So I only feature the Rick Reilly articles that are so terrible I have to write about them or I would write about him every week and his columns are not even close to be interesting enough to do that. Rick Reilly has written the ten most annoying things about the World Cup. Actually, he lists the same "thing" three times, but it wouldn't be a Rick Reilly column if he didn't cheat in some way.
Here are the top 10 most annoying things about watching the World Cup already:
"A column by Rick Reilly" had better be #1 on this list. Let's see how many cultures Rick can mock in this column.
1. That pesky cerebrum-blowing incessant buzzing sound coming from the TV set. "Babe, something's wrong with the TV," my wife said Saturday. But there wasn't anything wrong. It was the dreaded vuvuzelas, the yard-long plastic horns (voo-voo-zella) that South African fans blow all the time, without rhyme nor reason,
Those crazy Africans and their silly traditions! AFRICANS HAVE STUPID TRADITIONS!
They never stop. It's like having a desk in the center cubicle at American Bee, Inc. They sound like 80,000 yaks getting sick. They are the leading cause of Tylenol sales in the world today.
I demand of ESPN right now...fire Rick Reilly or hire a joke writer for his columns. It's time for him to stop making jokes that are right in the wheel house of Jay Leno or directed towards a generation that fought in World War II.
2. The embarrassing photographer bibs the guys on the bench have to wear during the game. They're very purple and dorky.
Dorky? I swear to God, this may be the worst column Rick Reilly has ever written. I don't even have jokes to make, it is so bad. I should just copy and paste the entire article and just type "this is terrible" at the bottom. My point would be made. He is giving writers who mail in columns a bad name right now.
Hey, are you on the American national soccer quad or do you throw bags for Northwest Airlines?
Haha! Throwing bags for Northwest Airlines is only for lower class people who dress like dorks and look stupid because they are poor. Rick Reilly has a shitload of money, class and many famous friends. He is wealthy and would only throw bags for Northwest Airlines if he could do it only to show how poor people work during the day. POOR PEOPLE HAVE STUPID JOBS THAT DON'T REQUIRE YOU TO BE WELL-DRESSED!
3. The Twinkie-fingered gloves goalkeepers wear.
This gave me a great idea. Let Rick Reilly stand in the goal and see if he could stop a soccer ball coming at him with batting gloves or any other thin type of glove that Reilly thinks would look better. I bet a ball would hit his hands and he would fall down on the ground holding his hands like he got shot. Soccer players kick the ball really, really hard so it is important not to have your finger break when you try to catch the ball and it is also important to make sure you hold on to the ball when it is kicked in your direction. I would love to see a group of 100 World Cup strikers shoot the ball at Reilly and see how the "cool" gloves he wants goalies to wear feel when the soccer ball hits his hands.
Also, since when did Reilly become a fashion icon to where he could point out what looks good and what doesn't? His picture on ESPN's site looks like someone is giving him an anal probe and he is actually enjoying it. All that is missing is him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cabana boy bringing him drinks continuously.
No wonder the English goalkeeper allowed that easy shot to give America a 1-1 tie in the Group C opener. You couldn't stop a beach ball with those big goofy things.
Actually if the beach ball weighed as much as a soccer ball and was still huge, it would be incredibly tough to stop a beach ball kicked at the speed a soccer ball gets kicked.
What, is Hamburger Helper a sponsor? Why must they be so huge? Doesn't Roger Rabbit need them back? And where do the batteries go?
There's no excuse for this. I am getting indignant like Peter King now. There are real journalists who aren't making 5% of what Rick Reilly makes who actually work hard to write well. You know how anti-abortion fanatics protest outside of abortion clinics? Rick Reilly is currently aborting the profession of sports journalism, perhaps those same protesters should move outside of the castle where Reilly lives and protest him performing journalistic abortions.
And is it difficult to play goalie while also taking things out of the oven?
I want to hear from one person who likes Rick Reilly. I would love to. I can understand how people can like nearly every sportswriter or at least read the writers columns. I really can. For example, Jay Mariotti, you read him just to hate him. Why the fuck would you read a Rick Reilly column other than to write 5,000 words about how bad it sucks and to raise your blood pressure?
