Now anchoring SportsCenter ...

[Scouter]

... Rick Reilly?

He's anchoring the show with Neil Everett right now. Is this a stunt (for a future column, perhaps?) or is he actually going to do this regularly?

 

[GlenQuagmire]

ESPN might as well get its money worth. For what he's getting paid he should be taking out the trash, washing windows and buying office supplies, too.

 

[YGBFKM]

He's done it before, and he's bad at it.

 

[Jack_Kerouac]

Got off to a great start tonight by looking into the wrong camera for most of the opening two-shot on him and Everett.

 

[spud]

This will not end well.

 

[MacDaddy]

He's done it before, and he's bad at it.

Perhaps he's recycling an earlier appearance.

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

Provides him with an excuse to wear make-up.

 

[Mediator]

Any swimsuit models on set? I see a first-person piece!

 

[Football_Bat]

This will not end well.

Ya think?

 

[bumpy mcgee]

I saw that he did a very late night west coast sportscenter a few weeks ago...yikes, was an absolute train wreck. If there was a golf cliche to use, he used it. I don't think sportscenter devoted so much time to a non-tiger related golf tournament ever.

 

[Lugnuts]

Now maybe a few writers will begin to understand-- it's one thing to go on TV to opinion-spew, or even report...

It's another to anchor.

Anchoring is a difficult skill to make look easy, and it requires a lot of reps.

 

[slappy4428]

He's done it before, and he's bad at it.

Perhaps he's recycling an earlier appearance.

Spit take...

 

[writingump]

Watched the first 15 minutes or so of it and couldn't take any more. It was a complete train wreck every time Reilly narrated a highlight.

 

[TigerVols]

He's done it before, and he's bad at it.

Perhaps he's recycling an earlier appearance.

IN fact, sounds like that's exactly what he did....after that first appearance, I heard him on some radio show talking about how terrible he was. He freely admitted that he sucked at it, and added that he wouldn't get any better.

Making TV look easy is very, very hard.

 

[Joe Williams]

That Reilly would even feel a need to try this, and the ESPN would let him, and that young potentially great sports writers would be lured into imitation of this, is all sadder than Greg Oden's latest knee blowout.

 

[mb]

The Deadspin roundup of Twitter feeds on Reilly is epic. The intro ...

Someone let Rick Reilly® anchor the West Coast edition of SportsCenter again, and sweet sassy molassy was he awful

http://deadspin.com/5423300/an-angry-and-bewildered-nation-watches-rick-reilly-ruin-sportscenter

2day..heard Joe Brown call hockey & saw Rick Reilly host SC. Could watch my dog get shot tmrw & 2day would still be my worst day of the week

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Did the dynamite go boom?

 

[Drip]

This will not end well.

Ya think?

The time has come for Rick to bend over and take it. Take it all and STFU.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Now maybe a few writers will begin to understand-- it's one thing to go on TV to opinion-spew, or even report...

It's another to anchor.

Anchoring is a difficult skill to make look easy, and it requires a lot of reps.

So you're saying it can be learned, not like writing.

 

[Shaggy]

A bad idea on so many levels. I'm saying this as a fellow writer who has TV experience on panels and being interviewed, etc. I would be a terrible anchor on PBS, much less an anchor on the most-watched sports show in the world.

Reilly's background is print writing. Sure, he could probably write OK television copy. But it's a whole other world to actually get in front of a camera and deliver it smoothly. It's freaking hard to do, and being in front of the cameras answering questions from a real anchor as an analyst or whatever doesn't prepare you.

I imagine there were only two people on Earth who thought this was a good idea. Rick Reilly and the higher-up that OK'd it.