First, jokes about LeBron going back to Cleveland? OH MY GOD THAT'S SO CUTTING EDGE!!!1 Second, a joke about LeBron going to the Clevelander in Miami? Oh, I get it, it's funny because he can't go back to Cleveland!LeBron James comes home to Cleveland. Now that's a Homecoming episode I'm dying to host.
Is there anything as perishable as sports superstardom? Nine months ago, the three most popular athletes in this country were Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning and LeBron James. Since that time, Woods has become the Sultan of Sleaze, Manning is suddenly the guy who can't get it done in the big moment, and James is disloyal, narcissistic and cruel, apparently. It's like one of those ancient cultures that would anoint a man king just long enough to kill him, ensuring a bountiful harvest. Sports fame is like riding a tiger. It's fun for awhile, but how do you get off without being eaten?
On South Beach, will LeBron be a regular at the Clevelander?
The obvious problem with the piece is that sports celebrity is fickle largely because the Rick Reilly's (and SI and ESPN) spend most of their time pronouncing that popular athletes' athletic accomplishments and personal traits to be superhuman and then lambasting the same athletes when they fall short of the mark. If Rick Reilly hadn't spend the past thirteen or fourteen years telling us that Tiger is a great person who cares about golf, winning, his family, and nothing else, maybe people wouldn't be so crestfallen about Tiger.Third and finally, as much as I dislike Peyton Manning...huh? Tiger Woods lost his popularity because he was a serial cheater who was outed as a scumbag, LeBron lost his because of the distasteful way he dragged out his free agency decision and the grandstanding way in which he shat all over Cleveland and their fans in primetime...while Peyton Manning failed to win the Super Bowl. And it's not like he blew it himself, as the Saints were too much for the Colts' D. If anything Manning was saddled with the "can't get it done in the big moment" tag years ago, which he pretty much erased following his Super Bowl win and subsequent achievements in the years that followed. It just seems like Reilly was making a (surprise!) lazy attempt to shoehorn in a theme there about the fluidity of sports fame and found himself lacking in concrete examples.
Even his feelgood stories suck ass. They did then, and they do now. Rick Reilly is one of the most god-awful things ever to happen to sports journalism.I miss when Reilly had the end column for SI and wrote feel good stories.
Has Rick Reilly never heard of Nick Saban? or even Pat Hill and Kirk Ferentz? Is Reilly aware that the Kansas City Chiefs are 8-5 and in first place?Proof positive that the Bill Belichick coaching tree has no limbs.
Nick Saban failed miserably as a head coach in the NFL. As did Crennell. Wiess made a fool of himself by the end of his tenure at ND and has never even tried to be an NFL head coach. Maybe that fatso Mangini will figure it out, but I'm not holding my breath. McDaniels was an unmitigated disaster. I think thats what Riley is referring to.A really dumb line even from a Reilly column about Josh McDaniels:
Has Rick Reilly never heard of Nick Saban? or even Pat Hill and Kirk Ferentz? Is Reilly aware that the Kansas City Chiefs are 8-5 and in first place?
Neither he, nor his coaches, nor his dad, had any comment. He was reportedly on his way back home to Marion, Iowa, where his mom was about to deliver her eighth child.
For the kid's sake, I hope it's a boy.
God... I don't usually read Reilly, but THIS crap needed to be addressed
http://sports.espn.g...tory?id=6136707
Quick summation:
At the Iowa state wrestling tournament, the 5th ranked wrestler in the state defaulted over wrestling the first girl to ever enter the tournament. He's 16 and home schooled by his minister father, and according to him, his faith wouldn't allow him to engage a woman in a violent manner. The girl made zero big deal out of it, and said she respected his faith and his choices.
And Reilly takes the kid to task, in one of his typical moral high ground articles. He takes pot shots at the kid throughout the entire article, hammering him with subtle and not so subtle accusations, ending with this blurb...
