Ricky Reilly wants a psychiatrist to explain Lance - i want one to explain Rick

I loved Rick when he wrote for Sports Illustrated, but I'm seriously confused. After Lance's interview aired, he's gone all over the place last night and today ripping Lance as shown here:http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=8855741How does one reconcile his anger with Lance now with the the fact that after Lance got busted, he defended him in a column in September that began as follows:

Reilly wrote:

I'm wearing something yellow Friday for Lance Armstrong. Not because I think he's innocent. He just gave up his chance to prove his innocence, so I suppose he isn't.

But I don't care. I'm wearing yellow just to say thank you. If he cheated in a sport where cheating is as common as eating, then I'm wearing yellow to thank him for everything he's done since he cheated.

I'm asking this question seriously. What changed in Rick's head?

Does it simply take time?

At first, the long time defenders think "Well everyone cheated and he did so much good in cancer" and then they slowly come to the realization of what Lance actually did and what that means - how he destroyed people, etc.

Somehow the actual USADA report and confession have totally flipped the mainstream media and I'm not sure why.

lil ricky is offended that lance came out to the big O instead of giving him the exclusive story. journalists have egos too (remember that whole christian hesch fiasco? does anyone really care WHO these scumbags come out to? only the journalists themselves...)

sorry, i kind of forgot that you (rojo) are a journalist (sort of). what is your take on it? do you think reilly is that depraved? it seems to me this website has always only cared about getting these guys outed but no mind who "gets the story" because you will have a link on the front page whether you wrote the article or not.

Reilly's the biggest douche in sports journalism. Who else saw on Espn when he asked Stuart Scott to give him credit on breaking the rothlesberger injury on twitter? Definition of ego-maniac. His articles are the worst attempts at humor, now he's pissed for standing up for lance for so long. Hey Rick, you were trying so hard to be the guys friend that you put your journalistic integrity aside.

Rojo, this is called nuance. Reilly hates that Lance cheated, tried to dupe everyone, and negatively affected so many people's lives in the process. Reilly likes that Lance used his fame and success to positively affect so many people's lives.

Just because someone does something that we don't like doesn't mean that we have to paint them as being the bad guy all the time. I think this website is mostly trash because of poor moderation, yet I visit it almost everyday. Do I need a psychiatrist to explain why I do this? Of course not. I visit this site because despite all the negative garbage there's still a lot of great stuff here. I'm mature enough to handle that and you should be too.

In journalism today having access to "important" people might be the most important factor in how successful your career will be. It matters more than finding and reporting the "truth," even though everyone in the field will say that the latter is more important.

It was a feather in Reilly's cap for years that Lance liked him and would talk to him whenever Reilly wanted to within reasonable limits. That would have changed had Reilly ever questioned Armstrong's honesty. So there's a nice, symbiotic relationship in which Reilly thinks he's got the upper hand on all of Armstrong's public critics because he gets his stories straight from the horse's mouth or at least from some end of the horse.

Now Reilly sees he's been played for a "chump,' his term, and millions of people know it. Guys like you, who had no access to Armstrong like Reilly did but were calling him out anyway turned out to be right and Mr. Inside Story couldn't have been more wrong. That's going to tick a guy off.

Just found a great article by a guy names John Warner who writes often about liars and what not:http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/11-time-sportswriter-year-rick-reilly-should-also-come-clean

Warner wrote:

I imagine that Reilly simply wanted to believe Lance’s story because it was the story he wanted to hear so the journalist could safely be pals with one of the most amazing athletes ever, to be called "Riles" by the man who charged up the Alpe d'Huez to victory.

It still doesn't explain what caused the shift from his Steptmber praise

to now.

I'd like one to explain why the public is allowing the media to put the whole thing on Lance when virtually (perhaps literally) every top rider on the tour was using illegal performance enhancers.

Why anyone would go along wuth the story line that Lance somehow bullied all the other riders into using and that's why he is solely to blame.

What is going on here, as always goes on in the media, is a cover-up of the elites. The money elites who profited from the bike tour (sponsors, TV networks, etc.) . Who were undoubtedly in the know about the doping yet kept it covered up to keep the dough rolling in. Since these are the same guys who own the media conglomerates, we hear nothing about this.

What I want to know is how many times the public is going to be fooled by these folks before they catch on. It would seem the number is infinite when it comes to the Brojos who always seem to gladly pass on the official narrative of the mainstream media without a bit of cynicism.

Reilly wanted to maintain access and keep getting paid. He's a fraud. The biggest sports story since 1984 has been the pandemic of PED's in elite American sports and virtually every sports "journalist" made a decision to ignore it.

Rojo is becoming a sad little man. Can he get on the psychiatrist schedule.

Wejo took a drug to enhance performance. Now they are all high & mighty.

I've come to the conclusion that rojo is the greatest troll in the history of Letsrun. He has trolled me very hard.

rojo wrote:

,

I figured you would delete my post about wanting to see your psychiatric analysis.

If you are going to use this site for your petty bully pulpit, you should be man enough to let contrary opinions be heard.

Does Dane or Kip see one

Lance was brilliant and terrible. Don't you think?

The issues of drugs and other forms of corruption in cycling has ruined a lot of riders throughout the entire history of the sport.

Yes he was a total (whatever) but he also won the Tour an amazing 7 times.