Rick Reilly is a whiny blubbering douchebag

This article is from 2 days ago, but we felt we had to comment on it:

In this article Rick blasts Phil Jackson, Roger Federer, and Serena Williams, all very successful at what they do, for what Reilly considers flaunting their victory. We'll address each person separately.

In the article Reilly calls the Zenmaster "un-zen," very creative, for donning a cap with an 'X' on it after the Lakers won to symbolize his 10th ring. Reilly writes

"That hat said, Aren't I amazing! Doesn't this hat prove it? Don't you wish you had one?I hated that hat for the same reason I hate those hideous championship T-shirts and caps that teams don the instant the final buzzer sounds. Why cover up the glory of the jerseys you bled in together all season -- the ones that have your city or team name emblazoned on the front -- with some ugly shirts nobody can read? And why top it off with an ugly hat that just dangles a tag in your face?"

Maybe Reilly's a Clippers fan and never got to experience a championship, but the fact of the matter is fans love to wear this gear. It gives them as much pride as wearing the jersey because you feel like your rooting for them made you a part of the championship. Also, if Reilly had done any actual reporting, he would have learned that the hat wasn't even his idea, but rather a gift from his long-time agents. Of course Jackson donned the hat as a token of appreciation for them

Frankly, there are symbols of achievement that people flaunt in areas other than sports. When someone earns their doctorate they are given a PhD and given the title doctors (but not medical doctors obviously). Why isn't Reilly up in arms about this as well? Maybe he somehow feels he's above Jackson because he managed to pay off enough people to win 11 Sportswriter of the Year awards.

Next Reilly goes on to blast Federer for wearing a sweater boasting the number 15 representing the new record for Grand Slam titles. Reilly writes that this was "a rare show of classlessness from a normally classy guy." We agree with Reilly that Federer is a very classy guy, but that's where the agreeing ends. As such, we are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here. Think about this for a moment: Federer has a multi-million dollar contract with Nike. It's a pretty good bet that Nike gave him 2 sweaters that day and instructed him to wear one if he lost, and the other if he won. Is that too far out of the realm of possibility for Reilly to possibly comprehend? Also, if Rick had such a problem with this, why wasn't he criticizing Federer when he analyzed the tournament for ESPN? First of all, Bud Collins is about as sane as Gary Busey. Second of all, You sir Rick Reilly, are a two-faced bag of douche.

There's more to say, and we didn't even mention Serena Williams, but this post is getting long and we will let readers form their own opinions on the rest of the article (please comment!). We wanted to conclude by asking our readers a question:

The NBA Finals ended on June 14th. Wimbledon ended on July 5th. As it says in the article, this column appeared in the August 10th issue of ESPN the Magazine. Has Reilly been fingering his asshole for the past month or having sex with corpses as he is prone to do? Why has it taken him this long to comment on these events? We leave you with that as a vivid image of another ESPNfail.

KZ & DD

Addendum: Wait, Doc hasn't been traded?

I want to piggyback on the brilliance of KZ's morning post.
The headline about Halladay on the ESPN homepage reads:


"Jays want 'to be blown away' by Halladay offer"

No way, you mean Roy Halladay is one of the best pitchers in baseball and any offer has to impress J.P. Ricciardi and rest of the clowns that run the Jays? The headline should actually be "Ricciardi still hasn't been fired." The article even creates a false hope for Rangers fans that a deal may still be done. Compare this the SI headline this morning "Texas deal for Halladay dissolves." C'mon ESPN, this is not news - a fourth grader could tell you that it will take a lot to trade for a Cy Young winner. Another ESPN fail

DD

Nothing to report on Roy Halladay

And yet, ESPN continues to report that nothing is going on in the Halladay sweepstakes. Today's article:

Jays still open to offers for Halladay

Boy that reporting by Buster Olney really blew me away there. Teams are still interested in acquiring arguably the best pitcher in baseball!? Shocker. Let's check out many times ESPN has had a report that there was nothing new to report on Doc being traded. A search of Halladay reveals the following going back:

July 30th: Olney writes the article above & Gammons has a video saying he doesn't think the ace will be traded

July 29th: Buster writes another article titled 'Jays not close to trading Halladay,' Rob Neyer writes a blog entry on how the Jays need to be 'wowed' to trade him,

July 28th: Rob Neyer writes a blog post entitled 'Our Kingdom for a Halladay,' I would appreciate the Shakespeare reference a lot more if he didn't follow it up by the next day copy/pasting his ideas.

July 27th: Jason Stark reports that 'trade talks are not going well' between the Jays and Phillies...seems to me like trade talks weren't going well between the Jays and anybody. If trade talks were going well I would think Halladay would have been traded or am I crazy?

July 26th: Jason Stark reports that the Jays rejected the latest Phillies offer.

Just to recap: We've gone back only 5 days and there seem to be no new developments in who is getting Roy Halladay. The Phillies obviously knew they weren't going to get Doc without giving up at least one of their 2 top pitching prospects (J.A. Happ and Kyle Drabek) and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. This takes one article to explain that. However, ESPN pinpoints on a few particular stories and then magnifies them to biblical proportions. This is how we end up seeing a new Halladay article everyday even though that article is as worthy of being read as the last 10 Eddie Murphy movies have been worthy of a view from anyone over 5 years old. Could Buster Olney not think of an interesting topic today so he dipped into one of the stories he knew he could bank on ESPN being satisfied with?

I think the coverage of Roy Halladay's trade talks is an ESPNfail, but boy he does seem like a swell guy.

KZ

Our first Brett Favre post

Sources are reporting today that Brett Favre has tied his shoes successfully. Reports indicate he used a typical '2 Bunny Ears' approach. Classic Favre.

MD

Good news sources

We assume if you are already coming here you probably feel about ESPN the same way you feel about anal bleaching. That being said, we've been asked what sources we turn to for news. Here is an incomplete list of our favorite sites we go to for serious news (except for Deadspin which is more humorous in nature) that we will update periodically:

Sports Illustrated (all sports): www.si.com

True Hoop (NBA): http://myespn.go.com/nba/truehoop

Pro Football Talk (NFL): http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/

AOL Fanhouse (all sports): http://www.fanhouse.com/

Yahoo Sports: http://sports.yahoo.com/

Deadspin (all sports): www.deadspin.com

Our first post

Greetings sports fans out there who have grown out of the diarrhea that ESPN spews each day. We promise to update frequently and keep our readers aware of every egregious offense that ESPN commits each day. Stay tuned for our official welcome message, but in the meantime, let us dive right into the shit.

My oh my this just writes itself. Please take a gander at this article about a story that ESPN covers religiously: the Greek tragedy that is the Michael Vick story.

First of all, why is it news that Michael Vick is "getting close"
to signing with a team? This is nothing more than ESPN glorifying a rumor. Yeah, I'm getting close to choosing what I want for dinner. What the fuck does that mean? If there is no decision, then ESPN has no business putting this on their pitiful excuse for a website as news. In addition, please look closely at the two headlines in this article. The article is titled

"Vick 'close' to finding new team"

However, it seems John Clayton, the resident NFL
brainiac who looks like he has one foot in the grave
already, has a different take on the matter:

Clayton: Vick Not Close To Any Deal

Please tell me these aren't on the same page...oh wait THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE. This was an article by the Associated Press. If ESPN were to consider it newsworthy, which they obviously do, then all they had to do was title it correctly. They even couldn't manage to do that.

And with that, we have our first ESPNfail

KZ & DD