With Reilly's exit, the column in the back of SI goes to ...

[broadway joe]

SI's problem is that it still thinks of George Plimpton as an admirable cultural and literary model.

Plimpton was an unabashed elitist. preppie, Ivy League, paris review, summers on the vineyard - all the post-war tropes of upper-class snobbery.

that was the SI culture, too. mark mulvoy was a wannabe. and that's why SI got left in the dust by espn, which rejected all that snobbish shirt. as most of america does.

Very true, HH. SI has an elitist history. Not too long ago the entire mag was pretty much run by Princeton men. But I do think Plimpton was an elegant writer, as were many of those who followed him. If SI could somehow find a way to maintain that elegance without the snobbery, they'd really have something, instead of chasing after ESPN with all that front of the mag bullshirt.

 

[shockey]

i, too, have a terrific brett favre story. i'm saving it for my newspaper at the appropriate time. let it suffice to say that i am in 100 percent agreement with peter king that favre is perhaps the most genuine superstar i've ever had the pleasure on encountering.

 

[playthrough]

Reading that column, I kept thinking this is only the second-best story of young girl gives lucky penny to athlete on the eve of the big game.

Dale Earnhardt, 1998 Daytona 500. Unlike Favre, he won. Penny was glued to the dash.

 

[BillyT]

Color me unimpressed.

The greatest sports magazine ever cannot come up with someone to take that slot.

I liked the single-person approach.

I will admit, I probably would have bitched no matter who they picked, but random magazine writers rotating ain't gonna do it for me.

That kind of column is an art form.

 

[Joe Williams]

Color me unimpressed.

The greatest sports magazine ever cannot come up with someone to take that slot.

I liked the single-person approach.

I will admit, I probably would have bitched no matter who they picked, but random magazine writers rotating ain't gonna do it for me.

That kind of column is an art form.

Absolutely unrealistic to think that a once-a-week columnist worth seven figures per year is just sitting there waiting to be deployed. Can't think of any working sportswriters who are good enough to handle that once-a-week routine -- most writers like those three or four at-bats every week, to mix in hits and home runs with the whiffs. If you string together two clunkers in a row on the back page of SI, your reputation is going to be at stake that fast, especially following in Reilly's steps.

Then there are the artistes for whom once a week would be a grind, forcing them to write too frequently for their wordsmithing. Or, in the back page format, limiting them to too few words.

So I like the rotation idea. Maybe a favorite will emerge from the group. Better yet, maybe one person will get really, really good at the rhythm and length of the format.

 

[broadway joe]

With the exception of Reilly's tenure, it's always been a rotating gig. He proved to be so good at it that he got it permanently, but readers seemed to like it just fine before Reilly came along, and I think they will again. SI has a lot of people who I think could crank out a really good 800 words. It'll be interesting to see what different writers come up with.

 

[SheaSeals]

I always liked SI much more without Rick's column in the back. His tone was snarky, he played the "I'm outraged!" or "I'm touched!" card every friggin' week, he mailed in 30% of 'em with "Here's a list of the Top 50 Naked Woman I'd love to Eat Lunch With," etc ... etc. Plus, being honest (and as a journalist), I rarely believed him. His stories were just too ... perfect. His quotes too ... exactly right. I always felt like he cut and paste a lot of shirt to fit his outlook, truth/honesty be damned.

 

[jlee]

I always liked SI much more without Rick's column in the back. His tone was snarky, he played the "I'm outraged!" or "I'm touched!" card every friggin' week, he mailed in 30% of 'em with "Here's a list of the Top 50 Naked Woman I'd love to Eat Lunch With," etc ... etc. Plus, being honest (and as a journalist), I rarely believed him. His stories were just too ... perfect. His quotes too ... exactly right. I always felt like he cut and paste a lot of shirt to fit his outlook, truth/honesty be damned.

Those "perfect" quotes and details were more likely from the fact that he spent an entire week working his ass off on 800 words while knowing how to work a source and get an honest, human reaction out of someone.

I concede he did mail it in a few too many times, but those disappointments were well offset by his good stuff in my opinion.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

SI's problem is that it still thinks of George Plimpton as an admirable cultural and literary model.

Plimpton was an unabashed elitist. preppie, Ivy League, paris review, summers on the vineyard - all the post-war tropes of upper-class snobbery.

that was the SI culture, too. mark mulvoy was a wannabe. and that's why SI got left in the dust by espn, which rejected all that snobbish shirt. as most of america does.

Fake proletarian outrage.
An SportsJournalists.com staple since 1999.

 

[BillyT]

To Broadway Joe: Correct me if I am wrong, but Leigh Montville had it individually for a while, before Reilly.

To Joe Williams: You make an excellent point that one of the dangers in giving it to an individual person now would be the comparison to Reilly, who really developed the art that is the back-page column.

 

[Monroe Stahr]

Sure he "talked kinda funny" but, come on, Plimpton wasn't totally irredeemable. The Paris Review interviews with writers should be required reading for anybody who does what we do for a living.

 

[henryhenry]

SI's problem is that it still thinks of George Plimpton as an admirable cultural and literary model.

Plimpton was an unabashed elitist. preppie, Ivy League, paris review, summers on the vineyard - all the post-war tropes of upper-class snobbery.

that was the SI culture, too. mark mulvoy was a wannabe. and that's why SI got left in the dust by espn, which rejected all that snobbish shirt. as most of america does.

Fake proletarian outrage.
An SportsJournalists.com staple since 1999.

one-upsmanship cynicism.

cynical one-upsmanship.