Rick Reilly is a sports columnist who in the past wrote the final column in Sports Illustrated and Reilly moved to ESPN in 2008, where he was featured as a columnist for ESPN.com and wrote the last column for ESPN the Magazine. In his columns “
The Weak Shall Inherit the Gym” and “Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!”, Reilly suggests that he writes sports columns because he referencesdodgeball and cheerleading. I chose Reilly because I enjoyed Max Berry’s columns that we read in class, and I like reading about sports.
In his columns, Reilly implements the figurative language technique of hyperbole. Reilly voices his opinion about dodgeball’s place in schools’ gym classes. He emphasizes his opinions when he references that if they take dodgeball away, the following activities will be next: “Baseball. Involves wrong-headed notions of stealing, errors, and gruesome hit-and-run. Players should always be safe, never out. Hopscotch. Sounds vaguely alcoholic, not to mention demeaning to our friends of Scottish ancestry” (The Weak). Here, Reilly exaggerates the effect of taking dodgeball away from schools. Even though you know that this is an obvious exaggeration, while reading it you picture these hyperboles being put into place and realize that there is more importance of dodgeball than meets the eye. In his other column, he talks about how he believes that cheerleading is not a sport, and the stereotypical cheerleader persona that many embrace during their high school and college years. Reilly is talking about now there are cheer gyms and cheerleading championships on ESPN now, and writes, “This is the event in which 408 girls named Amber attempt to create a human Eiffel Tower” (
Sis! Boom!). Reilly critiques the societal development that cheerleading has had on young girls that choose to become cheerleaders. He also pokes fun at cheerleaders, though admitting that his sisters used to cheer at a young age. In both of his columns, Reilly uses hyperboles to relay to the reader his strong feelings about dodgeball and cheerleading. These exaggerations show how strongly Reilly detests the exclusion of dodgeball and how ridiculous he believes cheerleading to be.
I loved both of these columns! These are very relatable and the authors use of metaphors was very clear and you explained them very well. Besides using metaphors the author uses question marks. The author uses question marks to try and make the reader think and comprehend certain questions that help get the point across. Both of these columns are evidence of certain syntax techniques and how the author uses them to get the point across.
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