Hey you guys.

So I’ve been happily rolling along for a few months. Just doin what I do. You know how it is. Hadn’t read a Rick Reilly column since April. It was refreshing. But still it was kinda like in Alias when Sidney Bristow and the gang had to let Arvin Sloan alone for a while because he had swung a deal with the government and was ostensibly doing charity work, but in reality he was still viciously collecting Rambaldi artifacts. Yep. It’s pretty much been like that.

Anyway, so I was going about my business obsessively tweeting about the Pirates and whatnot when I saw a tweet by Drew Magary. Against my better judgment, I clicked on it…and now I’m back.

For one post at least. Excuse me if I’m a bit rusty.

Brett Favre’s waiting game

Brett Favre and I are standing in his long dirt driveway in Hattiesburg, Miss.

It’s fitting that the most insufferable sportswriter would interview the most insufferable football player. Way to play to your strengths, Rick.

The sun is roasting my forehead like a rotisserie chicken.

Mmm…that sounds good….I hope this ends with Favre imagining Reilly’s head as a rotisserie chicken, like in the cartoons and chasing him around on his tractor.

“Yep, they’ll be comin’ purdy soon,” Favre says.

Oh…so this isn’t a real interview? Okay.

The hot winds whip up the grit. It paints the back of my throat.

This isn’t descriptive writing, it’s gross writing. Close your mouth, dude, it’ll keep the girt out!

“How much longer, do you think?” I ask.

“Soon,” Favre says, his neck craning down the long empty rural road that runs in front of his house. “They always come and get me ’bout this time of the year.”

A tumbleweed stumbles by. Birds are so exhausted by the heat that they’re walking.

Okay, for real? Did Reilly just read a Larry McMurtry novel? It’s life half shitty Western (like the overblown, stereotyped kind they use for weed-killer commercials), half Reilly interviewing a fake Brett Favre with an exaggerated accent. It’s already atrocious, and we’re seven lines in.

By the way, tumbleweed tumbles; it doesn’t stumble.

But we’ll press on.

“You think maybe they thought you meant it this time?” I say. “I mean — about retiring?”

What the hell is this? Rick Reilly, contemplative cowpoke interviews Brett Favre? What’s happening?

This seriously reads like the world’s most terrible novel.

“Aw, hell, no,” he says, spitting tobacco. “I say somethin’ like that every year. I been sayin’ that crap since ’03. Nobody ever really believes it. Hell, one year I even held a press conference. Cried and everythin’. But my boys know the truth. My boys’ll be along. They need me.”

Oh good, I’ve always wondered what a caricaturized version of Brett Favre would say to Rick Reilly if Reilly imagined said caricaturized version of Favre standing in Brett Favre’s driveway.

This, apparently, is award winning journalism at its finest.

A single drop of sweat falls off my nose. I try to catch it on my tongue.

But Brett turns to me, deep green eyes hidden beneath his strong brow, and quickly, with the speed of a gunslinger, catches it before it can reach my mouth. Our eyes meet….

Sorry, I’ll stop.

“Who, exactly, are we talking about?”

“My boys! My Viking teammates! Jared and Hutch and Longs! They’ll probably do somethin’ hilarious. Like come in a Hooters bus or somethin’. They’ll beg me to come back and I’ll finally laugh and give in. Then we’ll chug a few brewskis on the way to the jet. It just waits there for us. Zygi don’t mind. He wants me back.”

I have no idea what the point of this is. There’s like real news going on. And free agents signing. And Reilly’s writing crappy, sports-related, pop fiction about Brett Favre. And getting paid $10 million for it.

I look back at the house. His dog is under the porch. His wife, Deanna, stands at the upstairs window. I look at her. She just shrugs.

As if to say, “I can’t come between you two no more.” It’s the shrug Brett and I’ve been waiting for…

Sorry, sorry.

“Um, Brett? Zygi just traded for Donovan McNabb.”

“Sure, as my backup.”

“Well, uh, actually, I don’t think so, Brett. It’s just that you’re 41 now. I mean, you’re a legend, for sure, but last season you looked a little slow. And you had eight more picks than touchdowns.”

First of all, there’s no reason to write about Brett Favre right now. There just isn’t. And if one must write about Favre, this is like the worst possible way to do it.

Favre looks at me for the first time since sunrise.

It’s just writing itself at this point.

“Hey, I got every dang quarterbackin’ record in NFL history. Most touchdowns, most completions, most straight starts–”

“Most interceptions, most sacks, most fumbles…” I add under my breath.

“–most yards, most wins. Nah, they’ll be along.”

I didn’t get none a these here sportswritin’ medals by not capturin’ the doggone accent of famous quarterbackin’ legends as I pictur’em in my head.

“Every dang quarterbakin’ record”? Sure, Favre’s a little countrified, but’s he not Gomer Pyle.

And again, what’s the point of all this?

Another hour goes by. The last helpless cloud gives up and vaporizes.

Poor, wistful cloud. What excellent foreshadowing (hint: it’s not excellent foreshadowing).

