Rick Reilly on Tiger…and Sportscenter

A couple of Rick Reilly Updates:

• Just a quick word about the Tiger Woods saga. As you all probably know, yesterday Tiger announced that he would be taking an indefinite leave from golf. I can almost guarantee you that Rick will be crowing about this next week….that Tiger took his advice, that he saved Tiger’s career. Of course, don’t believe it. Reilly also called for Tiger to let a bunch of journalists into his home, you know so Reilly can come on over, and have a sleep over with Tiger, and maybe have a pillow fight, and if he’s real lucky, maybe even truth or dare. Further, Reilly wanted an apology, because he thinks that Tiger really hurt the poor little media. I have to stop. That makes me kind of sick. Shut up, Rick. You and the media have leached off the guy for years, he owes you (especially you, who yelled at him for getting persnickity on the course) absolutely nothing. You suck.

• So this past week, Rick Reilly apparantly hosted a Sportscenter.  I didn’t see it at the time, but Deadspin did and decided to find out what Twitter thought about it. The Twitterati were none to happy. AND for some reason they’ve put him back on again. Confession: I don’t have cable, so I don’t know if he was on real Sportscenter or just the mini-internet Sportscenter (which you can see here or just watch below). If anyone knows for sure…let me know. I mean…on one hand you kind of can’t blame ESPN for trying to milk more work out of a guy who they pay $10 million. Bill Simmons has his podcasts and his mammoth (and awesome by the way) 30 for 30 project to go along with his writing. What does Reilly have? Well now he has a couple of Sportscenter videos where he sounds like he’s going to suffocate and die if he says more than six words without taking an awkward, breathy pause. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and from what I hear, certainly not as bad as the other performance earlier in the week. But still, the guys not good at it, and they have people whose profession it is to do what he’s butchering. So just bite the bullet, ESPN. Rick Reilly is not worth $10 mil., and no amount of hours he spends awkwardly yelling at us is going to change that. [Deadspin, ESPN, Twitter]

The video’s here. Like I said, it’s not awful, but the guy shouldn’y be on camera. Stay tuned for Weekend on the Links, coming up later.