I think Rick Reilly is sometimes entertaining. He plays the similar card as Bill Simmons from a different angle ('I'm just a normal guy who gets to live a life that revolves around sports') and most of the time it works fine, if forgettably. But, he can also be an annoying little bitch. I do have to allow for the fact that he has to crank out an article on regular intervals that fits within his normal-white-guy niche and this story had been floating around the interwebs.
He makes a valid point that the Northrups didn't mention any of the pseudo-sexual contact in their reasoning for having their son default to Cassy in the opening round. To me, that's a good thing. I would tend to think that it is them trying to rock the boat the least and give the most bland answer to a story-hungry media and move on. Boys and girls are different. That is an awkward fact, especially when you're in HS.
As you may know, I wrestled in Texas for a little over a decade. Fortunately, I never had to deal with wrestling a girl, but I had friends that did. There are various ways to deal with it (some guys even molested them, which is the worst outcome in my opinion), but for the guy, its a no-win situation: win and you beat up on a girl. Lose and you lost to a girl. That is a fate worse than death for an adolescent boy. I know that losing is something you have to learn to do, yadda yadda, but I can understand his desire to avoid it.
The biggest issue for me here, is not Reilly's difference of opinion or his logic. Its the fact that he (like many other sports writers) think there is something to be gained from taking this imagined moral high ground and that they can't fathom any other line of logic. His closing line is the kind of thing that would get your ass kicked in most any athletic environment:
Neither he, nor his coaches, nor his dad, had any comment. He was reportedly on his way back home to Marion, Iowa, where his mom was about to deliver her eighth child.
For the kid's sake, I hope it's a boy.
I hope he has some hint as to how big of a self-righteous douchebag he is. Maybe he can share his enlightenment with Easterbrook and King.