Finally, in the distance. We see something. It’s a purple-and-gold van. After another couple of minutes, we can see that it’s flying huge Vikings flags.

“I’ll be damned,” I say.

Brett grabs his bags and walks toward the road, but the van just honks as it speeds by, while the passengers flip us off. One hollers, “Thanks for nothin’, Favre!” They leave us in a brown cloud.

Then, over the ridge, bursting out of the darkening twilight, came forth a mighty creature. In the distance I thought I could spy the body of the lion, and yet…and yet it flew! As it came closer, my suspicions were confirmed. It was indeed a gryffin! Oh rare and majestic creature.

That means about as much to as the rest of this column…and it’s far more entertaining.

I wipe my mouth and eyes on my sleeve. Brett is undaunted.

“It’s gonna be great to see the boys,” he says, spitting dirt.

Two more hours. A cow falls over sideways.

You see, because it’s hot and they’ve been standing there for hours. Even the cows are falling over. The cows! Man, what a rollicking good time this column is.

“Brett, I don’t wanna be a buzzkill here, but the Vikings don’t need a quarterback.”

Favre takes his red bandanna out of the back pocket of his Wrangler jeans and dabs at his brow. “Then it’ll be my boys from Green Bay. They’d send the damn Marines to get me back!”

We get it. You think Brett Favre is delusional. So do a lot of people. They don’t write 900-word fantasies about him for no apparent reason.

“Well, actually, the Packers have Aaron Rodgers now. They just won the Super Bowl with him. And you may not be quite as popular in Green Bay as you once were.”

Pause.

Aw shucks, I had no idear them there Packers won the Super Bowl….is not what Brett Favre would say because he certainly knows that the Packers won the Super Bowl and that Aaron Rodgers is an elite quarterback.

Seriously, what is the purpose of this column? What is it’s thesis statement? There is none. It’s like all of sudden, Rick woke up and was like, “Hmmm…I feel that Brett Favre is a spoiled, delusional uber-hick.” And then he decided that he wanted to make that sentence into a column. And then he realized it wasn’t much of a column and had no relevancy to anything whatsoever, and so then he wrote this crap, turned it into his editor, who, bless his or her heart, was so confused that they just ran it and tore another ring off their “Number of Columns until Reilly’s Contract is Up Chain.”

“Jets, then.”

“Brett, you can’t go anywhere near the Jets. Remember Jenn Sterger?”

“Cause remember, Brett. You may or may not have sent a text of your little gunslinger to Jenn Sterger.” Because only in Reilly’s warped head does Favre not remember that.

“OK — Philly.”

“Philly’s got Michael Vick!”

Why the Eagles are thrown in here is beyond me….it just totally breaks from the already loose and fraying tether this column had to reality.

Favre gives me a hard stare. “Somebody’s comin’. It just takes ‘em awhile to figure out that even though I say I don’t wanna come back, I really just want people to want me back. I don’t wanna have to ask, you know?”

Gah. Please stop.

We wait another hour. I look back at the upstairs window. The curtains are closed. The dog is gone. I pray for sunstroke. The first crease of doubt crosses Brett’s face.

A crease of doubt…and vulnerability…

“I don’t get this,” Favre says. “I did everything like I do every year. I announced my retirement. I worked out with the local high school team. I told Ed Werder I was done. How many signs do I gotta give?”

Just then, in the distance, we see the wavy images of a car approaching. As it gets closer, we can see it’s black. Finally, we see that it’s a long black limo.

It pulls into the driveway. Brett grabs his bags. The driver hops out and gets the back door. Tiki Barber steps out.

Whoa!! What a twist!

“Mind if I wait around with you guys?” Barber asks.

He stands next to Favre and cranes his neck up that long road.

“When’s L.A. gettin’ a team again?” Favre asks.

“Two years, tops,” Barber says.

I look at my watch.

The minute hand clicks backward.

Umm…all right.

And that’s it. FIN.

I’m not a fan of Favre…not by a long shot.

But what a pointless, ridiculous, sorry excuse for a column. This might actually be the worst thing I’ve ever read. It can all be summed up as: “Brett Favre is delusional, and no team wants him to play for them this year. Also Tiki Barber.” And it’s not like Reilly even has any insider knowledge that Favre’s open to a return, or expecting to come back, or even wants to come back.

It’s just utter nonsense wrapped up in the world’s worst pseudo-fiction. What the hell? Seriously.

Someone, please, I’m begging you, fire Rick Reilly.

Perhaps now and again I’ll post here, but consider this a farewell.

Rick Reilly hasn’t gotten fired, but of course, that was probably not going to happen anyway. He’ll still continue to mail in crappy columns, and people will still continue to wonder why he has a job and makes so much money.

But it’s been fun. And I thank everyone who came to the site and partook in some good old fashioned Reilly heckling.

I’ll keep the site up, and like I said, maybe I’ll post here now and again. At some point, the site will revert back to http://firerickreilly.wordpress.com so keep that in mind if you come back for the archives, you know, if you’re ever writing a research paper or something.

