Rick Reilly
Encyclopedia
Richard "Rick" Paul Reilly (born February 3, 1958 in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...

) is an American sportswriter. Long known for being the "back page" columnist for Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, Reilly moved to ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

 on June 1, 2008 where he is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and wrote the back page column for ESPN the Magazine
ESPN The Magazine
ESPN The Magazine is a bi-weekly sports magazine published by the ESPN sports network in Bristol, Connecticut in the United States. The first issue was published on March 11, 1998....

. Reilly hosts ESPN’s Homecoming with Rick Reilly
Homecoming with Rick Reilly
Homecoming with Rick Reilly is an American television show on the sports network ESPN. The show is hosted by ESPN personality Rick Reilly, and features interviews with popular American sports figures.- Interviewed :*Josh Hamilton*Jerry Rice*Kurt Warner...

, an interview show, and he is a contributing essayist for ESPN SportsCenter
SportsCenter
SportsCenter is a daily sports news television show, and the flagship program of American cable network ESPN since the network launched on September 7, 1979. Originally broadcast only daily, SportsCenter is now shown up to twelve times a day, replaying the day's scores and highlights from major...

and ABC Sports.

Career

Reilly began his career in 1979 as an undergraduate assistant with the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado. He left the Camera in 1981 to be a football writer on the sports staff of the Denver Post, then on to the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

in 1983 before joining Sports Illustrated in 1985. Reilly has become a recognized name in the sportswriting industry because of his human interest pieces; his column, “Life of Reilly” was featured on the back page of SI from 1997 until 2007 when he announced that he would leaving Sports Illustrated to join ESPN. The "Life of Reilly" was the first signed opinion piece in SI's history. Reilly officially left SI during the week of November 29, 2007, after 23 years with the magazine.

“Life of Reilly” now appeared in ESPN The Magazine
ESPN The Magazine
ESPN The Magazine is a bi-weekly sports magazine published by the ESPN sports network in Bristol, Connecticut in the United States. The first issue was published on March 11, 1998....

(also the last page) and on ESPN.com. On March 10, Reilly announced that he would no longer be writing his opinion column for the magazine, but was going to a regular essay on SportsCenter. Reilly delivers essays from live sporting events for SportsCenter and other ESPN telecasts, such as the U.S. Open
U.S. Open (golf)
The United States Open Championship, commonly known as the U.S. Open, is the annual open golf tournament of the United States. It is the second of the four major championships in golf, and is on the official schedule of both the PGA Tour and the European Tour...

, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...

, and the British Open
The Open Championship
The Open Championship, or simply The Open , is the oldest of the four major championships in professional golf. It is the only "major" held outside the USA and is administered by The R&A, which is the governing body of golf outside the USA and Mexico...

. He is host of “Homecoming”, an interview program, also on ESPN, taped in the hometowns of featured guests. The series launched in April 2009.

Awards

Reilly has been voted NSSA
National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association
The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, or NSSA, is an organization of sports media members in the United States. It constitutes the American chapter of the International Sports Press Association ....

 National Sportswriter of the Year eleven times. He is second only to the late Jim Murray
Jim Murray (sportswriter)
James Patrick Murray was an American sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times from 1961 to 1998.Many of his achievements include winning the NSSA's Sportswriter of the Year award an astounding fourteen times...

 of the Los Angeles Times (14) in number of times winning that award. In 2009, he joined a roster of journalism notables as winner of the Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His work has also been recognized by the prestigious New York Newspaper Guild's Page One Award for Best Magazine Story.

Film

Reilly co-wrote the screenplay for Leatherheads
Leatherheads
Leatherheads is a 2008 American sports comedy film from Universal Pictures directed by and starring George Clooney. The film also stars Renée Zellweger, Jonathan Pryce and John Krasinski and focuses on the early years of professional American football....

, a film directed by George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...

, starring Clooney, Renee Zellweger
Renée Zellweger
Renée Kathleen Zellweger is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire , and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary ...

 and John Krasinski
John Krasinski
John Burke Krasinski is an American actor, film director, and writer. He is most widely known for playing Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom The Office...

 and released in April 2008.

Reilly’s first novel, Missing Links, has been optioned for development as a feature film.

Style

The New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....

called Reilly "one of the funniest humans on the planet."

Reilly does have a serious side and has written on a broad range subjects. His writing often focuses on themes of family, heroism, and human spirit. He has said in his columns that he doesn't write about sports, but writes "about people IN sports".

Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

's Josh Levin
Josh Levin
Josh Levin is a senior editor at Slate magazine. He also hosts the magazine's sports podcast Hang Up and Listen.-Early life:Levin was born and raised in New Orleans...

 noted that Reilly had an affinity for discussing pro athletes and their accomplishments via tooth jokes. He is especially harsh on dental flossing. He described Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Formerly the World No...

's 2002 victory at Augusta as suspenseful as flossing, riding Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times, after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support...

's team car about as boring as flossing sharks, would rather floss crocodiles than go skydiving, and stated John Elway
John Elway
John Albert Elway, Jr. is a former American football quarterback and currently is the executive vice president of football operations for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League . He played college football at Stanford and his entire professional career with the Denver Broncos...

's perfect endorsement product would be Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....

 dental floss.

Controversies

In 2002, Reilly responded to Sammy Sosa
Sammy Sosa
Samuel Peralta "Sammy" Sosa is a Dominican former professional baseball right fielder. Sosa played with four Major League Baseball teams over his career which spanned from 1989-2007....

's assertion that he would "take a drug test if someone offered it to him" by spontaneously offering him a chance to drive to a local lab and take a drug test after a game; Sosa reacted by yelling and threatening him. Reilly responded in his column the next week.

Reilly has also been a frequent critic of former San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds
Barry Bonds
Barry Lamar Bonds is an American former Major League Baseball outfielder. Bonds played from 1986 to 2007, for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. He is the son of former major league All-Star Bobby Bonds...

 for his treatment of his teammates, his off-field behavior and his alleged steroid use.

Nothing But Nets

In 2006, Reilly wrote a column in Sports Illustrated about program dedicated to providing anti-malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 nets to African children at a cost of $10 per net. His request for contributions elicited a response from thousands and led to the creation the Nothing But Nets foundation in partnership with the United Nations Foundation
United Nations Foundation
The United Nations Foundation started up in 1998 with a $1 billion grant from Ted Turner in order to support the United Nations in executing its programs worldwide. The creation of the Foundation was intended to encourage other donors to also support the UN in its activities...

. By mid-2009, the initiative has collected over $24 million dollars.

Personal

Reilly married the former Cynthia Puchniarz, four years younger, in October 2008. From 1983 until 2003, he was married to the former Linda Campbell of Boulder, Colorado. Together they had three children whom Reilly writes about often.

Reilly appeared in a Miller Lite
Miller Lite
Miller Lite is a 4.2% abv pale lager brand sold by MillerCoors of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Sibling beers include Miller Genuine Draft and Miller High Life.-History:...

 commercial with Rebecca Romijn
Rebecca Romijn
Rebecca Alie Romijn is an American actress and former fashion model. She is best known for her role as Mystique in the X-Men films, and for her recurring role as Alexis Meade on the television series Ugly Betty.-Early life:...

.

External links

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