The most Rick Reilly article Rick Reilly has ever written

Geez, if I was told the description but was not told it appeared on ESPN.com, I would assume it was a parody written by some jokester. It's almost too good to be real.

Ridiculous Moral Indignation: ur doin it rong

By now you've probably heard the "story" (sarcastic quotation marks used because as the main subject of the story herself says, this is not actually a story) of Jan Cavanaugh. She's the Packers fan/cancer patient/autograph seeker allegedly snubbed by Aaron Rodgers as he walked to the team's Atlanta-bound plane last Friday. Now, all of the following are rational responses to the viral video that shows Rodgers walking past Cavanaugh without acknowledging her:

1) This is one 3 second video, we don't really know the context. Hard to judge Rodgers' entire character on this alone. Maybe he does other charity work and/or has given this woman an autograph before. (Both possibilities true)
2) Rodgers is wearing headphones, who knows what he was and was not aware of at that moment. (If you're Mike Florio, you speculate that Rodgers wore the headphones to make it easier to ignore cancer patients looking for autographs)
3) Players are not obligated to sign autographs for anyone and everyone at all times even if the autograph seek does have cancer and is a die hard fans of the player's employer. (Cavanaugh's own reaction, see below)

Of course, none of those angles appeal to sportswriters. #1 involves looking at all sides of an issue/situation, something 95% of sportswriters are too fucking stupid to do. #2 is too practical. #3 is too blindingly obvious and prevents sportswriters from being morally indignant about something that calls for no such perspective. So of course ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio (a breathtakingly useless writer employed by a breathtakingly useless site that we should write about far more often) took the easy way out.

Aaron Rodgers has a lot to learn about where his money comes from

Alternate title: Mike Florio has a lot to learn about how the business of professional sports works.

We realize that only two days ago we defended largely unlikable Bears quarterback Jay Cutler from a mailed-in attack by ESPN’s Rick Reilly.

The Rickster? Mailing in a column? Never. Also: anyone using the first person plural to talk about themselves deserves a square and vicious kick in the balls.

But since Reilly has yet to attack Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, we feel no need to defend him. (Yet.)

In fact, we feel the need to crucify him using shitty logic and pointless moral outrage.

Rodgers makes a lot of money because people are willing to pay to watch him do what he does, and because they’re willing to sit and watch him do it on television, while being bombarded with advertisements and networks promos.

True. Keep in mind that Rodgers does not make money because people think he's a swell guy. At least, not primarily. Of course being a non-asshole is good for a player's career, but before they can benefit from that kind of thing they have to be, uh, good at sports.

Without fans, football would be lacrosse. Or indoor soccer. Or postseason baseball.

Boom. Roasted. Take that, baseball. Your TV ratings for divisional round playoff games that start on weekday afternoons are not very good. That proves once and for all that football is better than you.

So football players need to be willing to pause and sign an autograph or two from time to time. Especially when the person seeking the autograph is female, is wearing copious amounts of NFL-licensed pink apparel, and has very short gray hair.

If players are going to stop and sign for anyone, I agree that cancer patients should be at the top of the list. Unfortunately, as previously stated (and as known by anyone with a brain since it's a really basic and obvious fact), athletes who are really awesome don't need to be willing to stop and sign for anyone. They don't. They don't owe it to anyone, they don't "need" to do it for anyone, and I think it's a stretch to say they "should" do it for anyone. The best way to put it is that they "can do so if they want." But you already knew that, because you have a brain.

Look- like any other fan, I want athletes to be nice. Especially the ones I cheer for. I can appreciate the occasional puff piece about one of them doing something really cool and charitable. But I'm not so much of an entitled prong as to think that any athlete owes fans anything. They owe their teammates, coaches, and management something. But they don't owe me shit. They don't work with me or for me. End of discussion. If you think otherwise I suggest you get your head out of your retum. When an athlete signs autographs, I say "Awesome! That guy rules!" When they refuse to, I shrug and feel neutral about it.

Hey, it’s a free country. Rodgers has an inalienable right to choose to behave like an ass.

Fuck the charity work the guy does, and all the other autographs he's ever signed in his life-including one for this very fan-this incident proves that Rodgers should be skewered by the media.

And the rest of us have an inalienable right to tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s behaving like an ass.

ExACTly. Good for you, Florio. This is a much easier way of generating pageviews than your normal method of making up trade/transaction rumors. Way to be the watchdog who makes sure no athlete gets away with snubbing an autograph seeker. AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW WHEN THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS. HOW ELSE WILL WE KNOW WHO TO HATE FOR NO GOOD REASON?

