We really kicked their clocks

A few guys were reminiscing about their days as soccer coaches, and one reflected on how good his team was, uttering this nice malaphor.  It is a congruent conflation of “kicked their butts” and “cleaned their clocks”, both meaning to win easily.  The words “kick” and “clock” have full consonance, and so the speaker might have grabbed both in the idiom soup we call English.  A big thanks to John Kooser for sending this one in, and admitting that he said it.