No corny jokes.

No stale pop culture references.

Just a touching story about a Montana kid whose father was a big John Elway fan.

I’ll give props when props are due…

Good column, Rick.

In an interview with Newsday.com, Rick Reilly discussed a number of different topics, including how he feels about sports blogs and his relationship with Bill Simmons.

“I don’t really go on the blogs, because they don’t really like anybody. Jesus could do a column and they’d be like, ‘What the hell is with the hair?’ It’ll always be something. Charles Barkley told me a long time ago always half the people are going to hate you and half the people are going to love you. If you suddenly change who you are, the other half will hate you. I don’t really care what people holding down couch springs do or say.”

I get it now. So since he has read some negative stuff on the blogs about his writing, bloggers must dislike everything. That makes perfect sense. Rick might want to consider that bloggers are just a subsection of his audience that actually has time to write about what they like and don’t like. Sure, there are blogs out there that just throw mud at everyone, but here at The Scores Report, there are writers we like and writers we don’t like.

He commented on his (outrageous) salary…

Every issue of ESPN The Magazine ends the same way. I absolutely dread flipping to Rick Reilly’s back page column because it usually throws me into a state of depression. I can’t believe that ESPN is paying Reilly what they are when the guy can only produce a good, entertaining column once in a blue moon.

Reilly’s column for the Feb. 23 issue is no different. He starts off with a bad joke.

I’ve been fired more than pottery.

Ugh.

Hey, at least he didn’t shoehorn in some stale pop culture reference. I’ll give him that.

He then runs down his personal employment history, or at least those jobs that didn’t end well.

I was fired from my first job at 12. Some people apparently don’t want their tulips mowed. I was fired from my babysitting gig at 13. Who knew a diaper wouldn’t completely flush? Got fired as a machine/tool rental store assistant at 16. Thought the boss said, “Fifteen parts oil, one part gas in the jackhammers.” Turns out, it was the other way around. Pick-ee.

And how did I react whenever I got canned? Not well. Once, my pals and I egged the offending organization’s window front.

So he performs horribly at his job and reacts to getting fired by vandalizing his ex-employee’s place of business? Nice.

He then goes on about how coaches are too nice after they’ve been fired.

Regular readers might be familiar with my occasional posts — “Correcting Bill Simmons” and “Correcting Rick Reilly” — where I try to help out my better-paid, less-informed counterparts by pointing out when/where they’re wrong. This time, I’m going to tackle ESPN The Mag as a whole. I know I’m going to hear some guy at the sports bar regurgitate this “analysis” as his own opinion and I won’t have the wherewithal to call him on it.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite blowhard — and I doubt he’d take that as an insult given his commentary stylings — Stephen A. Smith. In his “Up Front” column, he criticizes Oscar De La Hoya for not knowing when to give it up.

Help, someone! Pretty Please!

It would be really nice if someone could muster some plausible explanation as to why a fighter like Oscar De La Hoya, beyond his prime for quite a while before the Manny Pacquiao bout, still chose to step into the ring and get his brains beat out. The mismatch was so obvious that Oscar’s wife, Millie, was screaming for him to quit before he had the common sense to do it himself.

It’s really easy to knock De La Hoya after the match is over when it’s clear that he shouldn’t have fought the fight. But one quick look at the pre-fight odds (-165 Hoya / +135 Pacquiao) reveals that this fight fooled a LOT of people, not just the Golden Boy. According to the betting public, De La Hoya was the clear favorite in the fight, so why would Oscar think that he was about to step into a beatdown? The betting public clearly doesn’t know everything, but it’s a pretty good gauge of public opinion and if the public is fooled, why would De La Hoya — who has an ego of a big-time fighter — know any better?

If Smith writes this column before the fight, I’d give him props. But this is classic kick-’em-while-they’re-down writing.

Let’s move on to Mike & Mike (Golic & Greenberg) who answer “The Big Question” — if the best players in college sports don’t make any noise in the pros, what’s their legacy?

Regular readers might be familiar with my ongoing series, Correcting Bill Simmons. Now that I’m forcibly exposed to Rick Reilly’s back page column in ESPN The Mag, it’s time to start a new series with Reilly as the star.

This week, he wrote a somewhat touching piece about how Jay Cutler’s dealings with Type 1 diabetes has affected children all over the country. Reilly isn’t bad at the heart-warming stuff, but when he tries to be funny, he just comes off as stiff. Take this paragraph:

Shy and mop-haired, he led the league in shrugs. He looked like he had terminal influenza. The bags under his eyes had bags. And yet he’d sleep 10 hours at night and three more after practice. He lost 35 pounds in the 2007 season alone. He couldn’t concentrate. He was starting to look like the biggest bust since Lindsay Lohan. And that’s when he found out he had diabetes. Or rather, it had him.

All right, there are two problems here. The first is the statement that Cutler was a bust when he hit the league. I don’t know if Reilly is talking about Cutler’s first or second season, but he played pretty well even prior to getting diagnosed with diabetes. In 2006, he played in five games and threw for an average of 200 yards, 1.8 TD and 1.0 INT. In 2007, he played in all 16 games and finished with 3497 yards, 20 TD and 14 INT. What about these numbers says “bust”?

When I found out that a pre-diagnosed Cutler was still able to be a decent fantasy QB despite losing 35 pounds and much of his strength, I put him at the top of my sleeper QB list heading into 2008. Needless to say, that has paid off.

Then there’s the comparison to Lindsay Lohan.

He was starting to look like the biggest bust since Lindsay Lohan.

What does this mean? Is he saying that Lohan was a bust in that she was destined for big things but has since fallen from grace? Or is he saying that she has big knockers? If it’s the former, I don’t know how relevant it is to refer to actors as “busts.” They weren’t drafted in the first round and they weren’t given big contracts before playing in the big leagues. If it’s the latter – which is far less likely considering Reilly’s typically PG-rated fare – I could think of a dozen well-endowed starlets that would make for a better joke. (There’s Pamela Anderson, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayak, Jennifer Tilly, Catherine Bell, just to name a few.)

Then there’s this attempt at humor, referencing Cutler’s regular blood tests, which require him to prick his fingers over and over…

What Cutler wants to be is a normal QB, but he never will be. From now on, he’ll have more holes than a Jessica Simpson movie.

Really? More holes than a Jessica Simpson movie? Reilly can’t find another “actress” to kick around. Simpson hasn’t been in a major motion picture in two years (2006’s “Employee of the Month”), which I haven’t seen. She was in “Dukes of Hazzard” in 2005, but I don’t really remember it being filled with plot holes. (It was just a bad, bad movie.)

Maybe Reilly should take a shot at Kate Hudson, who has been in no fewer than six horrid romantic comedies in the last five years. I’m thinking of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Alex & Emma,” “Raising Helen,” “You, Me & Dupree,” “Fool’s Gold” and “My Best Friend’s Girl.” If you’re a big-wig Hollywood studio exec and you’re about to greenlight a bad rom-com, Kate Hudson should be on speed dial.

This is just a case of Rick Reilly trying to be Bill Simmons. He thinks that if he shoehorns some pop culture reference in as a joke that it will make his stuff seem fresh and funny. But it just makes him look tired.

He should stick to the sappy, sentimental stuff. The world only has one Bill Simmons, and that’s plenty.