With ESPN, Reilly sells out

Rick Reilly sold his soul to the devil.

That was the first thought that entered countless readers' minds earlier this week when it was announced that the veteran Sports Illustrated columnist had given the finger to SI and was leaving for a gig with ESPN.

Reilly's move was unexpected, but thanks to the rumored 10 million reasons he was given by ESPN, the respected sports journalist is now cashing in his morals and teaming up with a network that couldn't find the word journalism if it was written on its teleprompters.

As a columnist, Reilly represented everything ESPN was not and he campaigned against the devolution of sports journalism that ESPN has epitomized in recent years. Sports had taken a backseat to entertainment, with the airwaves filled with pundits screaming at each other in split screen, reporters who had biased relationships with athletes and an overall lacks substance. While it remains the No. 1 source of sports news, their in-depth coverage of sports has given way to non-stop self-promotion of nearly all of the network's personalities.

Whereas ESPN dominated sports coverage with sound bites and trivial viewpoints, Reilly managed to maintain the gravitas of sports without blowing it out of proportion. To Reilly, sports wasn't the biggest thing in the world, but he understood the times when it needed to seem that way. He didn't write about sports, he wrote about people, which appealed to the casual and die-hard fan alike.

Now he's joined the worldwide leader in the bastardization of sports coverage.

ESPN's daily agenda is obvious every time you tune in to SportsCenter: appealing to the lowest common denominator in the biggest U.S. markets. If something doesn't appeal to the big-time cities, it doesn't appeal to ESPN. Reilly has now put himself in a position where his columns on the sports everyman will face one of two scenarios: Either they'll be exploited for cheap tears and laughs, or altered to fit better within coverage of New York and Los Angeles.

Reilly knows this better than most: He's seen his material ripped off by ESPN for its own promotion a number of times. Yet, the sound of those millions tend to drown out any ethical thoughts.

The track record of how ESPN handles big-time writers is insulting, with journalists being turned into talking heads with any unique viewpoints being dummed down. Just look at Scoop Jackson, whose formerly uncensored and thought-provoking stance on sports, race and culture has been curtailed to the point of near non-importance. This is a terrible insult to a writer of his caliber.

Now, how long will it be before we see Reilly's columns pigeon-holed into topics and peppered with inside jokes and self-promotion? Reilly knows exactly what he is getting into, and while we can hope that he breaks the mold and makes changes at ESPN, the network has a way of homogenizing the views it expresses.

In his book "Hate Mail from Cheerleaders," Reilly commented about a harsh column he wrote criticizing Mark McGwire and expressed his dissatisfaction with the ESPN approach.

"Real journalism, as opposed to the I-can't-rip-him-he-plays-in-my-golf-tournament kind perpetrated by certain ESPN anchors, can't protect friends when they screw up," Reilly wrote.

But standards can take a backseat when the price is right, eh Rick?