4. The godforsaken vuvuzelas! Make them stop!
That would be the same topic as #1 on this list. Rick Reilly can't even make an entire list of 10 reasons why the World Cup sucks without rehashing something he has written previously.
Soccer fans sing and chant inane hilarious things like, "We are from Norway! We came on a plane! And we are very drunk!" But we don't get to hear the singing and the chanting because of the horrible, hideous, heinous vuvuzelas!
No soccer fans that I know of chant this particular and this chant is not hilarious. Rick fails on all counts. ESPN pays Rick Reilly to write columns. Just think about that. He gets paid to pretend people from Norway who attend the World Cup chant things like this. The presence of Rick Reilly makes me question my belief in a higher power.
My god, they should take them into the mountainous caves region of Pakistan and play them until Osama bin Laden comes running out, screaming, "OK, OK! I give!"
Because they are so annoying even Osama bin Laden can't stand them! That's how bad the vuvuzelas! This is comedy!
These guys collapse as though they've just caught a javelin in the groin every time an opponent so much as asks them for the time. These guys make Paul Pierce look sincere. Sell it somewhere else, Sven.
Apparently Rick Reilly does not like the country of Norway or people from Norway named Sven. Possibly Sven stole away Rick's wife or was the first to point out Reilly is a talentless hack...there is no telling really why he holds this grudge.
We live in the U.S., where hockey players pop their eye back into their socket without missing a shift.
And all of these hockey players who pop their eye back into their socket without missing a shift are from Canada and other countries. So they aren't American, they just happen to play hockey in America.
Americans are proud to have college basketball which has a huge flopping problem, just like soccer does.
6. The yellow cards. I love the way the refs come running up to the player as though he has just taken out a chainsaw and sawed somebody's hand off.
Intentional ignorance is no excuse for failing to understand soccer by putting down that you find something annoying about the sport. The ref runs up to the player to decrease the amount of dead time, to let the scorekeeper know exactly which player got the yellow card and because play continues immediately after and the ref wants the player to be aware he received a card. Perhaps if Rick Reilly spent more time figuring out soccer and less time pretending to be annoyed by it, he wouldn't sound like such an idiot.
And then all the ref does is snap his little yellow piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and stick it in the offender's face, as though the little yellow card has some kind of superpower. As if to say, "Ha! you are powerless against my little yellow piece of paper, which shows your less-than-average marks from third grade!"
There's really no comment I have for this. The overall horribleness of this section speaks for itself.
I'd love to see that in the middle of an NBA fight. Can you imagine seeing some ref come running up to Rasheed Wallace after laying out Carmelo Anthony with a roundhouse right and sticking that yellow card right in his face? He'd soon be digesting it through his ear hole.
BECAUSE ALL BLACK PEOPLE ARE OVERLY VIOLENT AND HATE AUTHORITY!
You will not see more ties at a J.C. Penney's Father's Day sale. I hate ties. Doesn't anybody want to win in this sport? All these ties are about as exciting as a Jonas Brothers roundtable on sex.
(the sound of talented sportswriters weeping)
8. The World Cup itself. Really? All this running and vuvuzela-ing and pulling off shirts for that trophy? It looks like somebody soldered it together in their basement -- after drinking a handle of Jack Daniel's. It looks like something you'd use to prop open your Tuff Shed door during spring cleaning.
You know things are bad for Rick Reilly when he is ripping off...(drum roll)
Scoop Jackson. Scoop wrote his column on June 15 at 2:07 pm and Rick Reilly wrote his on June 15 at 2:09 pm. All Rick Reilly needs is two minutes to steal someone else's work, when he is not busy re-writing his old columns or stealing ideas from his old columns.
10. The vuvuzelas from eardrum-hellas! Don't tell me it's discrimination to want them to stop.
Rick Reilly has stolen an idea from Scoop Jackson and regurgitated the same idea three previous times. So really there are seven reasons he is annoyed by the World Cup, but he just repeats himself twice and his ESPN editor is fine with this.
