Get ready for the next 2,163 years

It's often hard to agree on the sports media.\nI like Fox Sports' NFL play-by-play man Pat Summerall. Most people I talk to say it's time to hang up his mike.\nI don't like ESPN SportsCenter anchor Dan Patrick nor do I like his oodles of hair coloring. Many of you like his suave style.\nI sort of like Bill Walton, who was hired earlier this week by ABC and ESPN for their NBA coverage, and his constant self-parody. A lot of you cannot stand him.\nThen, there is Rick Reilly. The Sports Illustrated senior writer has won the National Sportscaster and Sportswriter Association Sportswriter of the Year Award seven times. Adulated by many, he has occupied the back page of Sports Illustrated with his "Life of Reilly" column for several years now, and a compilation book of his best work called Life of Reilly was released in November 2000.\nHaving said all that, I would like to make the following pronouncement: This guy sucks eggs.\nI could suffer through some of Reilly's inanities, but as a Cubs fan, his bizarre sabotage interview with Sammy Sosa hit way too close to home. What's worse is that his fellow compatriots in the sportswriting profession are afraid to take Reilly on. "Well, I have a good relationship with Rick," Chicago Tribune Cubs beat reporter Teddy Greenstein said. Oh, jeez.\nHere's the story: Sosa, when asked about steroid testing by another reporter weeks prior, said he would be "first in line" to take a urine test. Reilly, seizing the opportunity to embarrass a big-time athlete, traveled to Chicago, approached Sosa in the Cubs clubhouse, handed him a cup and told him of a diagnostic test lab in Elmhurst, Ill., about a half-hour drive from Wrigley Field, that would be willing to examine the test results.\n"Why not step up right now and be tested? You show everybody you're clean. It'll lift a cloud off you and a cloud off the game," Reilly claimed he told Sosa.\nSosa rightfully was furious. As conscientious of being a role model as any ballplayer, Sosa tried biting his lip before exploding, "This interview is over! Over, motherf-----!"\nIf it were me, I think I would have said, "Instead of this cup, how about I urinate on the back page of Sports Illustrated. Test that, poo poo head." But that's just me.\nReilly's question could not have been more unprofessional. What cloud was Sosa putting over himself by hitting 60 home runs a year? If Sosa said that he would take the test and then passed it, do you think many fans' cynicism would just end?\n"Well, Sosa's clean, so I guess they are all clean."\nFurthermore, had Sosa taken the test before any other player, it would be as if Sosa would be saying, "Hey, I'm above all you guys, so forget your little labor agreement negotiations. I'm protecting my own self-interests."\nReilly has written condescendingly of others for years now. In an April 3 column called "Out of touch with my feminine side," he told of how tough it was to coach a seventh grade girls basketball team. "Another difference between boys and girls: Girls have many questions. Our team meetings were sometimes longer than our practices. Apparently girls use team meetings as a chance to process feelings, whereas boys use team meetings as a chance to give each other wedgies," Reilly wrote.\nWell, gee, Rick. Perhaps they have so many questions because they are seventh graders trying to learn the game. Perhaps they represent a gender that is just starting to get over the idea that athletics is somehow demeaning for women. Perhaps they have so many questions because their coach wasn't telling them anything useful. Perhaps there is a magazine called Seventh Grade Girls Illustrated where a columnist on the back page writes about how bad basketball coaches have gotten these days.\nI could go on like this.\nBy the way, did I mention that Reilly signed a contract last week to stay with Sports Illustrated for $900,000 per year that will also include eight columns annually in Time? And did I also mention that in signing the contract, Reilly turned down a contract that would have paid him $1 million per year from ESPN that would include among other things a similar weekly column in ESPN the Magazine and a weekly TV show on ESPN?\nIf it sounds like I am jealous, make no mistake: You better believe I am. For me to make $900,000 writing this column, I would have to write one column a week for 112,500 weeks. That's 2,163 years, which also happens to be the next time Reilly plans on writing something worthwhile.\nBut when it comes to the media, we have our disagreements. The New York Daily News called Reilly "one of the funniest humans on the planet."\nThis only proves that the planet has lost its sense of humor.