Rodgers needs to realize that without people like Jan Cavanaugh, whose passion for pro football prompted her to go to the airport after a radiation treatment in the hopes of getting Rodgers to sign the pink hat with the Packers logo that she always wears, make his entire lifestyle possible. Otherwise, he’d be no different than a guy who’s really good at throwing darts or horseshoes or cornhole bags. He’d derive personal satisfaction from the use of his God-given skills, but not much if any money.

And Florio needs to realize that people like Cavanaugh might be slightly disappointed if they don't get an autograph, but they will continue to watch NFL games on TV, attend them when possible, buy NFL merchandise, and generally structure their entire lives around the NFL. Like most others in the world, our country is sports-obsessed. Our star athletes can more or less do whatever they want off the field as long as they don't kill anyone.

Do I hope that every person who wants an autograph gets one, especially when the person is a cancer patient? Of course. I've also heard of a man named Barry Bonds, who was a shameless user of illegal drugs (and eventual cheater once baseball got around to officially banning those drugs) and a world class asshole who treated 90% of the people he ever met like complete trash. Barry made a kajillion dollars throughout the course of his career and to this day remains wildly popular with a large number of fans. Why? Because he was good at what he did. And throughout the course of the modern history of sports, there have been hundreds and hundreds of Bondses. Rodgers isn't the Bonds of quarterbacking in terms of skill level, of course, but he's not a long ways off. And that's why is doesn't fucking matter whether he signs autographs or not.

We hope this strikes a chord with all pro athletes. The fans are the reason you get paid the big bucks. And it would be wise to show some gratitude, especially when it’s obvious that one of those fans isn’t blessed with good health.

Now I'm starting to think Florio himself was snubbed by a player at some point and is still carrying a grudge about it.

We also hope that Rodgers and/or the Packers track down Jan Cavanaugh and make it up to her. The fact that Rodgers would crap on a rare moment of happiness for someone whose entire life in consumed by fighting the disease and contending with the physical, mental, and emotional effects of it should make the stomach churn of anyone who has cancer, or who has seen a loved one stricken by it.

Jan Cavanaugh, what say you about this whole deal? (From the news link at the top of the post)

"I am very unhappy with people making so much out of this, because this really isn't that big of a deal. It's up to the players to decide who they want to give an autograph to, and that's their prerogative."

Three cheers for you, lady. You just made me hate the Packers a little less.

Rick Reilly: Pipe Down

Well, I wanted to post something, and I didn't have to look far. Rick Reilly, champion of every underdog team, avenger of every wronged squad, restorer of justice to every defamed group of athletes on this planet, provides us with just what we're looking for.

It's the perfect combination of righteous indignation, overblown hyperbole and mindless ranting: Boise State Broncos can't buck this trend

So that's it, then. It's done. The fix is arranged. It's Game Over and everybody knows the score. The BCS computers TKO Boise State. Why keep punching when it's not a fair fight?

Yeah, especially when Boise State plays in a conference that is orders of magnitude weaker than the other teams in contention for the BCS title. Teams with drastically weaker strengths of schedule are not really fighting a fair fight.

Auburn and Oregon are No. 1 and No. 2 in the country according to Sunday's latest, most fraudulent compilation yet from the BCS rankings. If those two schools win the rest of their games, they'll play in the BCS Championship Game.

Boy, that seems fair to me. As long as you don't have a plus-one or a playoff, that's the most sensible way to go about it.

And Boise State? Members of football's lowest caste system? It doesn't matter. The BSUntouchables play Louisiana Tech on Tuesday night, but they're just cleaning windows on the Titanic now. If Auburn and Oregon win out, Boise State can wipe out every opponent 50-0 and not make it in now. And the Broncos probably won't even if the Tigers and Ducks don't win out. Yes, we're talking about Auburn. The team that has 13 fewer wins over the past five seasons than Boise State.

I'm going to count up the number of totally irrelevant statistics that Rick cites in support of his argument. Auburn's win total over the last five years is the first.

Yes, we're talking about Oregon. The same team Boise State punched out last season 19-8.

Two.

It's the biggest rip-off since the Nigerian prince scam. It makes you wonder why you watch college football at all. What Boise State is being asked to do isn't doable. It's like trying to win a Cuban election. Or break into the Genovese family.

Or trying to make sense of your argument.

The Broncos are 6-0. They've won 20 straight games, the longest streak in the country.

Three.

