Rick Reilly, NFL Draft, Anger

Rick Reilly is one of those people who makes me feel pretty miserable about life. He has carte-blanche to 99% of the sports world because even Reilly pub is good pub while simultaneously appropriating an undoubtedly ridiculous amount of money from ESPN for doing so. He's the Paris Hilton of writers, except I'm already well aware that rich attractive women enjoy inappropriate privilege.

His newest bit on the NFL draft is like Heidi Montag's fourteenth surgery. Entitled "Not feeling the NFL draft", Reilly explains by example that not all high draft picks have panned out, discusses which teams drafted the most Pro Bowl appearances from 1997-2007 (the Colts, 37; the part of the column where Rick put a team's name next to a number corresponding to the number of Pro Bowl appearances by their drafts picks over a ten year span was actually enjoyable and might even form the basis for coffeemaker conversion tomorrow), and then concludes that "The NFL draft comes off as though the story ends after the last pick, as though the movie ends the moment Dorothy's house lands on the witch; put on your coat, the movie is over, THE END.

What it really is, of course, is THE START."

I left off his last reference to the Cleveland Browns (second-to-last in his statistical experiment; even though the Lions had the fewest (4) draft pick Pro Bowls, Reilly oddly spent considerable fingerpower on the Browns' draft picks and then hated on them in a disconcertingly-unidentifiable way instead of the Lions in his finale) for brevity.

I do not understand Rick's uppercasory infatuation with THE END of the draft. Admittedly, I've never watched it to the end on television, but I doubt a large Chinaman whacks a gong after the last pick and mourners ceremoniously leave the little draft shithole having just witnessed something terminate. To the extent we're describing an event that happens over a finite period of time, that ends, the NFL draft absolutely ends. But not like Rick says.

Let's sum up what Mr. Reilly just shat on ESPN: (1) "Not feeling the NFL draft"; (2) "It's like reading a novel with the last chapter torn out, watching a movie with no third act, falling in love after the first kiss but before you've tried her spaghetti"; (3) scintillating numbers; (4) "What it really is, of course, is the start". RICK REILLY HAS ALMOST CERTAINLY BEEN TO THE PLAYBOY MANSION BECAUSE HE HAS WRITTEN THINGS ANALOGOUS TO THE ABOVE.

Yes boss, I'll be in at 7:45, can't wait, thanks.