The Twitter account will stay up, but under my real name. Here.

Oh, and here’s one place where I do some writing. Usually not about sports.

Thanks again. Reilly delenda est.

Remember also when Reilly plagiarized another writer, and talked all about Matt Howard’s goofiness? And then he went on to say that that’s why Matt Howard’s a winner? Because he’s so goofy and has socks that don’t fit, and LOL, plagiarism? You remember that, too? Good.

Because last night, in the National Championship game, Matt Howard went 1-13, with 7 points. I look forward to Reilly’s hit piece on him.

Fresh off a controversial week about one white college basketball star, we go straight into another.

Interesting that Reilly touts Matt Howard, but disparages Jimmer, and the differences seem to be mostly because Reilly thinks Howard is goofy, awesome, and a grinder. Whatevs. The larger point in this instance is that Reilly’s latest sure looks a lot like another column…written by someone else…some time ago.

Here’s the article by Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post’s DCSportsBog.

And here’s Reilly’s article.

They’re both about Matt Howard and his eccentricities, and they are, um, similar.

Steinberg broke his column down into categories. I’ll go ahead and use his categories because they’re good ways to keep track of it all. To wit:

THE BIKE

Steinberg: “Howard is famous for riding his bicycle around Butler’s Indianapolis campus, no matter the temperature or weather conditions. This is apparently quite a sight ‘If it’s like 15 degrees outside, he’s riding his bike around campus, wind blowing in his face, eyes tearing up,’ Ronald Nored said….Shortly before the Horizon League tournament, Howard was on his trusty bike. Then the unthinkable happened. ‘The bike crash? Who told you about that,’ he said with a laugh Thursday afternoon.

Reilly: “He rides a rusted-out bike to Butler’s 6 a.m. practices, even in the dead of winter, even through ice storms, even though the handlebars suddenly bent under him the other day catapulting him onto the ice.”

THE SOCKS

Steinberg: “‘I overuse things,’ Howard admitted. ‘Again, like I’m saying, I’m low-maintenance, is how people describe me….The socks are not tight to my leg. They call ‘em the floppy socks and turtleneck socks. I think they’re jealous, personally.’

Reilly: “Look at those socks. They lost their elastic years ago.”

THE SHOES

Steinberg: “’He has a ton of tennis shoes,’ Nored said. ‘We get all kind of shoes. Matt wears one pair. He’s wearing the same pair I think that he got freshman year. We tried to get him to wear these Kobes, because they’re pretty nice. He didn’t want to wear them. He’s ok with what he has, and that’s all he needs.’

Reilly: And those sad shoes! If those shoes were your couch, it’d be in the alley now. ‘He has six pairs of brand-new shoes in his locker,’ teammate Shelvin Mack says. ‘But he won’t wear them! He just keeps wearing those ratty old ones.’”

HAIR

Steinberg: “Indeed, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder — that would be Howard — hasn’t cut his hair since before the season started. Teammates said they thought he was too lazy. Or maybe he was just being low-maintenance. ‘His hair is nasty,’ Nored said. ‘It’s just everywhere, all the time. And he doesn’t care. I mean, that’s just who he is.’

Reilly: “And what’s that on his head? Arugula? ‘That’s just the hair I woke up with,’ he says, trying to run his fingers through it and getting stopped by grease. ‘Whatever it looks like in the morning, that’s what I go with for the day.’

JOKES

Steinberg: “Like, one of his favorite things is to reverse the first initials in two-word combinations. He calls Mack ‘Melvin Shack.’” … “’It’s kind of hard to have a conversation with him,’ Mack said. ‘You ask him what’s up, he’ll say the ceiling.’”

Reilly: “You ask Howard what’s up and he’ll say, ‘The ceiling.’ Tell him your name and he’ll reverse the letters the rest of your life. Shelvin Mack is permanently Melvin Shack.”

Steinberg: “’You can officially write Matt’s the weirdest person I’ve ever met in my life,’ Shelvin Mack said. ‘He’s just a weird dude.’”

Reilly: “Through it all, Howard kept on being what Mack calls ‘the weirdest person I’ve ever met in my entire life.’”

Reilly goes on to say that because Howard is full of heart and a “knee-grinder,” etc., it fuels Butler to victory. “He’s just a winner,” is the oft-repeated point of the article. Which, shudder, I hate that sort of Ecksteinian praise in the first place, but more importantly, as we can see, fully half the article is exactly the same as Steinberg’s.

Sure, some of the wording is different, but Reilly hits on all the same points, and even uses some of the same quote. And all this is beyond, you know, doing an article 12 days later on the exact, nichey topic that someone else did.

A lot of this stuff is “common knowledge,” meaning that more than one person can certainly find out about it, but Steinberg brought it all together and got all sorts of quotes, and Reilly basically just wrote a condensed version.

I, of course, have no way of knowing whether Reilly saw Steinberg’s piece. But it sure as hell looks like it.

Something’s up here folks.

And, you know, maybe Reilly should return some his $10 million to ESPN, or maybe Steinberg should get a raise, because his idea is clearly good enough to make it onto a multi-million dollar space.

