Reilly's latest is appalling.

No, SOMEBODY didn't. He could easily have said, "Ohio State's players dine in ... watch TV in ... play raquetball in ...", and I don't think it would have diminished the piece. Didn't have to name an individual player. The piece was OK, but I'm not thrilled with villifying one player.

 

Excuse me, but what "vilifying"? Sorry, but I did not get that at all.

He used Freeman as a comparative device to help show the life of a typical OSU football player. But he never suggested that any of this was Freeman's fault, nor that Freeman was ungrateful for his circumstances, nor that Freeman was a bad kid in any way whatsoever.

And the Freeman quotes in the piece suggest he had the kid's cooperation. I see nothing in the piece meant to make the reader think less of Freeman as a person.

 

That you didn't pull out the Hungry Horse News is the disappointment of the year, although the Lake County Leader mentioin made me smile b/c it means you know your NW Montana weeklies!

But they make more than 15K a year, so they obviously don't know what it's like to be poor either.

 

I'm holding out for the Bitterroot Star.

 

The Whitefish Pilot and Bigfork Eagle get no love.

 

That's because the Pilot is a load of dreck. Worst. Paper. On. The. Planet.

Bigfork deserves love though. Great, great, great little paper.

 

It's no Daily Mistake.

 

Bill Gates is worth, oh, $60 billion.

I know of few people more qualified to talk about world poverty and squalor.

So can we end this ridiculous premise that is based 99% on professional jealousy and 1% on any tangible, rational thought?

 

One reference counts as "lots"?

 

Hey, SirVal -- You don't want to fight me, I'm too old and nearsighted.
I didn't mean to be cryptic. I pretty much agree with ECrawford.
It just seems to me that a lot of folks here are (A) heavily invested in an unquestioning/rationalizing attitude toward big-time sports and (B) apt to judge writing by what they know/envy about the person who wrote it.
I've been doing this for 30 years, but I'll quit the day I walk into a stadium filled with 70,000 face-painted, screaming, falling-down drunk people and don't think the whole thing is just a little creepy.

 

At least he's trying.
This may not have been the greatest column in the history of journalism, it was hardly appaling. It was comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. That's what we do. Or used to be, anyway. How much Reilly gets paid is beside the point.

 

actually, there were two, pretty early on in this thread. That's why I pointed it out. Then, we all got distracted by the fact that Rick Reilly is, in fact, a millionaire and thus unqualified to write about poor people.

But thanks for playing.