ESPN paid millions for this?

The problem with that theory is that Simmons writes much more material than Reilly, plus the Podcasts. So even his shitty material and flat jokes can be brushed aside because half of his stuff or so still works well and gets some belly laughs. Reilly writes a fraction of that and it has usually, lately been lazy horseshit.

 

It's not that it's a bad column -- although I thought the ending was a groaner -- it's just that it's not nearly worth the kind of money ESPN is paying for it. Reilly simply isn't special anymore and hasn't been for a while, so you wonder why ESPN wanted him so badly. A 50-year-old guy with creaky one-liners wouldn't seem to appeal to their demographic, so what's the deal? Did they steal him from SI just to show they they can take anybody they want?

 

Not to change the subject much, but... it is not uncommon to decide to shorten a finger if there is significant injury to the tip. Often amputating at the DIP joint (the last knuckle) retains the finger function. Repairing or rebuilding the finger may take months of rehab and the patient can be left with a clumsy finger that is numb and temperature intolerant. This does not apply to the thumb.

Carry on about Mr. Reilly.

 

why does it matter how much time someone puts into something? by that logic chinese democracy is going to be the greatest album of all time.

 

I wouldn't mind Reilly's stuff if they were short riffs, like blog items, three times a week and he saved his best stuff for the Mag, articles that perhaps linked two or three different items together, like the quick hooks given to Tony Franklin and Denis Savard compared to Matt Millen and what it says about America.

 

I think one thing that pisses off people about Reilly's piece is that it reads like it was effortless. Ballard's piece feels "written" -- it's also ponderous, slow-moving. Frankly, I preferred the tone of absurdity in Reilly's piece. And for whoever wanted Reilly to dig into the guy's pro prospects, etc.? Puh-leeze. That's not the story.

 

I normally like Reilly, but this was paint-by-numbers stuff for him. It read like a Mad Libs Reilly column.

And has anyone seen one of his guest host appearances on PTI? The one-liners are even worse when he's delivering them in a wooden, faux-conversational style.

 

It's so painful to see your heroes stop trying.

I don't begrudge him the money. Hell, he was so good for so long, he earned the money.

But it really sucks to watch one of the best feature writers of the last 30 years do the literary equivalent of bad Thursday stand-up at the Laugh Factory.

It's almost like waking up one day to find that Dave Letterman is reading Jay Leno's jokes at the Jerry Lewis telethon.

Sad.

 

I think that's what upsets me the most - I loved reading his golf pieces, feature stories and columns back in the day; now I read them in hopes of his old style returning.
Instead, he gets stamps out and mails it in week after week.

 

I've been reading the Life of Reilly book again and it's just incredible how there seems to be a passion in those unmatched in the new columns. It's almost like he's still writing just for the press pass.

But who knows.

 

If I never see him in one of those awful TV segments again, I'll consider myself blessed. Watching him do those pieces during the Triple Crown races was painful.

 

I prefer Bill O'Reilly to Rick Reilly.