Last weekend I was able to do what everyone on this site wants to do – give Rick Reilly a piece of my mind.

I am a big BYU hoops fan, and vowed to follow the Cougars this post-season until they lost or cut down the nets in Houston.  In the last three weeks I saw myself in Vegas for the MWC tourney, then Denver and finally New Orleans. (Sidenote:  Not once was I ever mortified by my surroundings, and in fact left Vegas up $350 from blackjack.  Sorry for bucking your caricature, Rick.)

Anyway, obviously we were gutted after the Florida loss, but our flight was scheduled for Sunday morning (more on that later) so we stuck around for Saturday’s game.  That morning before the game, I shook my head in bewilderment as I read the now notorious hatchet job.

Well guess who I see during warmups of Butler-Florida?  Rick Reilly; strutting his stuff in his designer jeans, hipster boots, and a smirk.  He was in the second media row so it was easy for me to walk down and tell him what I thought of latest column.

I began by telling him that I enjoyed his work from his SI days.  Then I told him I was a BYU fan and didn’t appreciate his latest column on Jimmer.  Really?  Why not?  He acted genuinely stunned.  I said he dumped on Jimmer, who’s just a college kid and didn’t deserve it.  He claimed he did nothing of the sort.  Throughout the conversation (that lasted a good 10 minutes) it became evident to me that he is a very smug, pompous guy, and probably doesn’t hear much face-to-face criticism.

I asked him how many times he had seen Jimmer play.  He told me just once, vs. Florida. (Yes folks, that column is entirely based on seeing him play once, in one of his worst games of his career.)  I told him I’d seen Jimmer play about 20 times this season and asked him if it was fair to judge his performance off one game.  He said nothing.  I asked him about all the cheap shots about Jimmer,  BYU fans and the Mormon religion.  He feigned innocence, and said the article “intended” to merely represent how he thought Jimmer would fare in the NBA.

While he obviously didn’t acknowledge this on paper, he did admit to me that Jimmer was a great college player and probably his choice as POY.  He told me his rub with Jimmer was…  wait for it… that he played no D and was not a leader.  We all know that it’s not Jimmer’s role to be a lockdown defender, and I tried to explain to him why on this particular team how that’s reasonable.  Again, he disregarded all my points.

But his claims about Jimmer’s alleged lack of leadership really bothered me.  I asked him what he meant by that.  He responded, “Have you ever watched Jimmer in the huddle?  How he sits all by himself?”  I reminded him that I had seen Jimmer play over 20 times this year alone.  Reilly then pointed out Matt Howard of Butler, who was warming up at the time, and said, “See that guy; that guy is a leader.  He makes his teammates better and Jimmer does not.”  I reminded that there are different ways of leading, not just the rah-rah type.  I asked him to consider where the BYU team would have been this year without Jimmer, especially if he did not make his teammates better.  Reilly dismissed that, naturally.  I insisted that Jimmer was the absolute leader of the team and that he in fact had lifted his teammates to great heights in many big games.  He just laughed.  I asked why Jimmer’s teammates got so many open shots.  He could not comprehend that with Jimmer constantly guarded by two+ guys all game, by default his teammates would be more open.  He continued to dismiss all my comments.

I asked him about the Nick Martineau quote.  I told him frankly I didn’t believe Martineau said it.  The smirk came off his face as he said “absolutely he told me that, word for word.”  And as to why he would interview the 12th man?  He said Martineau was the only guy available to be interviewed.  At that point, I laughed.

I also questioned the Maravich comparison.  He said he had heard that from a BYU fan.  So Rick, now one hyperbolic fan represents all of Cougar Nation?  However, it was clear that no minds were going to be changed so I shook his hand and left “agreeing to disagree.”  I was amiable, but still got my point across.

The funniest part of the story is the next day at the airport.  Guess who I run into at the gate? – Rick Reilly, still toting his designer jeans, boots and smirk.  I smiled and asked him if he remembered me.  He laughed and said yeah.  I made small talk.  He told me he was from Boulder, Colorado (which may explain the political and religious biases) and that he was never an athlete.  He also told me that he left SI for ESPN because they “offered me three times the money, and I had three kids in college at the time.”  I don’t think he was too happy to see me for a second time so I walked away.

But get this: In a turn of poetic justice, I was bumped up to first class in the row DIRECTLY behind him.  I just smiled and said, “Hey Rick, looks like I am sitting behind you.”  He mumbled something and did not engage in further conversation.  The only people he spoke to on the flight were Reggie Miller (who, by the way, also chatted with me about Jimmer. He was much more optimistic, but did say Jimmer would have to play the 1 in the NBA), who was in the row in front of him and Stan Verrette, a Sportscenter anchor.

Overall, I found him to be arrogant, unprofessional, and completely out of touch with reality – essentially the type of guy you figure he is, but hope to be wrong.

Fredette about it – he really is a hack.

