Reilly-Patrick I -- This Time, It's Insignificant.

Don't most of the ESPN anchors write their own material? I would think Patrick will carry those writing skills over. Column writing is tougher, though. Which is why I like Reilly (most of the time).

 

Most if not all. It's a pretty big misconception about TV. In sports, 95% of the anchors and reporters will write their own stuff. Not so in news.

Dan Patrick has a wit. Writing well for broadcast and carrying it off can be tough, and he did it. Column writing must be difficult, too. They use different muscles, and I'm sure Dan hasn't had occasion to flex the column muscle (c'mon - that thing he wrote for The Mag? That's not what we're talking about...) But it doesn't mean he can't work it out.

The same goes for Reilly. I'm sure he knows that simply writing his old column and reciting it won't make good TV.

The only person I've seen pull off a "print style" on TV was Leigh Montville. He would write these print-style commentaries and deadpan them. It was hilarious. Of course they were well-covered with video, so it didn't get boring... but he's a guy who made it work.

 

I agree on Montville. He was excellent on TV. Totally original. I believe he won an Emmy of some kind.

As for Patrick, regardless of how much of his TV material he wrote, writing for print is much different, and writing for print at the level of SI is even more so. It's a little like Michael Jordan playing baseball -- as good as Patrick might have been at his old sport, it's not likely that he can jump to a new one and play in the big leagues. Unless he gets heavy editing (and who knows if his contract allows that) his writing at SI will probably stick out like a sore thumb.

 

Print people like to think nobody else can "pull off" what they do.

TV people think the same thing.

But the unpleasant truth is for people who work in the creative fields and who make a living with words, quality material is definitely doable with some practice.

It's a blow to everybody's ego, but it's the truth.

 

It's not that I think Patrick can't do print, it's that I don't think he can do it at the level of SI. Not when he's never had any experience writing in that medium, as far as I know. (I don't count anything he did for ESPN the Rag.) That's like going from 0 to 100 mph. There are TV guys who could probably do it, like Costas or Olbermann, who are both essayists to some degree. But Patrick's strength has always been his charm and personality more than his facility with words.

 

I think you're overvaluing the quality of Reilly's and Rushin's columns from the last 5 years.

 

I'm right there with you, Lugs. Rushin especially had been less than mediocre -- often unreadable -- for several years before his departure, and while Reilly showed on occasion he could still bring it, mostly he came across like a guy laughing way too hard at his own lame jokes.

 

Reilly and Rushin both lost something off their fastballs, but I still don't think Patrick could compete with them as a columnist. And it's not just Reilly and Rushin. For all the valid complaints about SI, it still has more quality writing than any other sports outlet. It would be as unrealistic to expect Patrick to match that as it would be to expect Reilly to anchor SportsCenter smoothly.

 

A quick defense of the written word.

Yes, writing for television and writing for the page are two different skills. In fact, they're opposite skills. One - writing in support of moving images - requires knowing what words to leave out. The other - writing in service of creating images that move people - insists you know which words to put in.

That messrs. Reilly and Rushin had perhaps grown tired of columnizing is arguable. That each had begun their columns as two of the finest longform writers in that magazine's history is not.

That Mr. Patrick has a keen mind and a sharp sense of language is likewise inarguable. But the back page of SI isn't the woodshed, and it isn't a workshop. It isn't where you go to practice your craft. You earn that back page with your mastery of craft.

 

Yeah. That's what I mean.

 

That is really oversimplifying writing for broadcast. That's one technique-- an older school of thought (the gold standard, maybe)-- but there are several different approaches, and not all of them boil down to "write to the video."

Secondly, has it been confirmed Dan is getting the back page?

 

You're right, of course. But writing to video is where Mr. Patrick has had the bulk of his experience.

And no, it's fantastically unlikely that he'd be offered the back page.