Pretty good Reilly column this week 1/15/07

Somewhere, the real Henry Hecht just spit out his false teeth in anger and threw his labtop against the wall.

 

No, it's because even a podunk writer like myself knows that there's more to sports writing than gamers and stats and self-important hot-shit pro athletes.

 

The visual of this cracks me up.

 

I like Reilly, but this is ripped from another source

 

if every story "invovling an athlete" belongs in the sports section, i guess every story belongs in the sports section.

almost every story in the paper involves people who at one time or another participated in a sport. the mayor, governor, business honcho, police chief, assorted scumbags, accident victims, creative artists - all of them dribbled or kicked or hit a ball.

so you find this peripheral thread of "sports", connect it to the larger human interest story (or domestic violence story in this case), and you've got yourself a "sports" story. except that it isn't.

rick reilly is bored with sports. at his age, it's a sign of maturity.

 

If you can't see that this is a sports story, than you shouldn't be in sports. Get out now and spare the rest of us your idiocy.

 

sportschick, are you dyepack in drag?

never see a an idea from you. never anything cogent or thoughtful. yes, you once said that democrats and republicans are the same on misogyny - i guess that passes for an idea.

why exactly is the reilly story a sports story? go ahead and surprise me with a real answer.
or go ahead and do your dyepack thing and be predictable.

 

didn't say "more" mature.

it's common for sportwriters of reilly's age to grow out of sports. interests and intellect expand - as a writer you must grow or go backward. reilly is a real writer - he's chafing at the restriction of his column - witness his foray into africa to distribute mosquito netting to combat malaria, which was highly admireable.

a lot of sportswriters reilly's age are going through the motions. they simply have seen too many games - heard too much hype - and they no longer have the enthusiasm of the 20somethings or 30 somethings.

it's not a knock on reilly - it is what it is. i call it maturation - you can call it something else. sportschick can sneer and lob insults without actually saying anything worthwhile. and that's something you are never guilty of buck - you actually add some ideas to this board.

 

Well, thank you, "henry", but I have to disagree with you.

In fact, I would venture to say there are more sports writers -- real sports writers, that is; dedicated to sports journalism, not just fanboys with J-school degrees -- who are Reilly's age and older than there are in my own generation. That, too, is because of maturity.

You're right that some sports writers his age are going through the motions. But there are many, many more who aren't. ... Newsrooms in general are getting younger, and so too are many sports departments. But it is not because experienced writers are "growing out of it" or "getting bored" with sports.

Covering sports, contrary to popular belief, is not a frivolous way to make a living. No, it's not life and death -- but it's not something for those lacking "maturity", or life experience, or whatever you want to call it.

Reilly has other interests, to be sure. It would help if more sports writers had interests outside of sports.

But if you think Reilly is "chafing at the restrictions of his column" after this, you obviously didn't read the same piece that I did.

 

you're right, i should have said "chafing at the restrictions of conventional column content" - because obviously SI is not restricting him - he seems to have freedom to do what he wants.

that doesn't invalidate my point - it's not a sports column. it's a domestic violence column - could have been written by the lead metro columnist. and i stand by my other point - almost any story in the metro section can be converted to a "sports" story by finding a thin sports connection to one of the main characters.

i'll also venture that most sports fans - 80 to 90 percent - wouldn't have much interest in that column: the fans who play fantasy football, and work up mock drafts, and bet on games, etc., want to know all the leatherhead stuff. sports media ignores that stuff at its own peril.

the posters on this board are not a representative cross-section of fans - they have evolved tastes.

a more interesting question: what proportion of leatherhead coverage vs. esoteric columns are the SI editors willing to tolerate?

 

Seems me that in a 3.5-million circulation general-interest sports magazine that's, what?, 98 percent devoted to the "leatherheads," there's room for a column that goes outside the white lines, especially if it has a real sports connection, however thin, however un-famous the progtagonist is -- the kid was an active high school wrestler, wasn't he? -- and especially, part 2, if it's done as well as Reilly does it. Reilly could write that kind of column every week and SI couldn't be accused of ignoring, at its peril, its hard-core sports-fan subscribers.