Don't tell me it's an essential part of South African culture. If it is, it's an annoying part of their culture. Yes, I know that centuries ago, the vuvuzelas were made from animal horns to call the village elders in for a meeting. And I'll bet you five wildebeests that when the elders finally got to the meeting they said, "Would you STOP already with the blowing? You're making me crazy!"
Not to nitpick Rick's HILARIOUS joke, but if all the elders finally get to the meeting the blowing would have already stopped because the vuvuzelas were used to call the elders to the meetings and they would have stopped blowing if all the elders were there already.
I've been to Africa four times.
And probably stayed in a 5-star hotel paid for by someone else four times.
They do some of the most beautiful singing you can imagine. At the World Cup, I'm hearing no singing. I'm hearing no chanting. I'm hearing 80,000 kazoos on steroids.
The vuvuzelas were annoying at first, but if you watch enough of the World Cup (I know Rick won't do this because he just makes his millions off sports, but actually hates sports) then you eventually don't notice them anymore. This is more than I can say for a Rick Reilly column. I can read 100 of them and still notice how terrible they are.
These guys collapse as though they've just caught a javelin in the groin every time an opponent so much as asks them for the time. These guys make Paul Pierce look sincere. Sell it somewhere else, Sven.
Apparently Rick Reilly does not like the country of Norway or people from Norway named Sven. Possibly Sven stole away Rick's wife or was the first to point out Reilly is a talentless hack...there is no telling really why he holds this grudge.
We live in the U.S., where hockey players pop their eye back into their socket without missing a shift.
And all of these hockey players who pop their eye back into their socket without missing a shift are from Canada and other countries. So they aren't American, they just happen to play hockey in America.
Americans are proud to have college basketball which has a huge flopping problem, just like soccer does.
6. The yellow cards. I love the way the refs come running up to the player as though he has just taken out a chainsaw and sawed somebody's hand off.
Intentional ignorance is no excuse for failing to understand soccer by putting down that you find something annoying about the sport. The ref runs up to the player to decrease the amount of dead time, to let the scorekeeper know exactly which player got the yellow card and because play continues immediately after and the ref wants the player to be aware he received a card. Perhaps if Rick Reilly spent more time figuring out soccer and less time pretending to be annoyed by it, he wouldn't sound like such an idiot.
And then all the ref does is snap his little yellow piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and stick it in the offender's face, as though the little yellow card has some kind of superpower. As if to say, "Ha! you are powerless against my little yellow piece of paper, which shows your less-than-average marks from third grade!"
There's really no comment I have for this. The overall horribleness of this section speaks for itself.
I'd love to see that in the middle of an NBA fight. Can you imagine seeing some ref come running up to Rasheed Wallace after laying out Carmelo Anthony with a roundhouse right and sticking that yellow card right in his face? He'd soon be digesting it through his ear hole.
BECAUSE ALL BLACK PEOPLE ARE OVERLY VIOLENT AND HATE AUTHORITY!
You will not see more ties at a J.C. Penney's Father's Day sale. I hate ties. Doesn't anybody want to win in this sport? All these ties are about as exciting as a Jonas Brothers roundtable on sex.
(the sound of talented sportswriters weeping)
8. The World Cup itself. Really? All this running and vuvuzela-ing and pulling off shirts for that trophy? It looks like somebody soldered it together in their basement -- after drinking a handle of Jack Daniel's. It looks like something you'd use to prop open your Tuff Shed door during spring cleaning.
You know things are bad for Rick Reilly when he is ripping off...(drum roll)
Scoop Jackson. Scoop wrote his column on June 15 at 2:07 pm and Rick Reilly wrote his on June 15 at 2:09 pm. All Rick Reilly needs is two minutes to steal someone else's work, when he is not busy re-writing his old columns or stealing ideas from his old columns.
