Selena Roberts back page debut for SI (new column on Pg. 2)

Yeah, it was of his style. Many have said how tough those shoes are to fill. It was at least much stronger than many of the efforts to grace that page since RR left. It wasn't anything that will stay with you after you read it, but I thought it was a fun, light read.

 

Yeah, I'm probably being unfair by comparing it to Reilly. Taken on its own merits, it wasn't bad at all. I think Ballard has been the best of the Reilly replacements.

 

This is what reilly used to be great at, but by the end they were painful. Ballard fell somewhere in between. He had about 1/3 of a page of good material, the rest was stale & cliche or just whiny. Considering the context, slightly above average these days.

 

Excellent work as usual by Price. Very interesting read.

 

I thought Ballard's piece was OK ... it actually reminded me of a couple by Rushin in his heyday.

For some reason, as I read it, I kept thinking back to Rushin's great column on all the athletes/coaches who misuse the word "literally" ... and Ballard's effort wasn't even in the same ballpark. But that's probably not a fair comparison. That "literally" column was one of my favorite columns ever ... literally.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love Rushin. Great guy, immense talent and I'm looking forward to his next great professional success. But if I'm thinking of the right column about "literally," didn't he do a number of those, where it seemed like he Googled a phrase and strung out every instance of it, making his point about 1/3 of the way through and then just belaboring it?

Rank those just barely above the anagram-generating pieces.

 

Pretty good effort from S.L. Price this week:
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1140869/index.htm

I think he and Chris Ballard have clearly distinguished themselves as the two most capable of filling that spot.

 

Does anyone know where Rushin has gone? Is he doing anything besides an occasional Time essay?

 

He had one in particular that was literally about the word literally and how it literally gets used in unliteral ways all the time. It's still my favorite column I've ever read in SI. I thought of it when I read the Ballard piece too Ira. Let me go dig through the new SI "Vault" and see if I can find that. It had to have been back in, what, literally 2001 or so? FOUND IT! http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1024167/index.htm (It doesn't seem as good seven years later)

Back to the main topic of this thread for a moment: Not that I'm adding anything new to the Roberts complaints, but so far, there have been no columns worth reading from her.

Reilly, however, had one I enjoyed on ESPN.com: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3450245&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1

 

Um, Rick, the draft was held after this game was played.

 

Man, I really hate to dredge this back up, and maybe nobody will bite, but has anybody read this week's effort, comparing Favre and Jordan? Took me a hell of a lot of effort. I had to read the lead four times, and I'm still not quite sure what she was trying to say. Well, I know what she was TRYING to say.

I'm not usually one to pile on, but really, who is enjoying this stuff? I didn't read her too often before she got this gig, but has this always been her style?

 

We had a thread on her last column also - a jumbled mess as well--

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/64768/