They've beaten two BCS automatic qualifiers -- 6th-ranked Virginia Tech and 24th-ranked Oregon State. Doesn't matter. BSU could whip the 103rd Infantry and it wouldn't get a sniff. The computers are in charge. The pod bay doors won't open.

This is just mindless rhetoric. I hate. Also, I don't know why Rick [Edit: I once mistakenly called him "Bill" here] cites VT as the 6th-ranked team. At the moment, they're in the 20s of all the ranking systems.

Boise State is going to get seated at the kids' table again.

They play at the kids' table for 10 of their 12 games every year.

The Broncos will go to some pointless bowl and beat somebody like they always do -- they've already bested Oklahoma and TCU in bowls like that -- and they'll come home with a win and a hatful of "You kids sure play with a lot of heart up there" put-downs from the BCS blazers.

Yawn. It's a good thing they have a champion of the little guy like Rick Reilly to further pigeonhole them into a spunky upstart. If Rick Reilly ever writes an article about my teams, I'll be pissed, because I know he's taking them on as a human interest story, not a sports story.

Amazing, isn't it? NCAA Division I football is the only sport in the world where continued, uninterrupted, hats-in-the-air winning doesn't mean you keep progressing. For Boise State, it gets you a squirt of vinegar in the eye. It's a three-card Monty game and all they get is two cards. OK, here it comes. Say it: Boise State doesn't play anybody.

Well, in FCS football, continued winning doesn't mean you keep progressing. You're still just the FCS champ. The same goes for every minor league organization on the North American continent. The Columbus Clippers and the Toledo Mud Hens can win every game this season and not make it to the World Series!

They could even win every game 50-0 and not even get a sniff!

Boise State plays -- and beats -- whoever they throw at it. It thumped San Jose State 48-0. Wisconsin, which beat No. 1 Ohio State and No. 15 Iowa, only beat SJSU by 13, at home!

Four. Ugh, this is stupid.

Boise State smashed Wyoming 51-6. Wyoming nearly beat Air Force and Air Force nearly beat Oklahoma. You're telling me Boise State couldn't beat OU? Oh, wait. It already did.

Ugh, there are three irrelevant facts in one paragraph. I'm up to like 987 in this article already.

Boise State whipped Virginia Tech on the road. VT is undefeated in the ACC. Are you telling me Boise State wouldn't be carving up the ACC?

Are you, Rick, telling me the ACC is a conference equal to the Pac-10 or the SEC?

People think of Boise State as some kind of Tahitian ice skating team. It's not like the Broncos have to wait for the high school girls' field hockey team to get off the field at 5 p.m. before they can practice. They have killer facilities, blue or otherwise. They recruit against the best for the best. They have a head coach, Chris Petersen, who is 55-4 there. (Anybody remember Urban Meyer?) They've been to a bowl eight of the past nine seasons. They're trying to be the first BCS outsider to make the championship game, but who knew they'd have to whip a bunch of Geek Squadders, too?

This paragraph is a rhetorical disaster. It's a sign that you have a weak point to begin with. It has all the hallmarks of a moron. Rick's plan: confuse the argument (blue fields), call your opponents names (Geek Squadders), simplify your opponents' arguments (Tahitian ice hockey), and cite irrelevant facts (bowl record) . This is such a disaster of thinking. Who cares about their facilities?

Also: Auburn has been to a bowl nine of the last ten seasons. Oregon seven of the last eight. Ohio St. ten of the last eleven. Oklahoma twelve straight. So... that statistic isn't even all that impressive.

"If they played anybody in the country," said Oregon's offensive coordinator, Mark Helfrich, who used to coach at Boise State, "they could give them a game. One time? Against anybody? Absolutely, they'd give them a serious game."

Yawn. What is this, Little Giants?

"I think they'd be tough to beat," said Auburn's offensive line coach, Jeff Grimes, who also used to coach at Boise State. "They've proven that. They could beat anybody on any given Saturday. Could they win every Saturday in the SEC? No. But who can?"

If a rhetorical question has a disproving non-rhetorical answer - like Alabama in 2009 or Florida in 2008 - it's probably a poor rhetorical choice. But this is Rickworld we're living in.

Also: What the hell, Rick. Did you just go around interviewing former Boise State coaches? Did you expect some kind of unbiased opinion from them? Wouldn't it have been more relevant to interview the coaches who've lost to BSU?

Also: Jeff Grimes was offensive line coach at BSU for one season, in 2000. Mark Helfrich was the QB coach for three seasons - 1998-2000. Is their opinion valid here? Kinda.

