Rick Reilly Does It Again

I used to actually like Rick Reilly's work, but now he seems to have gotten lazy with his writing. He should stick to his short pieces for the four golf majors and then take the rest of the year off.


I this week's column, Rick Reilly makes up a word, Complisults. What is that you ask, well let's look at Rick's definition.

"A 'complisult' is half-compliment, half-insult. It's not until you're driving home in your Prius that a complisult slaps you across the cheek."

Or as the rest of the world calls it, a backhanded compliment.

Rick then goes on to write a column offering backhanded compliments for each team, yet, he doesn't know enough about each team to come up with good ones. I found two amusing and that's about it. Guess the two, Colts and Pats. What a surprise, two teams that get a lot of media attenion. Some of his backhanded compliments are just generic and could be used for any team. Way to do research for a lame column.

Not to be a homer, but I don't get his backhanded compliment about the Bears at all.

To a Bears fan: "Dude, when you talk about a team that's history, you're talking the Chicago Bears."

Where's the compliment in there? Isn't that just a straight up insult? Closest thing I can think of is he's trying to say the Bears are a historic team, not just a team that is already done for the year.

I actually like good Bears jokes, my two favorites.

Q: How do you keep Bears out of your back yard?
A: Put up Goal Posts

Q: Why did it take the Bears so long to get a website?
A: Cause they can't get three W's in a row.

Don't worry though, the Bears aren't the only one who don't make sense, there are plenty of other ones.

Rick Reilly Tries to be Funny About Soccer

I am joining fodor in the Rick Rielly is an idiot posts. His most recent post about how to fix the World Cup is so dumb it can't even be considered an attempt at humor.

Three of his 10 points are about the vuvuzelas. I have heard of one, and only one, person who is not in the media complain about these things. It's what they do, it doesn't take away from the game so who cares? We know Rick hasn't watched any games so he is jumping on the bandwagon here.

He doesn't like stoppage time. He claims we have no idea when the game is going to end. Actually rick, there's a nice little number next to the clock that shows how much extra time is playing. The other advantage of stoppage time is the ref won't end a game when one team is on the attack. No we won't get your dramatic 3-2-1 buzzer beater, but we can get a full 30 seconds of a good attack that leads to a goal which is just as dramatic and exciting. Oh and guess what, if this does happen, the game would end on that "last second" shot.