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There are a lot of people in this world. And a lot of them are on the internet. And a lot of them hate Rick Reilly. Here’s the first in a new occasional series highlighting some of those people.

Naturally, much of the Reilly outrage as of late has centered around the Jay Cutler thing.

• Here’s Bob LeGere of the Chicago Daily Herald. He’s been covering the Bears for a long time, and the Bears for even longer. Here’s his column, “Who’s the Jerk?” (Hint: it’s Reilly). Money line: “Imagine the gall of Cutler not to genuflect and share with Reilly his innermost thoughts the moment he saw him. What was Cutler thinking? How could he be so arrogant? I mean, this was THE Rick Reilly. How could he dare not answer HIS questions.”
• From John Paulsen at Scores Report.com, here’s a little riff on the Reilly’s BCS rant. It’s title, “Reilly’s Lame Jokes Undercut Argument,” is pretty apt. Money line: “…I don’t generally read Rick Reilly. I read this piece because I’m in favor of a college football playoff and I wanted to see if he had anything new and/or interesting to add. Nope.”
• So, this one was on ESPN at one point, but here it is on Deadspin. Reilly dunking on a pop-a-shot machine. It’s actually pretty awesome, but as Barry Petchesky notes, “Of course, it’s not writing.”
• Here again on Jay Cutler is Andrew Sharp on SBNation. “Should We Be Rooting Against Jay Cutler, Or Rick Reilly?” (Clearly, we should rooting against Reilly, but I’m open to a “both and” situation.) Money quote: “As insufferable as Cutler might seem, I’m pretty sure Rick Reilly just proved he’s even worse.”
• Finally, and I’m not sure what any of this about–the blog title, the incident in question, or was this just a dream–whatever it is, it’s, umm, interesting. Something about Tiger’s anus and whore bags. Fun!

All right. We’ll do this again sometime. Assuming Reilly hasn’t turned it around by then.

Well, it’s same-old, same-old today. Key words ‘same’ and ‘old.’ Reilly’s column is about the Yates High School basketball team in Houston, TX and their coach Greg Wise. They’ve been running up the score and and beating teams by as much as 135 points, which is…well ridiculous and pretty much the definition of douche-baggery. This is actually the odd Reilly column that I basically agree with. Coach Wise is the picture of bad sportsmanship, and there’s no conceivable good reason for running his team the way it does, especially in high school basketball. So no real problems there.

Sure there’s the usual Reilly silliness about what he would do to Wise, like torture him and make him a speedbump (hi-larious!), but whatever.

The real thing here is that Deadspin basically did this exact same story nearly three months ago. Here it is.

In the grand scheme of things, I guess this isn’t the biggest deal on the whole entire planet. However, you’d think a guy who makes as much money as Reilly does to write once–once!–a week, could come up with some fresh material. Honestly.

On another note, we got some nice little crowing from Reilly at the beginning of the column:

Note to readers: My math says this column puts me over one million published words. And that doesn’t count books (No. 11 coming up in May), screenplays (two), sonnets, ransom notes and quilts. This is one million too many for many citizens, but the fact remains.

That’s depressing. That’s over a million innocent words that have been murdered. So sad. He is right about it being one million too many, though. Right on, brother.

• Rick and Bill Simmons sucked it up and did a podcast together. I can’t listen to Reilly’s voice without getting physically ill, so…thanks to the Big Lead for taking care of that. They mostly discussed their paychecks and the Tiger Woods situation, because we haven’t talked enough about Tiger Woods lately. [TheBigLead]
• In related news, apparantly Reilly revealed that he will no longer be writing for ESPN the Mag, and will be solely online. This effectively means nothing. What does have some affect on people’s lives is this: Reilly will “be starting this 90 second essay on Sportscenter.” Supposedly he will be doing this from his home, or wherever, with a Flip cam and Skype…so that should be about the worst thing ever. As if watching Sportscenter wasn’t already bad enough. [Deadspin]
• Finally, on Reilly’s (not)blog, Rick officially became the 12,345,683, 249th person to make fun of John Daly’s pants. Better late than never. Amirite? [ESPN]

Now that we think about it, though, Reilly really has no place making fun of Daly’s choice of wardrobe, considering this….

Whatever this is.

On another note if you’re new to the site, you can go to the About page where we’ve got some older posts of note.

1. The NBA tells Caron Butler he can’t chew on straws anymore. Apparently this was kind of a big deal. I guess it’s kind of a big deal, because it seems pretty ridiculous for the NBA and David Stern to even care. That’s why it’s #1. We’re working in descending order here from most important to least.
2. OMFG!!!!1!!1 Ozzie Guillen has an effin Twitter account!!!!!1!!! Now, don’t get me wrong, as a person on Twitter, as a snarky blogger, and as a fan of both sports and life, I think this is a great thing. Even though sometimes he tweets in Spanish, and sometimes both English and Spanish. But the “controversy” surrounding the thing with his GM, and the segment about it on Around the Horn, PTI, and Sportscenter…and then they, inexplicably, have Crazy Old Lou Pinella chime in. Just weird.
3. Finally, the pissing match that came to a boil today between AJ Daulerio of Deadspin and Jason Whitlock of FoxSports via Twitter and the SportsHernia. Listen, I like Deadspin. I think they do a lot of good stuff. I even like Whitlock in a weird way. The dude’s crazy, and that makes him entertaining…plus he writes interesting stuff, eventhough I disagree about half the time. He’s a good writer. But their little fight about over whether or not Tony Kornheiser’s suspension was actually over comments he made about Hannah Storm or if it really was because of comments he made about Chris Berman being fat is dumb. Here’s the post on SportsHernia that has AJ’s letter to Jason, posted at the behest of Jason…who kind of auditioned the chance on Twitter (We didn’t win [didn't realize what was happening either]). Phew. That’s involved, isn’t it? And here’s the post that got things going on Deadspin.