Read more:

• Rick Reilly’s Jimmer Fredette Hatchet Piece
• The Internet Hates Rick Reilly: The Jimmer Edition

• From the Provo Daily Herald and cougarblue.com, Jason Franchuk has some quotes from people who actually know basketball, like Billy Donovan, and some actual analysis, that kind of debunks Reilly’s premise that Jimmer is a homeless man’s Danny Ainge. [Provo Daily Herald]
• From the Salt Lake Tribune, Jay Drew notes that Reilly was apparently following Jimmer around for “one of his clever takes.” Odd, since Reilly didn’t really interview Fredette, just bashed him instead. Sounds like ‘ol Rick was journalistically diligent. Shocker. [Salt Lake Tribune]
• Chitown Sports also offers a pretty good take down of Reilly’s slam piece. Chicago knows Reilly’s capacity for irrational slam articles after his pile of crap about Jay Cutler. [Chitown Sports]
• Gawker Ninja also notes the oddity of Reilly’s scoffing at Mormons being uncomfortable in the potential den of sin that is New Orleans. Makes some good points about the weirdest part of the article. [Gawker Ninja]
• SportsBinge also has a treatment of Reilly’s abomination: “Rick stop shitting on the Jimmer show and let us have our fun… you are an absolute scrooge.” Well put. [SportsBinge]
• Finally, from Vanquish the Foe: “The guy is a Cubs fan, he wouldn’t know a winner if he saw one.” [Vanquish the Foe]
• Let’s end on a happy note and watch some awesome Jimmer highlights. Range, Rick. Range.:

Read More:

• Rick Reilly’s Jimmer Fredette Hatchet Piece
• The One Where a BYU Fan Confronts Rick Reilly about Jimmer

NEW ORLEANS — So that’s the end of Jimmermania. Saw it for myself. Caught the closing act. Not impressed.

Really? Not impressed by Jimmer? Not by this?

Thanks to one of the worst performances of Jimmer Fredette’s frabulous career — and a set of teammates who looked like pizza delivery guys — the BYU star took a hard fall in the Big Easy. BYU was bumped out of the Sweet Sixteen on Thursday, losing to Florida in a lopsided overtime, 83-74.

You can take off those “Romney-Fredette in 2012″ T-shirts now.

Cause they’re both Mormons! Get it? Mormons!

C’mon Rick, Romney would totally be the vice president in this situation anyway.

Except for a stretch in the middle, when he was brilliant, Fredette was brutal.

Except for when he was freaking awesome, he wasn’t freaking awesome. See? He sucks.

Yes, he scored 32 points, but he took 29 shots to do it. He seemed to be wearing a blindfold from the 3-point arc — 3-for-15. Plus, he committed six turnovers and wandered aimlessly through the lane on defense like Moses in the desert. I’ve seen dead people play better defense. At least they occasionally trip people.

Guh. The dude has carried this team for what, two years now? He can’t have a perfect game every night. I’m just trying to wrap my head around exactly why Reilly is being so acidic towards the kid.

Sounds like he’s just being the typical, everybody-loves-the-kid-so-I’m-going-to-say-he-sucks guy…even if I have to baselessly rip on a kid.

Plus, you know, he was basically a one man show…and he still put up 32 points against a very good Florida team that was basically just playing defense against him. He got knocked around, double-teamed, and really had no one to pass to. Yeah, he wore down, but putting up 32 in that situation is pretty good.

If his last college game is what he’s bringing to the NBA, then I’d say, in five years, he’s got a really good chance to be your Provo area Isuzu dealer.

Why on earth would anyone think that Jimmer would play like this (one of his worst games) for the remainder of his basketball career when he’s played great the rest of the time? Sure, his skills probably won’t translate as well in the NBA, but he’s a big guy and he can shoot the lights out. He’ll be all right.

And if he can take his depleted team to OT against Florida in his worst college game ever, then that’s pretty good.

You’re being petty, Rick, and not very artfully so.

Great kid, though. Polite, smart (good chess player, whiz at Sudoku), studies his Bible in hotel rooms. Maybe that was the problem. Fredette and the largely Mormon BYU Nation should’ve never been made to come to New Orleans. You can sin just by osmosis here.

Har har har. Musta been that there goofy religion that made ‘ol Jimmer suck so bad.

You should have seen some of them on Bourbon Street, the freshly scrubbed Cougars fans, horrified to find themselves among the window strippers, the hurricane chuggers and the bead catchers.

I’m not sure why we’re making fun of people for being uncomfortable around things they consider sinful. Anybody else know why? I can’t figure it out.

Seriously, if you believe your soul will damaged by certain things, many of which are in New Orleans (booze, sex, gambling), wouldn’t you be cautious, too? And for the record, it’s not just Mormons who consider drunkeness, pornography, and gambling sins, so…

Then again, some of the comparisons BYU fans were making about The Jimmer this week made you think they deserved it.

“He’s a little Maravich,” a guy in a BYU shirt told me.

No! No, he isn’t! He’s not within a mile of Mardi Gras floats of Maravich. Maravich could get his shot off from the bottom of a swimming pool. He could get 40 in handcuffs. He averaged 44 points a game in college (to Fredette’s 28 this season) and that’s without the 3-point shot. With it, studies of his game film have shown, he would have averaged over 55.

