," which means "tied." I can't quite explain this one with the syllable justification, but it DOES contain one fewer letter. And I don't know whether a tied zero score is referred to as "love, love" or "love, all," or just "this game hasn't started yet."

I do know that it can be quite difficult to keep all of this straight. I suggest using catchy phrases, such as my [copyrighted] "I love the little green ball, is all," which handily ties the reminder that "all" and "love" are used for the same sport to the reminder that that sport uses a small green ball. If you need to, you can change the color to "yellow" or "neon lime" or whathaveyou to more accurately reflect your television's color scheme.

This one, the [copyrighted] guide to "O," is more of a chant, carefully designed for performance either with or without cheerleader arms:

O is for oblong!
Oblong is the ball!
Oblong is for football
Where the winner takes all!

See what we did there? Again, for ease of use, "O" is mentioned in tandem with the shape of the ball itself. Actually, on second thought, you may not want to use that one, if you're the slightest bit unsure about the "all" issue, since that could cause you to think that a tied score in football uses the "all" designation. Although, really, it should. It would save them a letter.