10. The vuvuzelas from eardrum-hellas! Don't tell me it's discrimination to want them to stop.
Rick Reilly has stolen an idea from Scoop Jackson and regurgitated the same idea three previous times. So really there are seven reasons he is annoyed by the World Cup, but he just repeats himself twice and his ESPN editor is fine with this.
Don't tell me it's an essential part of South African culture. If it is, it's an annoying part of their culture. Yes, I know that centuries ago, the vuvuzelas were made from animal horns to call the village elders in for a meeting. And I'll bet you five wildebeests that when the elders finally got to the meeting they said, "Would you STOP already with the blowing? You're making me crazy!"
Not to nitpick Rick's HILARIOUS joke, but if all the elders finally get to the meeting the blowing would have already stopped because the vuvuzelas were used to call the elders to the meetings and they would have stopped blowing if all the elders were there already.
I've been to Africa four times.
And probably stayed in a 5-star hotel paid for by someone else four times.
They do some of the most beautiful singing you can imagine. At the World Cup, I'm hearing no singing. I'm hearing no chanting. I'm hearing 80,000 kazoos on steroids.
The vuvuzelas were annoying at first, but if you watch enough of the World Cup (I know Rick won't do this because he just makes his millions off sports, but actually hates sports) then you eventually don't notice them anymore. This is more than I can say for a Rick Reilly column. I can read 100 of them and still notice how terrible they are.
13 comments:
Ties are as exciting as a Rick Reilly column. At some point doesn't someone have to take him to task for stealing ideas? You know, someone at ESPN? Also, why are the NBA players fighting when the yellow card is given out? A better example would be when Derek Fisher flops to the ground and the ref would run up to Paul Pierce and give him a yellow. Soccer players get red cards if they fight.
You would think they would be concerned that they pay Reilly a shit load of money and he steals his ideas and the ideas of others. Apparently they don't care.
I didn't get any of those examples in this column. They all seemed uninspired and old to me.
"I've been to Africa four times. They do some of the most beautiful singing you can imagine."
Who's they? It's a massive continent.
What a dipshit.
Why can't we know how much time is left?
Are you fucking kidding me? Out of the five major team sports in North America, soccer is probably the one where you have the best idea about how much time remains. Baseball doesn't even use a clock.
"Well, the ref should be calling this game shortly. A minute or two...Kaka seems confused. He's dribbling. Wait. Now he's stopped to examine a small scab, and well, that's it."
Did he write this article before Donovan's goal in stoppage time? Even bother to watch a game? From what I saw, teams go nuts trying to "equalize" or go ahead in stoppage time. If anything, the uncertainty of when the whistle will be blown can make it even more frantic. I think we even did the soccer equivalent of pulling the goalie in the Ghana game when we got desperate. Only a pinheaded fucktard like Reilly would be confused over why the game didn't end after the 90th minute and start staring at his fucking cleats.
I get the feeling this dipshit originally planned a quick screed about the vuvuzelas for that "Too Short for a Column" bullshit, but ESPN actually wanted the cumguzzler to earn his pay for once. He decided on a "Ten Reasons to Hate..." type column, got stuck at eight, so used two more digs at the vuvuzelas to round out the number, and then phoned it in.
Anon, I think it happened that way also. He probably had a whole column about the vuvuzuelas and they forced him to lengthen it and we got stuck with this.
Apparently "they" are the entire continent of Africa. They are just all lumped together since there is no difference in any of the ppl who live on the continent, just like all regions of America are alike.
I think the players know how much time is left. It's not like it is hard to figure out during the game. You can tell a difference in stoppage time and regular time in regards to the player's intensity. I think they can tell the difference.
I think personally Rick Reilly doesn't understand soccer, so he just does what some ppl who don't understand something do and assume is it stupid and ridiculous...because if it wasn't stupid and ridiculous they would surely understand it.
While I'll agree that the article is terrible, vuvuzelas didn't exist until the 90s. It'd be like having the WC in the states and having thundersticks drown out everything. It's not so much a "tradition" as a fad. They're also a health risk as they have roughly the sane decibel level as a jet engine.
