[Vision2020] Giving Up the Life (Rick Reilly)

[Tom Hansen]

>From the "Life of Reilly" (by Rick Reilly) column of the December 3, 2007
edition of Sports Illustrated -

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Giving Up the Life
By Rick Reilly

I was born the youngest of four, an attention-seeking missile, half boy,
half caffeine and a leading cause of teachers' facial tics.  But I always
had one clear dream - to work at SI.

So why now, after 23 years, am I quitting?

I mean, we're talking more than 850 bylines - which is funny, because I
thought I'd never get to 10.

I came to this job 100 feet over my head and with no snorkel.  I was 27 and
terrified of being fired.  I'd gobble aspirins and down them with coffee
until my stomach blew out and dumped me into the hospital.  Twice.

I learned to control my fears with biofeedback - making one giant breath
last 30 seconds, puffing my cheeks out on the exhale until I turned slightly
purple.  I looked like a nauseated puffer fish.  When I made my first TV
appearance, on a SportsCenter segment in 1988, my stomach was all knives.
We were supposed to go live from my living room in two minutes, enough time
to take a couple 30-second breaths to calm down.  I was in the middle of my
second when my then wife ran in, horrified.

"You're on the air!"

My earpiece had failed.  The host had asked, "Rick, is your book an
indictment of college football?"  Cut to me, peering into the camera and
suddenly inhaling mightily.  But the host thought I was thinking hard about
his question, so he waited.  The the slooooow exhale.  Still waiting.
Purple.  Surely, the answer was coming now?  Nope, another suck-in.

"Well," the host deadpanned, "we know he's alive.  We can see him
breathing."

Eventually, I switched to decaf, and realized how much fun this job could
be.  I got to smoosh cars in a monster truck, mush dogs in Alaska, crush
balls with Tiger, chase Lance, face Ryan and race everything from a blimp to
Indy cars.

One time I picked up the phone and heard, "Hold for the President, please."
One of my pals, no doubt.  The president of what, the Kiwanis?" I sneered.
Only to hear a gravelly voice on the other end go, "What?  No, it's Bill
Clinton.  We're just laughin' our asses off over here over whatchu wrote!"

Best moment ever?  In a men's shower.  Hours after he led his Denver Broncos
to a stunning win over Green Bay - ending his run of Super Bowl humiliations
- I could hear John Elway whooping and hollering alone in the shower.  "You
know what?" I said to the old towel guy sitting on the bench next to me.
"That's the sound of redemption.  That's primal joy, man."  He shrugged and
said, "Nah, we ran out of hot water."

Still, the big names and big events weren't the best part of the job.  The
best part has been my e-mail inbox.  I seem to have become the national
clearinghouse for stories about people overcoming disease, war or tragedy to
achieve great things - tales of courage and resilience that would melt an
executioner's heart.

I could tell only a fraction of those stories, but the ones I did write have
stayed with me.  You may read them once and forget about them, but I hear
from my columns all the time.  They call, they write, they tell me that
their lives just keep getting better.

Just one example from this year:  Do you remember Sean Cronk, the kid in
Everett, Mass., with cerebral palsy but could make tons of free throws in a
row (SI, March 5, 2007)?  He finally got into a game and won a playoff with
one.  Well, he's going to go to college, thanks to the guy I wrote about the
very next week - billionaire Kenny trout, who flies his sixth-grade Dallas
AAU basketball team in private 737s.  Troutt called Sean's mom and asked,
"Anywhere Sean wants to go, I'm paying."  So Sean is going to junior college
in the fall, with plans to transfer to UMass.  Nice.

My favorite column, though, was not about one person but millions - the
impoverished Africans who benefited from Nothing But Nets, the anti-malaria
campaign you and I started with the help of the United Nations Foundation
(SI, May 1, 2006).  Every week I hear about another kid donating his bar
mitzvah money, a Brownie troop sending its lemonade profits, a family
choosing nets over Christmas gifts.  We're at $16 million, and much of that
has come in twenties and fives and rolls of quarters.  Nobody does teamwork
like sports fans.

Anyway, it's been my privilege to write for this elegant magazine and its
wonderful readers.  Now I'll find out if my little voice can carry in a
whole new way.  You can reach me anytime at RickReillyonline.com, and
beginning June 1, I'll be starting a new job, which includes writing a
column and working in TV.  Of course, when I told my son Jake that, he said,
"Dad, it's not gonna be high-def, right?"

Right.  And I promise not to turn purple, either.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

Came a tribe from the north brave and bold . . .

"Here We Have Idaho"
http://www.tomandrodna.com/HWHI.mp3

"I-D-A-H-O Idaho Idaho Go Go Go"
http://www.tomandrodna.com/Vandals.mp3