Yeah, Maravich was one of the best ever. Jimmer’s not. But he’s not road kill either.

“He’s better than Danny Ainge was,” a lady in a Cougars sweatshirt told me.

No! No, he isn’t! Ainge was Danny Clutch (remember his Sweet 16 drive in 1981) Fredette didn’t have a single game-winning shot all year. Against Florida, he didn’t score a single point in the game’s final eight minutes, or, for that matter, the first 13.

Jimmer’s better than Danny Ainge, clutch or no, he’s better than Danny Ainge.

“I know from just watching him he’s going to be a great NBA player,” Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook said.

No! No, he isn’t!

Because Rick Reilly, professional asshole, says so! And don’t you forget it you sniveling little Mormons!

Seriously, Rick. Calm down. Jimmer’s not going to be the best ever. He might not even be a perennial all-star in the NBA, but he’s a very good basketball player, who made highlight reel shots, and scored more points in bunches than anyone in a long time. And people liked that. It was fun. It was exciting. And he was a good kid.

Leave it to Reilly though to drape the world’s biggest wet blanket over us all, moments after a big loss.

Don’t get me wrong. The Jimmer will make a modest living in the NBA. When he gets hot, he can drain them from the hotel coffee shop. He splits the double team as well as anybody in the league right now and he has a whole Santa bag of off-balance scoop shots with either hand. But until he shows more interest in defense than a blind man has in rainbows, he’s going to spend most of his NBA life sitting on padded folding chairs.

How many people play defense in the NBA? Six? Seven? Somewhere around there.

To his credit, he’ll have more help in the NBA than he had this season at BYU. His best rebounder, Brandon Davies, was thrown off the team for violating BYU’s no-booze, no-sex, no-caffeine honor code, which meant it was pretty much Jimmer or nothing against the tall trees of Florida. He never came out once in the first 44 minutes and had to fire up shots through the tiniest cracks of light allowed to him by the Gators. He wore out. He fired up two 3s from at least six feet behind the arc in the overtime and missed them both, badly. Then again, he had a cut in his chin that looked like something George Foreman had left and his calf was killing him. But when his teammates really needed him, at the end of regulation, on defense, Jimmer really hit the dimmer.

You just explained why Jimmer was shot. Dude had played basically every minute of ever game for a few weeks. He was pretty much the only guy on the team. He carried them through the end of the season and first couple rounds of the tourney. But, yeah, dude’s a quitter. Not there for his teammates when they need him.

Florida missed a trey with 24 seconds to go and Fredette’s man, Erving Walker, who stands only 5-6, beat him to the long rebound. It wasn’t hard. Fredette was nowhere to be found. I’m not even sure Fredette knew who his man was the entire night. Florida wound up with a reset and the last shot.

People get beat to rebounds. Especially exhausted guys. Especially when a lightning fast little guy is running after it.

“If we’d have gotten it, we’d have had about eight seconds left differential,” Fredette said. “I’d have had the ball in my hands at the end.”

Note to Jimmer: To get the ball, one must occasionally check one’s man and/or box said man out. One did neither.

Give the kid a break, dude. Why all the vitriol? What could Jimmer possibly have done to elicit this reaction from Reilly? I’m curious. The guy turned in one of the greatest college basketball seasons in recent memory. He was the team. And he finally wore out. Had a bad game. It happens. It doesn’t mean he’s a lazy piece of crap who isn’t there for his team and can’t be bothered to play defense.

What an utter hatchet job this article is.

“The weird thing is, [his defense] has gotten progressively worse over the year,” says Fredette’s own teammate, Nick Martineau. “From the start, he’s never really been accountable to it, but it’s just gotten looser as the year’s gone on. But he can play defense. He really can. He’ll definitely tighten it up for the NBA.”

He’d better.

“I just want to take a couple weeks off and then start getting ready to try to make an NBA team,” said the man who probably will be voted about five player of the year awards. “That’s my dream, to make an NBA team.”

Fine. That he can do. But you think this barely 6-2 kid with no speed and YMCA hops can be the next Maravich or Ainge or Westbrook?

Jimmer might not pan out at all in the NBA, but then again he might. I happen to think he’ll be a very solid player. And there is ALWAYS a spot for a guy who can shoot like he can. He’s physical. And as Rick himself said, he has an uncanny ability to break a double team. That’s enough right there.

Fredette about it.

Maybe Reilly just faked all this anger so he could use the world’s worst pun.

I really don’t get it. Reilly just decided to attack the poor kid, for really no apparent reason. Because a BYU said he’s a little Maravich? Because he’s Mormon? Because Reilly bet on him? Who knows why, but it’s an odd hatchet job by an over the hill hack on a guy who just turned in a fantastic college season. And if he pans out (or doesn’t) in the NBA, let’s leave that for later.

No need to rake the kid over the coals for nothing, especially now when we should be remembering his great college career.

