Benne posted:

"Yeah, forget the 18 years of captivity and unspeakable horrors you went through, here's all the sports poo poo you missed!"

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Simmons vs Reilly would be ugly. They're both tools, but Simmons is not held back by his corporate masters nearly as much and can go anywhere he wants with criticism.

erezaka posted:

Simmons was never as good as Reilly at his best and I'll be shocked if he ever becomes as bad as Reilly is now

haljordan posted:

It's even more depressing when you find out 2 or 3 editors at the paper also read that column and not one of them said "Holy gently caress, we need to burn this poo poo and forget it ever existed."

Crazy Ted posted:

There needs to be some kind of Sportswriting Hall of Fame with its own wing just for that piece. I remember reading it the day or two after it came out, and it never gets any less incredible as time goes by.

R.D. Mangles posted:

erezaka posted:

Simmons was never as good as Reilly at his best and I'll be shocked if he ever becomes as bad as Reilly is now

MourningView posted:

Rick Reilly has always been really bad.

MourningView posted:

I guess I shouldn't say always because I'm probably too young to have read his earliest stuff for SI so maybe he had some decent feature stuff, but he's been bad for a really really long time. Those back page stories were almost always either formulaic sob stories or hacky attempts at being funny.

Vertical Lime posted:

This is probably about as good of a rebuttal to that Reily column as there is:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176260/rick-reilly-and-most-irredeemably-stupid-defense-redskins-name-you-will-ever-read

MourningView posted:

I guess I shouldn't say always because I'm probably too young to have read his earliest stuff for SI so maybe he had some decent feature stuff, but he's been bad for a really really long time. Those back page stories were almost always either formulaic sob stories or hacky attempts at being funny.

davecrazy posted:

Deadspin had a feature a while back about his best feature stuff. It's worth a read.

quote:

Freshman Chadd Smith knows why he's hanging from his closet shelf by his fingers at three in the morning, with his legs bent and spread. It has to do with football. The Citadel hadn't lost the Wofford game since 1958. In fact, it had never lost the Wofford game at home. But tonight it did. As usual, somebody has to pay. As usual, it's the freshmen. That part he understands. What Smith wants to know is, What is it? What is that coldness I feel now and again down between my thighs?

Smith is hanging because of football and duty. At The Citadel it is the sophomores' duty to run out any freshman who does not measure up to the Citadel man-to break him down, humiliate him, run him until he cannot feel his toes, drill him until the arm with which he holds his rifle is numb, yell at him until his cerebellum turns to Jell-O, rack him until he either does things the Citadel way or goes home blubbering to his mommy. It's a point of pride among the 17 companies at The Citadel to see who can chase out the most knobs, as freshmen are called; a usual figure is 15% of the class. This tradition is called the Fourth Class System, and if you survive it you are, say Citadel men, "nine feet tall and bulletproof."

Smith knew knob year would suck, but he knew what to do. You talk to no one and salute everyone. You run when you are inside the barracks. You ask permission to eat, leave, pass, cough, sneeze and scratch your nose. You serve everybody at mess and hope you can stuff in a forkful before mealtime has elapsed. You polish your shoes and your brass until midnight and then your French and chemistry until two, and you hope the guy who blows reveille dies in his sleep.

You do not put a picture of your girlfriend on your desktop. You do not watch TV, because you are not allowed a TV. You do not get Cokes out of the barracks Coke machine. You do not walk on any grass, which means you must walk around the football-field-wide quadrangle in the middle of campus. You do not have any answers besides Sir, yes, sir! and Sir, no, sir! and Sir, no excuse, sir! And you do not complain unless you want 13 weekends of being stuck in your room.

[...]

Then came the Wofford loss, and that's how Smith ended up hanging from his closet shelf, his legs burning, his arms trembling, his fingers slipping and his ears absorbing the insults and the spit and the constant warning: "Don't drop, Smith! Whatever you do, don't drop!"

What was it down there?

"O.K., Smith," a voice finally whispered in his ear. "We're getting ready to leave. But before we go, I want you to look down."

There, gleaming in the reflected moonlight, two inches below his testicles, was an officer's saber.

Declan MacManus posted:

Here it is.

quote:

Tyler Phillips has said he was hit with a broom and rifle butt, spit on, kicked in the back, and was told by an upperclass cadet that he would light him on fire. He said he struggled for a long time to heal from the damage inflicted on him at the school.

And Debby Kibbee, whose son also suffered myriad abuses, including an upperclassman attempting to drive an unsharpened pencil into his forehead, said the recent efforts demonstrate too little and come too late.

quote:

That complaint was lodged in 2007 by a teen who accused ReVille of watching porn and masturbating with young boys at The Citadel’s summer camp five years earlier. The school closed the matter without notifying police, following an internal investigation that yielded no action.

ReVille, a Citadel graduate and one of the camp’s counselors, went on to molest a number of children.

A subsequent investigation cleared the school of any criminal wrongdoing. ReVille is now serving a 50-year prison term after he pleaded guilty in June to molesting 23 boys in the greater Charleston area.

Grittybeard posted:

That whole Citadel article is worth a read. I wonder how their fake army is doing these days? Oh...



Way to make Texas A&M look sane, guys.

axeil posted:

The Citadel story is absolutely horrifying. How did Reilly go from writing stuff like that and the story about the high school ref to the drivel he puts out today? It's a real shame.

davecrazy posted:

SI published a rebuttal (sort of) to the Riley column.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1140310/1/index.htm

Josh Lyman posted:

Whaaat? So Reilly really wasn't being sarcastic?

sba posted:

sba posted:

Drunk Canuck posted:

Haha oh man how he's getting back at people right now on twitter. Hilarious.

sba posted:

Ribsauce posted:

I looked at a few of the replies and by far the most annoying is the concept this is "illegal cash." It is not illegal, it is against the NCAA rules. If my job had a rule I couldn't drink a beer after work, and I did, that is not illegal. It is against the rules of my employment sure, but I cannot be arrested for it. There is nothing illegal about someone paying you 100 bucks an hour to wash a car. It is against some (bullshit) rules regarding your scholarship, but again, it is not illegal.

sba posted:

sba posted:

I like the point that that jerkoff has made a living off of college athletes. Where does that put him on his little food chain?

The broken bones posted:

Someone responded: "does that make you a pimp?"

Thaddius the Large posted:

He's not really a pimp, more an advertiser to attract johns. A barker maybe?