FJM Hall of Shame: Rick Reilly

Ladies and gentlemen, the first inductees for the Fire Jay Mariotti Hall of Shame will be inducted over the course of this summer. The first few will be awarded the title of "Inaugural Inductee" since their candidacy is so obvious, they will go down in history. Without further ado:


This is the man whose columns relate the human side of sports - which is certainly not the worst of goals. This is the man whose stories graced SI for 23 years and has been at ESPN since 2007. If you want to read a sample of what one of his columns usually looks like, read this FJM post, also from 2007. Apparently he has won the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters' Association's Sportswriter of the Year award eleven times.

He might be a good guy who helps charities, but his articles are still mindless tripe. In general, he is inducted for his crimes against decent writing, for his throwaway pop culture references, for his overly sentimental attitude and for his lack of logical thought while writing. We here at FJM are not here to indict Mr. Reilly's charity work or his attitudes on life, but rather to indict his awful sportswriting on a national level.

Here are some of his lowlights, as chronicled here at FJM:

• Rick goes out on a limb to castigate the Georgia HS pitcher who beaned the umpire.
• Rick humorously breaks down the national anthems at the Beijing Olympics.
• Rick, after exhausting research, declares which franchises rule which cities.
• Rick, in his position of power and authority, declares that Utah is the undisputable national champion of the 2008 season.
  
• Rick gives us fans the lighter side of Super Bowl preparations.
• Rick has something to say about Magic Johnson's AIDS. (!!!)
  
• Rick wants to retroactively take suspected steroid users' MVP awards and give them to other suspected steroid users. (!!!)
  
• Rick thinks that Rachel Alexandra is a victory for gender equality, democracy and world peace. In case you forgot, Rachel Alexandra is a horse.
• Rick has a few ideas about how to improve baseball.

One note about the last link. In it, Rick wants to call out baseball for its tolerance of steroids. He writes:

In the Small-Balls era, nobody -- not the players, not the owners, not the writers -- tried to stop it. Where were all these books when we needed them?

In the comments section, FJM reader Fred Trigger provides perhaps the best comment in FJM history:
Writers didn't try to stop the steroids because they were busy writing things like this:



For his lack of historical awareness alone, he merits first-ballot status. For everything else, Mr. Reilly's resume clearly welcomes him into the hallowed ranks of this previously-empty hall. Don't worry, Rick: you'll have company soon.

New Feature: the FJM Hall of Shame

We here at FJM have had quite a few HOF debates over the years - focusing around a few core players like Robert Horry, Craig Biggio (twice!), Tim Raines, LeBron James and other NBA stars, a host of NFL players and Curt Schilling. Articles about Hall of Fame-eligible players are easy pickins', since there's no clear definition for what constitutes Hall of Fameness in any sport, and it's usually not hard to find some way to argue against what any writer is saying.

Anyways, since this blog sees so many names repeated over and over again headlining and tagging on these hallowed pixels, we thought it only makes sense to honor the writers out there who've managed to achieve truly pathetic status. These writers have consistently (consistently) committed some of the most egregious fouls sportswriters can commit:

• lacking basic research skills
• poor syntax or grammar
• misusing or abusing statistics
  
• a naive lack of any critical powers
• oversentimentalizing sports or life
• heavy and wanton use of anecdotal evidence
• disparaging things they don't understand or
• anything else we like to complain about.
  

Since we're already hypocritical enough as it is, we're going to do the same thing that every sportswriters' association does to their respective sport - induct writers based on no set metric other than that we think their writing is not just bad, not just extra bad, but truly worthy of the Hall of Shame.

Certain obvious candidates will be inducted quickly and easily - there's nobody out there arguing that Babe Ruth wasn't a Hall of Famer and I'm pretty sure inductee #1 (who will arrive later today) will be voted in with 100% of the ballot. But you're welcome to start the debate about which writers truly belong in the next class, which be inducted approximately whenever I get to working on the next one.