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

I just read her latest column. I feel like it's been long enough: she's terrible. I'll echo what others have said, particularly the criticism of her topics. I just don't understand why she's chosen to write about some of the things she's written about. This week's would have been a throwaway story in a newspaper when you're trying to scratch out one more story during draft week.

 

Exactly. The whole time I'm reading it, I'm thinking, "OK, she must have another day job."

It reads like something you'd throw together on short notice to meet a freelance deadline that snuck up on you.

 

Funny, I thought just the opposite. I didn't think it was thrown together at all -- in fact it seemed like she put in a lot of time on the reporting of that column. Talked to several internet draft gurus, an ex-NFL exec, etc. She probably spent more time on that one piece than Reilly did in a month of columns, but it still turned out ... blah. Just lifeless, in addition to being pretty much without any real point. Someone needs to tell her to lighten up, to try writing a relaxed column with a clear, easily understood message. She's making it harder than it needs to be.

 

That's your joke?

 

serena ever apologized for her role in the duke lacrosse hoax?

no?

okay.

screw her, then.

 

I was an assistant SID at Bethune-Cookman when she covered us back in the 90s. Every time I see her on Sports Reporters and now in SI, for some reason, a modicum of self-loathing kicks in.

 

Self loathing?

 

Every time I see her on the back page, I think, OK, this is the one when it begins to click. And it doesn't. At best her stuff has been middling, at worst barely readable. They ought to just turn that page over to Chris Ballard for the time being. Of all the writers rotating on the back page, I've thought his columns are the most consistently good.

But Selena ... just seems lost right now. I hope it's that she's just trying too hard. Because if this is what we're going to get long-term, it's a severe disappointment. That back page with Reilly was almost always a fun read, even if the topic was serious. Selena makes me feel like I'm going at the page with a pickaxe. It's manual labor just to get through the damn thing.

 

May all be true. I was talking more about the idea of the column itself. This would have been a mediocre, read it then forget it sidebar in a newspaper on draft day. Why was it chosen as the column to grace the once hallowed last page of SI?

 

Never got her.
Never will.
I freely admit that people I respect greatly think the world of her.
I could be wrong.

 

Think I'm going to ask my mailman to pre-read the back page of SI on his way to my house. If he can't make head or tails of it, or get through it in the time it takes to walk a 1/4 block, or grasp a particular metaphor, then he's free to tear out that page and blow his nose on it. Will save me the trouble.

BTW, my mailman is a bright guy, college degree and all. Dedicated SI reader.

 

The one about the forgotten black caddies in Augusta was really, really good.
Not one of the others has done a thing for me, and this week really left me scratching my head.
OK, this guy she interviewed has a different take on the NFL draft than many "experts." Good column, if you establish the guy's bona fides, enumerate times when he has been right and the conventional wisdom has been wrong. Unless I somehow missed it, there's nothing like that in there -- nothing to tell us why this guy's opinion on the draft is any more relevant than mine.