Rick Reilly Writes a “Very, Very Easy Column”

I absolutely love it when Reilly comes right out and admits that he wrote what he wrote because it would be an easy column. It’s fantastic. You may remember his Cha Cha column from a while back. It wasn’t about sports at all, but it was easy. This column about Closed Caption text isn’t really about sports either…it just has the names of some athletes. And Reilly got to drink while doing it. Ugh, you suck, Reilly.

I like bars. I like sports. I like watching sports in bars. This is a topic my wife could discuss with you at length. But I couldn’t fully enjoy this hobby if it weren’t for an invention more miraculous than even boneless teriyaki chicken wings: closed captioning.

Everyone likes bars and sports, Rick. Nobody’s wife likes this fact. Boneless Teriyaki chicken wings? Really?

 Closed captioning, or, as many closed captioners spell it, CLOTHES CAP SHUNNING, is what stenographers type onto the bottom of your screen, moving faster than a double-parked meth freak, when you press “CC” on your remote.

Hey, Rick, everyone in the world knows what closed captioning is. Honestly dude, stop insulting your readers. But yes, closed captioning typers have to go real fast, and they often mess up words or just spell everything they hear phonetically. You are certainly right about that.

 These people are generally very good at their jobs, but sports announcers spew between 150 and 200 words per minute, and most stenographers were French majors at Swarthmore, so mistakes are made.

Random fact: Most sports announcers were Literature Majors from the University of Illinois!

 I’ve seen HALL OF FAME LINEBACKER DICK BUTT KISS, and Atlanta Brave Chipper Jones come up to BAT RYE HANDED. (I wonder if Babe Ruth ever did that?) I’ve watched MIKE PIZZA and MIKE PIZZERIA. I’ve seen a thousand FIELD GOLDS and a few hundred torn INTERIOR CRUCIAL LIGAMENTS, some belonging to members of the Alabama RIMS AND TIDE.

Is this it? Is this what the article is going to be? C’mon, man. Everyone knows that closed captioning is not the most accurate thing in the whole entire universe. And now you’re just listing misspelled names, as if you’re the effing Ponce de Leon of  watching effing TV. Also, Dick Butt Kiss is basically right. That guy just has a very unfortunate last name. Good thing he could kill just about anyone with his bare hands.

 Good athletes compete for THE GOLD MEDDLE (as does Redskins owner Daniel Snyder), and bad athletes are JUST OUT OF SINK. Quick-release quarterbacks GET IT OFTENTIMES (and, here, I believe the subject is Tom Brady).

 The point is I ghoulishly relish captioning mistakes. Also, my mouth relishes beer. No surprise then that a very, very easy column hit me like an angry wife’s 3-iron: What if I spent the entire weekend in bars seeing how many captioning goofs I could catch?

There it is: a very, very easy column. This is ridiculous. Eat shit and die, Reilly. You make $10 million dollars, and you’ve resorted to this bullshit. And then admit it. You could at least try. My twelve year old brother routinely does this stuff. You are supposed to be the preeminent sports journalist of our time, and you pull this crap. Good lord, I hate you.

 God, I love this job.

 FRIDAY
We must be vigilant in our quest, so we started early — 3 p.m. PST, just about when Michael Wilbon of PTI issued this statement about soccer, according to the captioner: I EXPECT TO WATCH THE WORLD COUPLE ALL MONTH. (Exactly which channel will that be on again?)

Stupid. stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid. Honestly man. This is almost like trying to get a grown man to write down PEN is 5 or I C U P, or telling someone to hold their tongue and say apple, waiting for them to do it, and then writing a freaking column about it. Everyone knows about poor/sometimes mildly comical closed captioning spelling. This isn’t funny or original.

 Then there were these:

 Jim Hill, Channel 2, LA: Tiger was found SHOELESS AND SNOWING. (Actually, the snowing came later, during the cover-up.)

Here’s the real kicker about these things. If Jim Hill had slipped up and actually said Shoeless and Snowing, would that be funny? No. No it would not, so why the hell would it be funny to see it typed out that way in a medium in which everything’s always misspelled. I don’t get it.

 Lingerie football (hey, we said we’d be vigilant!), Channel 32, LA: HANDOFF TO THE LOVE SIDE. Also, a second and eight became THE SECOND THEY ATE.

 On Channel 9, LA: David Beckham is from YOUR UP (but not from CROW ATE YA).

SATURDAY
The 8 a.m. SportsCenter captioner identified Cavs forward Jamario Moon as GENTLEMAN MARIO MOON. (Perhaps they’re in a book club together.) On ESPNU, Alabama receiver Julio Jones came out JEWEL I DON’T JONES. And on Channel 7 in LA, Clemson running back C.J. Spiller’s 4 TDs were sure to get him his IN-FLIGHT TO THE HEISMAN TROPHY DINNER. (Useful new word: Invite + free ticket = in-flight!)

I think there’s something wrong with your math there, Rick. This whole column is worthless. It’s not about sports, and is explicity an excuse for Reilly to sit at a bar and drink, thereby making the easiest job on the planet, even easier.

 CC fun fact: The first closed-captioning message on TV, produced in the 1970s by Bill Kastner of Texas Instruments, was FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE.

Interesting.

 Okay, so Saturday was a slow day.

AND, he only managed to find three on Saturday.

 SUNDAY
One of the delicious moments for those of us captivated by captions is the three seconds between an announcer’s saying something ear-twisting and the captioner’s typing it. On ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, host John Saunders said, “The best player I saw yesterday was [Nebraska's monster defensive tackle] Ndamukong Suh” [pronounced en-DOM-ah-ken SOO].

Whatever, I’d like to see you spell it Rickster. I’m gonna skip the next few. It’s not even worth it.

 Mike Tomlin said his team would UNLEASH HOWL IN DECEMBER. (Poor dog gets off the leash only once a month?)

 And that was about it. Remember, the point here was not to show all the mistakes the captioners make as they translate hundreds of thousands of live sports-TV words. The point was for me to drink many, many Coronas on an expense account.

Shameless. How on earth does he get away with this shit. Usually it’s just terrible, pointless rambling once a week. That I can handle. At least I know he just sucks at what he does. But these occasional columns where he goes: “I’m Rick Reilly, and I’ll do whatever I damn well please because I know ESPN won’t fire me and they’re paying me $10 million dollars and whatever this beer costs.” So he writes a column about absolutely nothing, and then tells us as much: the point was to get paid to drink beer. Which, whatever, that’s the dream, right? But if you’re supposed to be God’s gift to sports and writing, and get paid a crazy amount of money, don’t insult your readers by writing a column that no one on earth cares about and then telling us it’s because it was easy and you could drink beer.

 Anyone complains, and I unleash Howl.

I’m waiting with bated breath.