How would Grimes feel if he were the Boise State coach, getting more shaft than Chilean miners?

I'm glad Rick kept that joke PG.

"I think I'd say, 'Bout time for a playoff, isn't it?'" Grimes said.

Exactly.

Of course, Petersen, who's just so annoyingly classy, won't say boo. "Coach Petersen likes to stay away from the topic," said a Boise State spokesman. "If he starts worrying about the polls and all the noise out there about it, it will just be a distraction to the team."

I like Chris Petersen! He has some decent sense! He realizes that fulminating like Rick Reilly is a quick way to make everyone hate him.

No, what Petersen needs to do is get noisy in Boise! He needs to be calling up reporters and seething about the short in the BCS mainframes. He should be asking anybody, How come your schizoid computers keep vaulting unworthy teams over us to No. 1? Two weeks ago it was Ohio State. They lost. Last week, it was Oklahoma. They lost. This week, it's Auburn. Who's the computer going to leapfrog us with next? Swarthmore?

Auburn beat a top ten team.

Boise State's athletes and coaches deserve better than this dog's breakfast. Fix the crappy data going into the computers. Get rid of the SEC bias. Update the strength-of-schedule logarithms. This is 2010, not 1960. The difference between the old-school schools and the new-school schools is a butterfly's burp.

What? Rick seems to have this impression that people are throwing random numbers into these computers and coming out with equally random numbers. Now, I'm no expert at the BCS computers, but seriously? The lack of substance in these allegations suggests that the real absurdity comes from the Reilly himself.

Sports isn't fun when you take the anything-can-happen out of it and that's exactly what the computers have done.

Better yet, get us a damn playoff.

Do I think a plus-one is a good idea? Yes.

Do I think Rick Reilly's rhetoric is insanely stupid? Yes.

Jemele Hill flat out sucks at writing

Do you like boring human interest stories that are only tangentially related to sports? Yes? Fuck you.

CATCHING UP WITH THE MAN WHO CAUGHT 756

When he was at the bottom of a pile of bodies, suffocating, with unknown hands clawing at his face and clothes, his leg pinned against a stadium seat, and blood gushing from his nose and mouth, Matt Murphy was just hoping he wasn't about to die over a baseball.

That's some very nice prosey stuff. Really sets the mood nicely. Too bad it's a huge crock of shit. If Matt Murphy were really concerned about his physical well being, he would've let go and gotten out of the scrum. But in reality he cared much more about getting paid, not that I blame him, but cut the shit.

It was a thought Murphy revisited a few times in the days following his life-altering catch -- between the appearances on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and the "Late Show with David Letterman," his fourth hotel change in two days and his father's warning he should give up the baseball if nefarious figures put a gun to his head.

This story is so lame and uninteresting that Jemele Hill has to add an anecdote about a warning of a possible armed robbery. Riveting stuff.

With his new sneaker business opening Friday in New York's trendy Tribeca neighborhood, the 22-year-old Murphy can look back and see the absurdity and humor in everything that's happened to him since he caught Barry Bonds' historic 756th home run ball a year ago in San Francisco -- which made Bonds baseball's all-time home-run leader and solidified Murphy as a high-level thousand-aire.

"Let's just say I've got a really great conversation-starter," he said.

Or we could say "You caught a ball that made you a lot of money. THE END."

Between that last quote, and this picture of Murphy, he gives off a real douche-vibe. A good sports journalist wouldn't indulge him in his bullshit, but this is Jemele Hill we're talking about.

As you might have heard, Murphy and a friend detoured to AT&T Park en route to Australia, to see Bonds on Aug. 7, 2007. In the fifth inning, Murphy emerged from that pile of bodies with a ball that eventually was purchased by designer Marc Ecko for $752,467.

Murphy's take was half of that. He paid the taxes and gave his buddy, Amir Kamal, who was with him when he caught the ball, the remaining half.

A year ago, who would have guessed that the owners of the historic ball would be much better off than the guy who actually hit it and broke arguably the most hallowed record in professional sports?

Matt Murphy, ~$350,000 richer from last year > Barry Bonds, omnipresent in discussions about greatest basball player of all time, and career earnings of $188,245,322, not including endorsements/appearences.

The opening of Solefood NYC allows Murphy to fulfill his lifelong dream of being an entrepreneur.

And his lifelong dream of making the lamest pun of all time.

Meanwhile, the 44-year-old Bonds is out of baseball in what appears to be a result of unofficial collusion. Not a single team, contender or otherwise, will take a chance on a player many feel is the best of his generation.

