What's been the better hire Patrick at SI or Reilly at ESPN?

I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't take sports talk radio anymore, but Patrick's show is one of the few I still like.

I can deal with Rome until he has guests or takes calls, at that point, the channel is changed. I can't listen to Cowherd on any level. For some reason, Patrick's show doesn't annoy me as much as the other national shows.

 

And I happen to be the opposite.

I even keep Cowherd on at a very low level at my computer for the two hours before a newscast. He just 'speaks to me' because I happen to agree with him about 90% of the time.

But, then again, it's the only ESPN radio that I do like.

Diff'rent strokes.

 

Cowherd is hit and miss with me. Sometimes, I agree with him totally and find myself even saying, "damn, yea, you're right about that. good point." then, like the other day, i wanted to turn the channel because he began talking about his abs, pecs or whatever bodily part he believes makes a mirror blush. and his sidekicks--"Fish" and Amy, is it?--gush with delight over such stuff or agree just for the sake of agreeing.
maybe the pop culture references, "it's about me, dude" angle is what a lot of listeners want. weak, though, in my opinion and lazy.

 

Yeah, you can listen to excerpts from his show on SI.com, but I'd say that helps Patrick more than it helps SI. In any case, it's certainly not worth the money SI is paying him. At least with Reilly, you can make the case that some of his readers from SI are now more likely to check him out on ESPN. I doubt that there are many DP listeners who search him out in SI.

And not only does it seem that ESPN guys are banned from Patrick's show, he makes fun of the WWL quite often, which is the best part of his show, IMO. He does a wicked Berman imitation, portraying him as a clueless windbag who has no interest in what's going on at ESPN if it doesn't involve him. According to Patrick, Berman thinks Dan is still doing the 11 pm SportsCenter. Love it.

 

Berman?
A clueless windbag?
Unpossible!

 

Someone told me a story that Berman ran into Chris Myers and Berman said something to the effect of, "Stop by my office and we'll continue this chat."

Myers then told him he hadn't been at ESPN for five years.

 

Gawd, it's gotten pathetic with this guy. Regurgitating lame columns from 2003.

http://deadspin.com/5262796/rick-reilly-takes-a-page-from-his-own-book

 

I've defended Reilly on this board in the past.

Not this time. That's embarrassing.

What's Reilly's first piece of advice anytime someone asks him about breaking into the business or how to become a great writer? Never write a sentence you've written before.

Wow.

 

Sad. At least we know Patrick is recycling material from his show in SI. And I thought the excerpt of the interview with IsaiahThomas in the latest issue was actually interesting (particularly the part about Ike's overdose). Though the thing about Thomas not being used to failure was pretty funny considering his efforts at the CBA and the Raptors. The guy has done nothing but fail upward.
That said. Reilly has been the bigger disappointment. Didn't expect much from Patrick.

 

My #1 rule is something oscar wilde once said: "Never write a sentence you've already read." that forces me to sit there and sweat and bleed until i come up with a new, completely original way to say something. it's very hard but it makes your writing do backflips.

--Rick Reilly, ESPN.com chat

I don't know if Reilly is overworked, or if he just intentionally mails it in, but I'm going to go with the latter. I know it's easy to point out Joe Posnanski, arguably the best in the biz, but the guy a) still writes a weekly column, b) is working on a book, c) writes several long blog posts daily, and d) has written three SI cover stories in the last two months. Hell, the guy even Twitters. His work hasn't suffered.

Rick has to write an 800-word weekly column for dot-com. His contributions on-air, either through radio or TV, seems minimal at best. ESPN way overpaid.