Rick Reilly leaves Sports Illustrated - now confirmed by NYT

Re: Rick Reilly leaves Sports Illustrated - apparently

True, too.

 

Re: Rick Reilly leaves Sports Illustrated - apparently

I'm guessing that yes you are screwed.

 

Re: Rick Reilly leaves Sports Illustrated - apparently

I find the essay at the front of Scorecard routinely more interesting than Reilly's stuff. I would have liked to have seen Reilly do a column on a football game at Jena High School or the goings on at Hoover High, Joe Torre's last game with the Yankees, or a contrary take on a controversial issue (siding with Imus, Vick or PacMan). I think when Reilly stopped using his wit to make a larger point and simply used it to show how witty he is was when his column started to slide. It seems that Reilly enjoyed being goofy and light and he'll fit in at ESPN, but it seems as if that is what Patrick was running away from. I'm hoping.

 

Carbon-dating myself here, but I remember Sports Illustrated when it didn't have any columnist, since all its writers were kind of columnizing if they saw fit.
1. Rick is a tremendous writer, but a weekly column is tough to do. Nobody bats 1.000 in the column racket, and when you fail, all your flaws as a writer are magnified. 50 at-bats a season is very risky. Best thing about daily newspapers, or the people who're writing for Web sites is the "fuck it, we'll get 'em tomorrow" attitude you can have.
2. Synergy is another word for "lousier product". I can think of at least 100 columnists, no more, because I'll include myself without bragging, who could and would do a better job with that space than Dan Patrick. Nothing against Dan, he's a good radio personality.
3. There's still a great deal of good work done at SI. Alas, just like ESPN the magazine, there's a lote more useless crap you have to slug through to find it.

 

Hope your list of 100+ is limited to columnists who don't spend half of their work weeks chasing after radio or TV gigs of their own. Unless each of them is ready to replace Red Smith or Jim Murray atop the all-time sportswriter rankings, he or she would be wise to focus on doing one job exceedingly well, not two or three in mediocrity.

Gotta laugh at newspapers who let themselves get cheated by moonlighting employees, both in hours worked and morale trashed (as grunts witness the corner-cutting work ethics and absence of team play). They let their people provide content to their competitors, while giving the scribes the credibility that lines their pockets. That's how desperate, sniveling and insecure the papers and their editors are about their own brands.

 

I've got to think Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steven A. Smith has more credibility than SAS of ESPN Radio 1050 in New York. I always laugh when I see a radio sports host with a stupid name like Joey the Tank or Brooklyn Bob interviewed on TV. And sorry folks, I'll take a dude from the Hartford Courant over someone from ESPN.com or The Magazine as it is known. Mostly because ESPN has such a wide disparity in talent from the ex-jocks to the fan boys to the heavy hitters like Boucher, Olney, Kurkjian, Gammons and Clayton.

 

Amen on that point. I enjoy ESPN The Magazine, but there is a ton of CRAP at the front of the mag (Stuart Scott, Mike and Mike, short attention-span theatre stuff). It takes me about 10 minutes to get through the first 50 pages of the mag, and about 90 to get through the next 50-70 pages, which usually have excellent, substantive features (X-games crud nonwithstanding).
Reilly would be a good fit at ESPN, but he'll have to carve out his own niche in the Mag that's different than what they have now, lest he gets lost amid all the junk at the front of the mag now.

 

Rushin was overrated.
Call me crazy, but three people I never thought were funny: Rushin, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler.

 

Guess you're just too high-brow for us

 

A non-compete is almost always the result of a resignation, not a release, unless the employer says 'here's X dollars to not work for the next 6 months.'