Read More:

• The One Where a BYU Fan Confronts Rick Reilly about Jimmer
• The Internet Hates Rick Reilly: The Jimmer Edition

Are you the kind of person who loves hearing the bug zapper?

Yes, because it means that bugs are dying. Any other questions?

Who likes it when the highway paves over a few neighborhoods?

Oh…there are more. Umm…no.

Who secretly wants the tank to flatten the kid with the flower?

That kid sounds like a hippie. If it’s a hippie, then yes. Cut your hair!

Then you’re going to love the NFL owners in this mess.

It’s hard to find anybody to like in this coming distraction known as the NFL lockout. But look closely. Yes, some of the players are millionaires. But half of the owners are billionaires.

NFL players are really rich. NFL owners are even richer. This is hardly groundbreaking news.

Their estimated combined net worth is well over $40 billion, which is more than the GNP of 150 nations. Paul Allen, owner of the Seattle Seahawks, has a 414-foot yacht called “The Octopus” with two helicopters, two submarines, a swimming pool, a music studio and a basketball court. He also has two backup emergency yachts.

Good for him. That sounds awesome.

You’re really worried about his wallet?

No, but when were we? What does this have to do with anything?

Yes, many of the players are diamond-coated knuckleheads. But have you ever met Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder? He’s worth $1.1 billion and yet, two years ago, the Redskins sued a 73-year-old grandmother for not keeping up on her season-ticket package payments.

First of all, Daniel Snyder is a pretty awful guy. That’s true. He also has a ton of money. Albert Haynesworth seems like a tool as well, and he, too, has a ton of money. Yes, it’s less than Snyder, but it’s still unfathomable to most people.

This man also got caught buying stale peanuts from a defunct airline and reselling them at games.

Yep, Dan Snyder is a douche.

For the owners to lock out the players at this time in American history is unconscionable. You don’t like the players? Fine. There are still nearly 9 percent of Americans out of work. Think of the people who’ve lost their homes, lost their cars and can barely pay the rent. Watching an NFL game on a Sunday — and getting ready for it all week — is sometimes literally the only thing keeping them going.

Oh, here we go. The NFL owners hate poor, unemployed Americans whose only solace is their awful, miserable lives is football. Also, if they can barely pay the rent, how are they paying for cable to watch the games? Also, shouldn’t they be looking for jobs instead of obsessing about NFL all week? Also, this is a dumb argument, and to say that the NFL lockout is “unconscionable” is just silly.

Do you realize what having no NFL season would do to the economy? According to the NFLPA, it’s estimated it would cost each NFL city $160 million and 3,000 jobs. That’s 93,000 jobs nationwide. For what? Another Aspen chalet?

Yes, some people would lose their jobs during a lockout. That sucks. But most of these jobs are seasonal, so they have to have other jobs as well. Reilly is including the beer guy and the guy who sells giant foam fingers and the ushers. Those guys only work for the teams eight days a year.  The point is, these numbers Reilly is bandying about are disingenuous.

Oh, and 3000 wouldn’t be fired for every team. The Jaguars have said they’ll keep their employees as usual. The Jets said some of their staff would be paid for three months out of the year. And most other teams will retain their employees, but reduce their salaries during the lockout.

Question: In 10 years, do you think you’re going to find New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft wandering the streets because of the 200-plus concussions he didn’t know he had from his time in the NFL? You figure Detroit Lions owner William Clay Ford will end up with ringing in the ears and depression the way former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson did? Within the past year alone, two former players killed themselves.

Okay. Concussions are bad. Really bad. I get that. And the players should have some assurances that the NFL and its owners are going to do everything they can to cut down on concussions. And they are getting them. Slowly but surely. And yes, NFL players risk a lot to play the game. That’s why they get paid millions of dollars to play the game. Let’s not feel too sorry for them.

And yes, most owners have even more money. What’s the point? It’s their money. They made it. They bought the team with it. They pay the players with it. They buy the equipment with it.

You recall any NFL owners killing themselves lately?

Oh, you’re right. I haven’t. Good point. Let’s take all their money.

The players aren’t asking for more money. They deserve what they get, and they get it for an average of only three years. The Bidwills have owned the Cardinals for 79 years. The Rooneys have owned the Steelers for 78 years. Nine NFL owners inherited their teams. There’s no easier path to permanent hot-and-cold running jets than your dad handing you an NFL team.

This is irrelevant. It’s a pointless point in a stupid argument.

On the other hand, nobody hands NFL players anything but a chinstrap. With what we know about the dangers to brains now, would you exchange jobs with an NFL player?

Yeah. I probably would.

Also, let’s not lose sight of things here. The player make a ton of money. Considering the money poured into the sport, they probably deserve it. And they do, in fact, make more money as a whole year after year. There is certainly risk in playing football, but they choose to do it, and, once again, they get paid a lot of money to do it.

I’m just not sure what the point is here. Do the owners want more money? Yes. Are they wrong just because they have a lot of money and want more? No. Should they do more to protect players and offer some health benefits long-term. Probably. But they are not wrong just because they want to make more money. Yeah, they have billions, but they pour a lot into these teams.

