Reilly Nails It!

I am so torn on Rick Reilly. Sometimes he drives me absolutely crazy, and other times he writes columns like this one on the Mike Shanahan/Donovan McNabb controversy in Washington. Reilly writes this column using that rare commodity these days, common sense, and I find myself wanting to like his stuff again.

For those not aware, a couple weeks ago, new Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan, benched Quarterback Donovan McNabb with 2 minutes to go and inserted Rex Grossman. Grossman screwed up and Washington lost the game. Shanahan initially said Grossman knew the 2 minute offense better, and then later said that he felt McNabb's conditioning wasn't good enough to run the 2 minute offense. Basically, Shanahan screwed up because everybody knows Donovan McNabb is a better Quarterback than Rex Grossman, but Shanahan couldn't admit it...he has a hard time admitting he's wrong, as do most type A personalities.

What caused this situation to blow up is the fact that Donovan McNabb is African American. Yes, it's all coming back now isn't it? This is the same Donovan McNabb that Rush Limbaugh commented on several years back. Rush was summarily fired from ESPN for causing controversy...which is ironically why ESPN hired him in the first place. Anyway, as the race card seems to follow McNabb everywhere he goes, several prominent liberal hippy sports writers started calling Mike Shanahan a racist. Most notably, John Feinstein, who Rick Reilly so eloquently destroys in his column.

(Author's Note: I've read a lot of John Feinstein's work, and he's a very good writer, however, he tends to let his leftward leaning politics sneak into his writing a little too often. That's just my opinion, which I give here on this blog, in case you haven't noticed.)

See, Rick Reilly gets it and John Feinstein does not. Not everything that happens, good or bad, between black and white people involves racism. Sometimes one guy is just stupid and makes a mistake, which happens to wrong the other guy. If it was the white guy who screwed up and wronged the black guy, does that automatically make him racist? No! Absolutely not! Use some common sense here!

John Feinstein should stick to writing about sports and Rick Reilly should keep writing great stuff like this.