Anyway, I understand that in a world with multiple 24-hour-a-day sports networks and an endless amount of sports talk radio shows and blogs, some trivial things come up. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan…it’s just odd that these are huge stories. Not as big as Blogs with Stones though!

For now, I’ll just link to a Tommy Craggs retrospective about this year in Reilly. Perhaps this will be the year he’s fired. Fingers crossed.

Til Next Week. Here’s the Deadspin piece.

• 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.

This from someone by the name of Deadliest Crotch:

“Knock-knock
Who’s there?
Jayson Williams.
Jayson Williams who?
BANG!”

And this one from UkraineNotWeak:

“I’m sure Jayson Williams has been bought and sold many a time in prison.”

There are others, too, that don’t have to do with Jayson Williams.

Anyway, one would think Reilly would be much faster to these stories than a blog, considering how little he thinks of them. We’ll always remember this famous quote (which I had to get from Canada this time because for some reason Newsday would rather not have people read them anymore. It’s also here if you don’t support Canada): “I don’t really go on the blogs, because they don’t really like anybody,” Reilly said. “Jesus could do a column and they’d be like, ‘What the hell is with the hair?’ It’ll always be something.”

Whatever, Rick. This “story” was broken 48 days ago by a blog. By a blog, Rick! And nearly two months later you decide to write basically the same thing on your own blog. It’s not a blog though, apparantly, just an innocent collection of “occasional and random mind dumps.” Well, in that case.

Here’s the column from 2007.  And now, here’s the one from today.

I was all excited to write about it when I got home from work, but alas…there is no competing with Deadpsin, I guess. Check out the link above for the full story. I’m posting Craggs’s comparison here. It’s pretty ridiculous that Reilly can get away with this, just as a regular journalist, not to mention the fact that he gets paid a ton of money. At least we know that his last offering wasn’t him turning over a new leaf.  Here are pieces of the two columns side-by-side, from Deadspin:

2007: When I was a sophomore in college, working on the town newspaper, a professor took me aside and said, “You need to get out of sports. You’re better than sports.”

2009: When I was a college sophomore and just starting to write for the Boulder sports section, my journalism professor edged me aside, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re better than sports.”

2007: There’s no back door in. If you’re Aaron Spelling’s daughter and you want to act, you get to act. If you’re a Trump, you get to build. But nobody in sports makes it onto the field because he caught a lucky sperm. Jose and Ozzie Canseco were identical twins. Jose played 1,887 major league games. Ozzie played 24. And sports doesn’t care how you did last month, either. If you’re Derek Jeter and you stop hitting, it doesn’t matter how many Visa commercials you’ve done, you’re toast. And yet Flavor Flav still puts out CDs.

2009: Sports is real. It can’t be faked. If you’re Henry Fonda’s son and you want to act, you get to act. If you’re Chelsea Clinton and want to govern, you get to govern. But just because you’re Nolan Ryan’s son doesn’t mean you get to pitch in the Show. Money, family, looks mean diddly in sports. If Tom Brady suddenly can’t throw the 30-yard out, he’s benched, dimple or no dimple.

2007:Sports is a way in. One of the best e-mails I ever got was from a 25-year-old: “Thanks for writing what you did about the Red Sox. It’s the first time I’ve been able to talk to my dad in five years.”

2009: Sports is Oprah for guys. I knew a Boston dad and son who hadn’t spoken in five years. Some disagreement that just grew too big to see around. But when the Red Sox won it all in 2004, the son came home. They hugged and cried and laughed, and if you think it was about baseball, you don’t know men.

2007: Sports isn’t an escape from life-it’s woven into the fabric of it.

2009: Sports is woven deeper into American life than you know.

2007: It’s black and white, there’s no gray area. Every night there’s a winner and there’s a loser and nothing in between. There’s no waiting to see the third-quarter fiscal report. It’s open to zero interpretation. I’ve never been to a game yet where, at the end, the ref announced, “O.K., Cleveland won 14—13, but the Cleveland coach was blocking his deep-seated childhood need for validation. So, actually, Buffalo is the winner.” There’s a score and it’s fair and clean and easy to understand. Except for figure skating, of course.

2009: Sports has no gray areas. It’s black or white, win or lose, hero or goat. Nobody has to form a committee to figure it out. Not true in dance or art. Who was better, head to head, Matisse or Monet? If it were sports, we’d know. (Matisse, 13-8.)

2007: So bite me, professor. Thirty years later, I still don’t think I’m better than sports. In fact it’s been the other way around the whole time.

2009: So here’s to you, professor. I’m glad to know I’m not better than sports. But you did show me I’m better than one thing: advice from professors.