I don’t really come down on either side. To me they are a bunch of rich guys arguing about money. I don’t really care what happens as long as they play football. The players risk a lot physically, and the owners risk a lot financially. They own the teams and they pay their employees well.

Regardless, I have nothing to do with it. Neither does Reilly. Nobody’s being oppressed here.

This isn’t baseball. These guys go to a job every day in which safety is Job 1,379.

The people asking for more money are the owners. They want $1 billion more out of the deal they have now.

They say they’re losing money. But if you were losing money and were asking for $1 billion back, wouldn’t you slap some proof down on the table? The owners are more secretive with their books than KFC is with its recipe.

Take our word for it and just fork over the billion. Oh, and play two more games for free. Thanks.

Here’s the thing. We have to take their word for it. We have nothing to do with this. It’s not between us and them. It’s between them and their employees. Employees who aren’t being treated unfairly or inhumanely. There’s no human right’s issues here.

In this, the greediest and most shameful era in American business history, the NFL owners would steal the cake. No set of sports owners in U.S. history has known this kind of popularity, love or cash. If there is a lockout, the day the 2012 season starts, every fan ought to pelt the owners’ luxury boxes with pennies.

Not BP? Enron? Really?

C’mon. Let’s get real. The owners want more money. But they pay their employees millions of dollars. And even if the owners get their extra billion (collectively) they will still be paying the players millions of dollars.

This isn’t some robber baron paying a bunch of nine-year-old kids five cents a day to work in a factory.

And the owners do own the teams. It’s their business and their money.

Do I think they need more money? Nope. Do I care if they get more money? No. Do I feel bad for NFL players? No.

Will both players and owners continue to make a boatload of money? Yes.

I’m not sure why we’re even having this conversation. It has nothing do with us. Lockouts happen in sports. Everyone will get paid.

Jeffrey Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, owns an 18-bedroom estate with a three-hole golf course, two-lane bowling alley, two-story recreation center and indoor tennis court. He’s really going to lock players out? For what, his own ski hill?

Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams, owns four homes, four ranches and three vineyards. He once ordered his employees to destroy $3 million in wine because he didn’t think it was up to his standards. His wife is a Wal-Mart heiress.

Are you really fretting about his future?

Ugh. These guys have lots of money. So what? So do the players.

It’s a slippery slope when you start saying, well, you already have a lot of money, so even though you pay your employees well, and even though you actually own the thing you’re making money off of, well, you can’t make any more, because some hack at ESPN doesn’t think you need anymore.

AND, if you look at what the players want, which is mainly continued health benefits after retiring from football, it actually makes sense that the players would want a larger cut, because the cost of health benefits will rise and rise.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the other day that the owners need this money to build new stadiums. And who profits from new stadiums? The owners. A new stadium doesn’t make the team any better. The seat under your butt isn’t any bigger. But a new stadium, usually built with vats of your tax dollars, funnels millions more per game into an owner’s pocket via luxury boxes, concessions and advertising. That’s money that isn’t shared 32 ways. What Goodell is saying is, “We need that billion so my owners can buy new Bentleys. Theirs are dusty.”

By Reilly’s line of arguing companies should never build new skyscrapers or offices because the owners of the companies don’t need more money.

Like I’ve said. We’re dealing with a bunch of rich people here doing business. That’s just how it is. It is their money.

Locking out the players now would be unjust, unfair and as indefensible as Al Davis’ wardrobe. There is so much to go around, it’s obscene. A billion back? These guys have that in cash.

Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, once bought a $14 million Palm Beach mansion and never moved into it. He later sold it for $24 million.

So what? He’s a business man. He has a lot of money. I don’t get the problem here.

Bud Adams, owner of the Tennessee Titans, has 10,000 head of cattle.

Jennifer Lopez, part owner of the Miami Dolphins, has offered to auction off her twins’ clothes because they’re not allowed to “repeat” outfits.

Rick Reilly gets paid $2 million dollars for spewing unartfully crafted, illogical arguments.

Oh, and do you remember when Reilly was yelling about how great the NFL’s system was because it didn’t let players switch teams? And how the NBA was stupid because it let it’s star players run the show? Yeah, it was, like, last week. Now he’s basically saying the complete opposite.

By the way, J-Lo’s like 1 percent of the Dolphins. She probably doesn’t even know there’s a potential lockout.

When’s the telethon?

As I said before, I don’t side with the owners or the players. The players probably appeal to my sensibilities a little bit more, but they make a ton of money, as do the owners. But 1.) the owners, well, they own the team. It’s their money. And 2.) None of this really concerns us. It’s between the owners and the players. To become indignant about the amount of money involved is just silly. Either way, someone’s getting a bunch of money piled on top of their existing bunch of money. None of this money could go to you, me, or Reilly, so stop bitching.

Oh, and all this is coming from a guy who gets paid millions to write for ESPN and then gets paid more millions for his dopey books and awful screenplays. Does he really need all that?

Thus concludes my personal posting forever, at least until the next baby.