ESPN Will Be Livin’ La Vida Reilly
When I heard that ESPN had pried Rick Reilly away from SI, one thing came to mind. What is ESPN smoking? For a network that attempts to be young, hip, cool, and promote its personalities across all forms of media, this move makes no sense. Reilly hasn’t proven himself to be popular outside the back page of a magazine, and I find it hard to believe that ESPN’s readership (which is used to Bill Simmons’ back page column) will warm to Reilly’s writing.
The only explanation is that ESPN is making a big push to overtake SI in the magazine industry. Maybe ESPN thinks if it can convert enough old time SI Reilly lovers, it will finally be able to rise head and shoulders above SI. It’s like when you’re playing a game of Risk and after slowly and conservatively building up armies you attempt to end the game by attacking your opponent’s most powerful stronghold.
Unfortunately for ESPN, this is a terrible move, and not just because Reilly isn’t compatible with their network. The fact is, Reilly is a dinosaur. His recent contributions to sports journalism are archaic, outdated, unoriginal and not all that funny (although his past contributions are invaluable). Now that I’ve levied that unnecessarily harsh criticism, allow me to explain.
Over the years Reilly made a career out of telling the sad but invigorating stories of disabled people who still managed to find happiness in sports. He basically had a monopoly on any and all things sappy. (I’m not saying Reilly capitalizes on the misfortune of others—and unlike most people, he has done some actual good with his mosquito net project—but it wouldn’t surprise me if Reilly got caught encouraging pregnant mothers to drink and smoke in the hope that he could write about the athletic careers of their disabled children.) Anyway, now thanks to the internet, Reilly’s monopoly on that sort of thing has been broken. Before Reilly can snatch a heart-wrenching tale from a small town newspaper, blogs or other publications have already picked it up. That’s half of Reilly’s columns down the drain.
As for Reilly’s other type of column (funny lists, fantasies, games etc.—such as this Tom Brady column), he’s just no longer that funny or original. Reilly deserves all the credit in the world for creating that genre of sports humor, but at this point he has been surpassed by numerous other writers. I just don’t think there’s any way that young ESPN readers who are already spoon-fed tons of funny lists on blogs will fall in love with Reilly’s stuff.
Just for fun, (and full disclosure) here are some other issues I have with Reilly.
–When the Katie Hnda (Colorado’s female kicker) rape-assault allegations were made, Reilly wrote a scathing column about Colorado’s terrible behavior in which he wondered how anybody could objectify a woman like that. Interestingly, the previous week Reilly wrote a fawning, ogling column in the swimsuit issue about how amazing it was to witness swimsuit models being painted. The SI swimsuit issue is not rape or assault, but let’s face it, it objectifies women and it’s hypocritical for Reilly to write both of those columns. By the way, I’d like to thank Reilly’s new colleague DJ Gallo for pointing this out to me 3 years ago.
–For somebody who has access to resources and athletes most journalists could only dream about, Reilly gives us a surprisingly small amount new information. Mostly, he wastes column space with stale one liners instead of providing readers with the juicy nuggets of inside information we crave.
—Reilly’s flip-flopping makes if hard for me to find him genuine. On Barry Bonds alone Reilly has flip flopped more times that I can count. If I only had a nickel (or a million dollars) for every time I read a Reilly column that said Bonds should be banned from everything, only to read another column months later in which Reilly talked about how Bonds is a legendary hitter regardless of how he did it.
So basically, I don’t think Reilly will be the success ESPN hopes he will be. Here’s my prediction. ESPN uses Reilly in every single way for about year, but eventually he’s not such a big story anymore and people stop caring about him. Then ESPN sticks him in some terrible role nobody cares about—like being on Around the Horn. Then he’ll get unhappy and leave. You heard it here first. Rick Reilly writing for Yahoo! Sports in 20010.
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