Say what you will about why no team will take a chance on a player with a career 182 OPS+ (I personally wouldn't be surprised if there was collusion on this), but what the fuck is "unofficial collusion?" Every team is either officially colluding with each other and not signing Barry Bonds, or, as Jemele says, they don't want to "take a chance on [him]." In which case it is not collusion at all.

God, she's stupid.

"I thought [Ecko] was either a really smart businessman or a complete idiot," Murphy said. "Turns out, he was a really smart businessman."

This could be true, or it could be a complete lie, but we can't know for sure because Jemele Hill backs it up with nothing, save for "Ecko received enormous publicity for asking fans to vote online about what he should do with the ball." Nothing about increased sales or anything. Journalsim at its finest.

But Ecko wasn't the only one who deserved that kind of credit. Murphy knew the ball was a commodity he could milk for some serious financial comfort.

Wow, super savvy on Murphy's part. No one had ever sold a homerun ball for a ton of money before. Never.

After securing the ball in a safe deposit box, he turned down some initial weak offers, including one from Topps trading cards that guaranteed him $100,000 and free tickets to baseball's All-Star Game and the Super Bowl. Another businessman offered him $200,000 for the ball, but Murphy went with premier auction house Sotheby's, which auctioned the ball to Ecko in January.

He did what anyone with a half a brain would do. Whoopee! Will your next column be about a guy who didn't accidently shoot himself while cleaning his gun?

Murphy has done his best to lead a normal life. He still works as a contract supervisor, overseeing renovation projects around New York City. He still hasn't bought a car. He moved into a Manhattan apartment, but nothing ultrafancy. He invested in the stock market. The only big-ticket item he purchased was his sneaker store, which he shares with two other partners. The one fact he kept at the front of his mind is that nearly one-third of all lottery winners go broke.

"Even if I made $6 million off the ball, I'd still be at work every day," Murphy said. "My mentality is: Don't spend it. That money can make more money, and then I can live off that money."

My guess is Murphy has to pay around $2,000 a month for his apartment. In addition, I did some reasearch (journalsim...gasp) and found that he put $60,000 into the store. So for those keeping track at home, Murphy will have spent 1/3 of his money by the end of next year.

And while selling high-end shoes may be his dream, I wouldn't say sinking a large chunk of your cash into that is the best idea during a recession, but that's neither here nor there in this bafflingly unnecessary puff piece.

About the only thing that's different is his love life, and he admits his faith in people is somewhat shaken. Asked what the dating scene is like when you've got a couple hundred thousand dollars to play with, Murphy laughed and said: "It's like fishing with dynamite. It's a very good closer at the end of the night. Let's just say I've got a good winning percentage."

His faith in people is shaken because he takes advantage of would-be gold diggers. I guess two wrongs make a right.

The money has exposed the ugly side of people. Murphy has gotten an advanced tutorial on hidden agendas and greed. Some of his so-called friends took money from competing auction houses who wanted them to steer Murphy in their direction.

Yes, none of these guys are paragons of virtue like Murphy, who held a historical baseball hostage to the highest bidder and bangs chicks who only dig him for his money.

"A lot of freeloaders," he said. "I understand now why people with money watch their backs. Everybody is out to get you. Everyone is trying to get something out of me."

Murphy just wants the chicks to give up the pussy and everyone else to BACK THE FUCK UP. Is that too much to ask?

In that way, being a New Yorker is perfect for Murphy. He's living in the one place where the famous and infamous go largely unnoticed.

First of all, saying that the famous and infamous go largely unnoticed in New York is beyond stupid. Ask A-Rod or Angelina Jolie about how unnoticed they go in NYC.

Furthermore, Murphy isn't famous or infamous. Had it not been for this incredibly asinine article, I wouldn't know his name or be able to pick him out of a lineup. The only way people know he's rich is because he brags about his wealth to pick up chicks.

He just wants his new store to do well enough so that he can eventually quit his day job and live out the rest of his days as an unassuming businessman.

Wasn't the supposed point of the article to show what an unassuming businessman he's managed to remain?

"I don't want to be recognized," Murphy said. "I don't need the attention. I just want to live a normal life. In that way, mission: successful."

"And yet I went on Jimmy Kimmel, and had a national read columnist write an article about me and my recent good fortune. In addition, a Google search of '"Matt Murphy" Solefood' yeilds 266 hits. I am a douche and Jemele Hill is a terrible writer."

p.s. Here is an article about sports and finances that's actually very well written and researched.