Rick Reilly leaves Sports Illustrated - now confirmed by NYT

Here's the thing about a weekly column (did one at the Phoenix for many years). You're cooking with leftovers. You're trying to find an angle that hasn't been used. Not so easy, if you're writing about major events.

 

. . . or you can just play the houseboy card, as Downey did at the Trib with his kiss-kiss column on Wirtz following Bill's passing.

It wouldn't have been so bad, if he'd at least acknowledged that the team's been noncompetitive for far too long for one primary reason -- the abject miserliness of entrenched family management.

But he didn't, so rotten tomatoes on the way to the man who's seemingly been coasting longer than . . . even Wirtz was.

 

I wonder if part of Reilly's contract calls for a book deal with ESPN books. I noticed on last night's LSU game that The Mouse cranked up their cross promo machine with an "impromtu" sideline interview with John Ed Bradley author of "It Never Rains In Tiger Stadium". I found it interesting that interviewer did not mention the fact that book was published by ESPN Books.

BTW - cheap promotion should not detract from what is a great book that I would highly recomend.

 

I read the John Ed Bradley book and was really disappointed.

I love his work in SI, but his book was about an athlete who couldn't get past the glory days. (Hardly original) For whatever reason, he avoided his coaches and teammates because of it. You'd think he'd want to talk to them to relive the glory days. Apparently not.

 

Don't even fucking get me started on Downey. I posted his "It's your fault you died or went to the hospital, not the city's" column TWO DAYS after someone died during the Chicago Marathon. I know many will argue for Rob Parker or El Sid as the worst (big city) columnist in the U.S., but at least most people know those two are idiots. Downey does it in relative obscurity, for some reason.

Sadly, however, Downey isn't even the worst columnist in Chicagoland. That title is owned by Mike Imrem until he dies or retires.

 

It's nice he went to Chicago to retire.

Wish he'd told the Trib.

 

Every print journalist acts uniformly outraged by the unconfirmed reporting tactics of TBL and other blogs, yet so many are willing to give a pass to the Jenny Carlsons who do "rumor" sourcing in newspaper columns. Not necessarily saying there's a double standard here, just sayin...

 

I don't think many people gave Jenni Carlson a pass, Stoney. The posts here were 95 percent, against. The Big Lead has been just as skewered, and rightly so.

 

Maybe I'm a sucker for the "genre" but I thought it was a beautifully written book. Bradley articulates the feeling of many who have played and the game unlike others never leaves you to some degree.

What I found interesting is that Bradley unlike many other truly trys to get away from the game but 20 years later realizes he can't.

Rick Telander wrote a very similiar book last year that was also very good.

 

Another day, another choose 'em:

Island yadda yadda 6 months ... Whitlock or Reilly?

 

Cave paintings.

 

I'd have the Professor make us a DVD and flatscreen set-up out of a coconut.