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[font="Verdana][size="3"][font="arial]Real classy. [/font][/color][/size][/font][/color]
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[color="#333333"][font="Verdana][size="3"][font="arial]Look, I'm not going to pass judgment one way or the other on whether or not the kid should have wrestled with the girl. It's a decision I've wondered about what the right thing to do would have been, whether it was sexist, etc, since I heard about it a few days ago. I've still never found an answer I'm comfortable with. I don't think the kid should have been in a spot like that, but at the same time, I don't think the girls should be excluded. It's oxymoronic, I know, but what can you do? There's no easy answer. I'd like to think that I'd respect the opponent and get on the mat with her, but I've never actually been put in that position. And I'm not a home schooled 16 year old boy.[/font][/color][/size][/font][/color]
[size="3"]Point is, who knows what he was actually thinking. There's a lot going on. She's the first girl to ever qualify. You know this is probably going to be national news one way or the other. He was probably afraid of hurting her, being hurt by her, accidentally groping her, accidentally getting a boner in his wrestling outfit from all the wrestling with a girl, and a myriad of other things only 16 year olds can worry about, only all multiplied by knowing that there was going to be some level of national attention on the outcome no matter what happened. And the kid probably panicked, withdrew, and said what he thought would sound best.[/size]
All of which is why I think this was a scumbag article to write, and an easy morality play for page hits from the king of them all. There was far more malice and condescension in this article than was ever involved between either of those two wrestlers, and it must be nice to sit in his ivory tower at ESPN, making all that money they pay him for that little shit box on the main page, and launch attacks at a high schooler with no forum to respond. Ass.
RickReilly said:You're thinking: What about these $60,000 checks that went out this week to the players from the NFLPA's lockout war chest? That should pay for a few babysitters, right?
True, but maybe you should meet …
… former Air Force star Chad Hall, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver.
Hall, 24, isn't getting any $60,000. Since transforming himself from an F-16 mechanic into a modern-day "Invincible" with the Eagles, the 5-foot-8 Hall hasn't exactly hit the Lotto. He was on the team for only 11 games, so he got the minimum salary, prorated. The most he'll get from the lockout fund is "about $10,000," he says.
Now he's training friends' kids for whatever they want to pay him -- "I don't really charge a set fee" -- and trying to open a wings restaurant in Atlanta with his sister's boyfriend, Detroit Lions QB Matthew Stafford.
"If we don't have a season, I'll be waiting tables and bartending there," he says. "Plus, my uncle says he has a plumbing job for me. Pays $15 an hour, so that's not bad."
You think Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen will be asking "BBQ or teriyaki?" anytime soon?
It really isn't that good.Reilly shows some life! His front page article, "Making Tight Ends Meet" about the workaday NFL player dealing with the strike is a little short but it's Posnanski-good.
Fine, all well and good, whatever. Silly exercise for a stupid column. But then, in the throes of declaring Seattle the worst out of those three years, he brings up Kentwan Balmer's failure in the NFL. That would be fine, you know, if Seattle had actually drafted Balmer. But they didn't, San Francisco did, and Seattle got him for a 6th round pick last year.Talking to draft experts and using our own eyes, you'll find below the re-drafts of the first rounds of 2006, 2007 and 2008. Each draft was conducted as if you were drafting right now with the same pool of players, but now you have three years of watching them in the bank.
He gets at least some of the draft positions wrong (Revis was 14 not 32).Rick Reilly is a fucking dunce. In his latest "column" he uses some redraft, and...I'll let him explain it:
Fine, all well and good, whatever. Silly exercise for a stupid column. But then, in the throes of declaring Seattle the worst out of those three years, he brings up Kentwan Balmer's failure in the NFL. That would be fine, you know, if Seattle had actually drafted Balmer. But they didn't, San Francisco did, and Seattle got him for a 6th round pick last year.
I got all rex ryan dyslexic there. Reilly says Revis went 32 when he in fact went 14.Revis was taken by the Jets 14th right? Not the Colts at 32nd (named Anthony Gonzalez)
I could have probably verified what you were saying if there was ever a chance in hell I would click on a Rick Reilly column. Which I wouldn't do. Even if it were to avert nuclear holocaust.I got all rex ryan dyslexic there. Reilly says Revis went 32 when he in fact went 14.