Rick Reilly sucks balls at Sportswriting AND Poetry

True Story: A number of years ago, while at WPCR (Pretentious College Radio) at Ivy League U, I interviewed a member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins (not Mercury Morris). We talked a bit about that season, and at one point the player mentioned that every year they celebrate their accomplishment when the last undefeated team loses. This was long before the Patriots made their run, but every year, some sportswriter someplace would write a column about how the '72 Dolphins are grumpy old men who need to shut the fuck up and go away. Rick Reilly had relatively recently written one such column.

"Well," I asked, "what do you say to someone like Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated who writes that the '72 Dolphins are basically grumpy old men reveling in the short coming of current players?"

"Rick Reilly is a horse's ass."

Truer words were never spoken.

This is all a lead-in to this poem that Reilly "wrote"(?) for ESPN. Seriously, don't click that link. I'm about to break it down for you, and the poem is awful enough without seeing Reilly's douchey face with his douchey voice reading it to you. Here it is, shitty couplet after shitty couplet:

I love the Open from its A's to its Z's
But Most of all, I love it for thee

Seriously? Rhyming "A's to it's Z's" with "thee"? This is sign number one that this will be bad. Also "zed" and "thee" don't even remotely rhyme...

Bangers, Pasties and good stout beer

Roughs so high you can lose Mike Weir

Mike Weir is the ranked 35th in the world. He has not won a major since 2003 and he hasn't won anything at all since October 2007. I tell you this because I asked myself, since when is Mike Weir at all relevant. Then I realized his name happens to rhyme with beer. Silly me.

Wee winding burns and half grown flag sticks

Teeing off and it's only half past six!

I have no idea what the first half of this couplet means. Archie, you Limey bastard you, does this make ANY sense? And yay, they tee off... early... in the morning? Yay?

Funny lies and your still on the tee

Oceans you smell but never see

... I'm seriously starting to lose my motivation guys.

Holes that seem like they're more than a mile

Fairways so narrow you walk single file

Worth noting that that second line was accompanied by a golfer and his caddy walking shoulder to shoulder down a fairway.

Fish and chips and biscuits and tea

Heather and gorse and greens like high seas,

What does that bit about the greens even mean? The greens are wet? The Kraaken lives in the 17th hole at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club? Tiger Woods is Davy Jones? Is this all a lead in to a Monkees embed? Yep!

Okay that's enough fake Beatles for today...

Blokes and chaps and "good shot laddy!"

Drives hit lower than a '56 Caddy

Okay, this is just starting to not make sense at all. Was the '56 Cadillac particularly low? Did Rick mean a "5'6" caddy?" I guess that'd be a pretty low drive but don't we usually describe such people as "short" rather than "low"? And if the reference is to the car, then fuck you, Rick Reilly, for making such an indecipherable reference to a car manufactured 52 years ago.

Rain and cold and gusts that stagger

And Bunkers with lips as big as Mick Jagger's

...

Fuck this, man. I'm going with the Stones embed here.

Holy shit, I didn't even recognize Keith Richards.

Huge chilly crowds with red rosy mugs

Millionaires lusting for one little jug,

I'm out of energy, man...

And the only way to make them all skittish

Is simply to call their Open the British.

Oh ho ho! I see what you did their Rick Reilly! Everyone else refers to it as the British and they just call it the Open! Ha! No not really all that funny. In fact, it's not funny at all. If there's one thing this world needs less of it's bad poetry. Well, I suppose we could do with less religious intolerance and violence, war, disease, famine, shitty themed restaurants, and child-molesting clergy, but bad poetry ain't too far behind.

ESPN, THIS is what you're paying $2 million a year for? Jesus Christ, this is worse than that time you gave Stephen A. Smith his own show... oh man... ANOTHER embed to close? YAY!