Calling Out Sportswriter Schmucks

Longtime readers of this column know I like to bag on popular sportswriters, so I thought I'd start off this week by bagging on a popular sportswriter.

I've never been much of a fan of Rick Reilly, but he at least has been competent enough to avoid being satirized and mocked by me. But his last couple of columns, ay-chi-wawa. ... really bad.

It's almost like someone important told him he wasn't edgy enough, he doesn't take any risks, and he is afraid to alienate any athletes except for obvious transgressions. So he goes Carsenio on us and writes the hatchet job on Rex Grossman that was his post-Super Bowl article.

The point of the article was, boy, Rex Grossman sure sucked during the Super Bowl. Now, I'm not here to tell you that every opinion that a columnist has to be controversial, but they should at least be debatable. It isn't debatable that Rex Grossman had a terrible Super Bowl. The only point to writing a column with an undebatable point is if you are making this point in a particularly hilarious or insightful way. Really hilarious. Really insightful.

You want to know the funniest and most astute line in the Grossman piece?

"I mean, there is bad, there is terrible, and then there is Wrecks Grossman, who did for the Bears on Sunday what scallions did for Taco Bell."

Zing! No wonder you get asked to do beer commercials and have your own backpage column in America's No. 1 sports magazine! "Wrecks" Grossman! Haha! Do you have any other puns for us, Mr. Reilly? You do? The Bears need a "Rexorcism?" Wow! Every one, a Maserati!

I can't decide if that piece is worse than his latest, which is yet another "dese wimmin" columns so beloved by The Sports Guy. Except unlike Bill Simmons, Reilly doesn't have the nerve to go all the way with it, ending the piece with, "But the truth is we love you more than we say and need you more than you know. Now will you tell us where you hid the remote?" (Zing! Beer commercials!)

Simmons, who gets more abuse from me than any other writer by far, would die before throwing such a hoary caveat onto one of his anti-feminine screeds. But I suspect the now-edgier-than-ever Reilly couldn't bear not to include it, which it makes the worst of two worlds: half-hearted chauvinism.

Most of the article is an allegedly humorous guide for women to understanding men. My favorite is this one:

"Just because we haven't played catcher in years, it's not okay to throw out our jock and cup. Do we throw away your pom-poms?"

Touche. Wait, what?

I guess we can all relate to that universal truth of being ... married to an ex-cheerleader. Who still has her pom-poms. But we like the pom-poms because we like for her to still occasionally dress up like a cheerleader, or ... or ... nope. I just can't wrap my head around this one. I'm lost. Sorry, Reilly.

I will say this for Reilly. There is absolutely no noxious, veiled, insulting implications in any of his columns, which is more than I can say about the recent CSTV column from Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, in response to the SEC having five or six of the top 10 recruiting classes depending on where you look (the Big Ten, one or none):

"I love speed and the SEC has great speed, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends. I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process. Not every athlete fits athletically, academically, or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards."

Yeah, you fasters! Fasters may be on top of the world now, but they aren't as academically-enriched or smart as our kids! You give fasters an inch, and they take a mile and get all uppity, acting like they own the world. I'll stick with my own kind, thanks. What's wrong with that? People being different? We will do things our way here, with our people, and you fasters can go wherever you want in the crazy liberal South. Oh, you fasters. And Urban Meyer is a faster-lover.

So which is more odious about Delany's comments?

1) That's he clearly suggesting that the kids SEC schools recruit (and earn their schools high recruiting marks) are too dumb to be admitted into Big Ten schools, but he gutlessly dances around it rather coming right out and saying it, giving him some plausible deniability later. (No! That's not what I meant!)

2) That, whether he implies that or comes right out and says it, he would even make such a dubious, unsupportable claim?

The Big Ten has Northwestern. The SEC has Vanderbilt. The rest of the schools in both conferences are all public and state-funded. Generally, this means their entry criteria is pretty broad, forgiving, non-subjective, and similar. I got accepted into Ohio State with a 2.2 high school GPA and an ACT score of 26, and I didn't even play a sport.

But just in case Delany or his supporters want to argue ("Illinois requires a 2.5 GPA while Mississippi State only requires..." or whatever), I want to know exactly which SEC signees are the ones that would not have qualified for a Big Ten scholarship. After all, we would all like to have six of the top 10 recruiting classes like the SEC, but we can't, because of our "discipline," "restraint," and "academic mission." You probably have to gather some paperwork to answer that question. I'll wait.