Maddening Plaguirism

So Rick Reilly bitched earlier this year to Gelf Magazine, complaining that his intellectual property is jacked by ESPN more than a house owned by a baskeball player in Chicago. He said that, “[he’s] flat-out handed them five or six Emmys.”

See, he put in all the the effort in coming up with these ideas. Everyone is always looking for a new angle, and well ESPN took Reilly’s angle and didn’t link back to him.

(Now they could have saved a ton of hassle by just having a real-journalist roll on the side of the page. Then Rick and ESPN could be RSS BFF. Well, ‘cept for that douche Simmons, real journalists hate him, too. But that’s a tangent.)

Rick, beware though, Ethan Albright is going to (long) snap your damn neck. You stole his idea. You took his angle, and didn’t mention him.

Actually, it’s Juan Turlington’s angle from The Phat Phree where he wrote a profanity filled tirade on lowly rated Madden players funnier than any of your imaginary conversations with golf gods, draft picks or cheerleaders. There was more humanity in Albrights plea for Madden’s acceptance than in any of your tear jerkers that serve as an allegory to an Aesop fable.

Juan is flat-out handing you another National Sports Writer of the Year award.

With Madden gaining main-stream acceptance more and more each year, with every player thinking his rating is too low, with every reference to Tecmo Bo Jackson, you decided that people who had ignored video games thus far needed you to show the human side of the PS3.

I’m shocked you didn’t make this about NCAA 08, then you could have talked about how these were just amateur athletes trying to get an education who were being subjected to quantification by some computer dorks in the Valley. Could have tugged at the ol’ heartstrings.

You ripped off Turlington. You went and talked to several crapily-rated players and presented it as an original idea.

You shouldn’t be throwing rocks when you live in a glass house. You need to save those rocks for Courtney Brown, the player you asked about being the least aware in the game, to eat for breakfast.

Or perhaps save them for your readers, who you appearantly give a 12 to in awareness for thinking this is another original Riff of Reilly.