I'm typically all for people doing what they want at a game they paid to see, but I can't imagine that it's not ruining someone else's experience at the game. Players are also complaining, so I think that banning them might have been a prudent move.
Rich, I don't know how I have done it, but I have completely tuned them out when I watch soccer. They annoyed me at first, but b/c they annoy Rick Reilly, they are my friend.
I do have to admit them coming to the US is going to be annoying. First time I am in the crowd w/ someone who has one, an incident will occur.
Vuvzuelas existed a long time before the 90's. I remember as a kid in the 70's them being sold at baseball games, they were called "air horns". In the US if you blew it like they do in South Africa someone would have wrapped it around your dads neck.
Martin,
You are correct, the first vuvuzela appears to have been made in 1965. The Vuvuzela didn't become what it is today (like most things do has become more "efficient"). I read something about 1995 being a big year for the vuvuzela in Africa, so maybe that's just when they became popular or the writer pulled an GE and just made shit up.
Ben,
I watched the first bit of the first match at the WC (a game SA played in) and holy crap was it insane. I muted the game after 5 minutes and then just turned it off bc the closed captioning had so much lag that all I was experiencing was a pretty unexciting soccer game.
ESPN (and every other tv station) made a filter for the vuvuzela (since they mostly operate at a single, incredibly annoying frequency). By the time the US played their first game, it was only a moderate buzzing noise. Once they started playing two games at the same time though, you could tell the difference. You could watch one game and hardly notice them, but if you switched to the other game, your survival instincts would kick in.
As much as I hate to say it, the "tradition" argument doesn't hold up (for me). Something that didn't become popular until, at the earliest, the 1970's isn't a tradition. I don't really think making the world's preeminent soccer tournament (happening every four years) vuvuzela free would really change the "atmosphere" or "culture" present at the game. In fact, taking away a POS plastic toy would actually allow "real" traditions (chants, songs, dances) to be notice much more readily.
I understand why you ripped the article and the point Riley "made" about the vuvuzela, but I think this is more a point that I, personally, agree with Riley on, I just think he said it in an incredibly arrogant, self-centered, pompous, egomaniacal way.
Also (separating my points), I can't believe that Riley wrote this:
The World Cup itself. Really? All this running and vuvuzela-ing and pulling off shirts for that trophy?
Considering it has the same general concept as the Lombardi trophy and the Larry O'Brien trophy, I don't think Riley even believes this point. He can't. The trophy has a base and is crowned with a globe.
The super bowl winners get a trophy with a base and a football... woooo!
The NBA champion gets a trophy with a base with a basketball...
The World Series trophy is pretty friggin' ugly itself, but I don't remember hearing Riley ever rip that POS.
The only trophy that (again, IMO) is actually iconic of the sport is the Stanley Cup. The thing about the SC is that it wasn't the NHL's trophy until 1946, meaning that for 60 or so years, the trophy belonged to the sport and not a specific league. Even now, the SC can be awarded to a non-NHL team if there's no NHL season (in response to the lost season).
I guess it's smallish, but seriously who needs a 10 foot tall trophy when you just won the world's biggest tournament for your country?
What about the Olympic medals? You work four years for disk that hangs around your neck?
This proves to me that Reilly has no idea about sports. You don't play to win the fuckin' trophy, you play to win the tournament. The trophy is just the physical representation of that victory. You could hand the winners a hamster ball filled with ping pong balls and they'd still kill themselves to win it.
Rich, it is fine to agree with him about the vuvuzuelas. I think they are annoying too, but I don't like how he used the same point three times on his list and also didn't like it for many of the same reasons you didn't.
I think the Stanley Cup is the most iconic trophy too. I thought Scoop Jackson's column about the trophy was stupid for the exact reasons you stated, but I thought it was super hilarious that Rick Reilly knocks the trophy as well. I don't know if he reads Scoop's column, but it is interesting I haven't heard anyone else rip on the trophy and a guy who is known to copy his own work made the same annoying point as someone else at his network.
Rick Reilly sucks and articles that expose him are alwaqys appreciated. Thanks a lot and keep it up.
http://firerickreilly.com/
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