My parents both attended Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. Careful readers know that the bucolic Green Mountain burg is my birthplace. In 2003, Reilly penned a moving tribute to one of the great small-school traditions of all-time, Picking Up Butch.
Here are the first few grafs:
The best college tradition is not dotting the i at Ohio State. It's not stealing the goat from Navy. Or waving the wheat at Kansas.My father framed the article. It hangs today in his old office. Later, other national media outlets picked up the story - Butch got airtime on CBS, ESPN and others, always with the same refrain: its the best tradition in college sports. On this most glorious of sporting days, I highly recommend a reread of Reilly's article. It's easy to be a cynic in today's sportscape - hell, the caricature that's now Rick Reilly does it professionally - but Butch has a way of bringing us back to the best of our natures.
It's Picking Up Butch at Middlebury (Vt.) College.
For 42 years Middlebury freshman athletes have been Picking Up Butch for football and basketball games. It's a sign-up sheet thing. Carry the ball bags. Gather all the towels. Pick Up Butch.
Basketball players, men and women, do it during football season. Football players do it during basketball season. Two hours before each home game, two freshmen grab whatever car they can get and drive a mile off campus to the tiny house where 54-year-old Butch Varno lives with his 73-year-old mother, Helen, who never got her driver's license. And they literally Pick Up Butch, 5'3" and 170 pounds, right off his bed. They put him in his wheelchair and push him out of the house, or one guy hauls him in a fireman's carry. They pile him into the car, cram the wheelchair into the trunk, take him to the game and roll him to his spot in the mezzanine for football games or at the end of the bench for basketball.
So read Picking Up Butch. And enjoy the Madness.
Posts
19 comments:
This redeems the school after your quiddich post.
I remember this column--it was really good.
Love the story and the character of the Vermont kids.
Reilly is still a loser.
Rick Reilly is still an epic d-bag.
i only said we'd redeem him temporarily
he really is a tool, but....
in 1994, he ventured to pinehurst resort under the auspices that he was going to write a glowing piece on the property and experience there. when he left the property, those that facilitated his boondoggle had a warm fuzzy feeling that rick was going to do them and the property right. he didn't give them any other indication. instead, he wrote this...
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7eo7pbq
it's long. but it's pretty good and all true. and it set the wheels in motion shortly thereafter for that property and many others to do something to improve the situation...2 years later they hired us and we've been there ever since. that article had as much to do with us getting hired there as our charm & good looks.
but really, there isn't a bigger tool out there.
i wish i could find the clip...at the '09 British Open reilly shows up to do one of his pre-coverage stories donning a white suite & purple tie. peter alliss is heard off camera saying to peter gannon, "when did neil sedaka come in here?"
numbnuts hears it and gets defensive, commenting on alliss' short sleeve dress shirt.
it's not like reilly himself picked up butch, right?
I remember seeing a piece about 'Picking up Butch' a few years back on ESPN. And I too think Reilly is a douche.
Reilly may be a douche, but his doucheness pales in comparison to many talking heads, like Skip Bayless or Stephen A. Smith.
I think we're piling on a little much here. There are many folks who are far more annoying.
I disagree. Reilly is a different type of douche. The "I'm better & smarter than you" type who acts like he's not a total self absorbed self promoter when he's as bad or worse than those he tries to differentiate himself from. He also regularly tweets pics of his plastic wife (who's no actually very hot despite what he thinks) and includes captions like "scoreboard". He's a total douche, TR. and he thinks he's funny. He's not. Not in the least.
it's the "funny" thing that really irks me about him. he thinks he's funny as hell, the bees' knees. i will pile on the douche that is rick reilly all day long. but yeah, skip bayless is right there with him, but a different kind of douche entirely. i'd put both of them on the mt. rushmore of sports guy douches. who are the other 2?
The Mt. Rushmore of Sports Douchiness: Reilly, Bayless, Cowherd, Stephen A.
Random political rhetoric generator...real time saver.
http://phrasegenerator.com/politics#.T2FKT0cEhtj.facebook
celebrate butch, you assholes. stop talking about reilly.
butch on the other hand, that's good stuff...
I celebrate Butch every day at my job, sort of. It's a great story.
On the other hand, I trash Rick Reilly every year. He's lousy.
Im working on the first day of March Madness. Don't tell me what to do, tiny.
In case you were not near a TV, I wanted to let you know that Jay Wright is back in teh TruTV studio today, and still looks good.
Thursday Madness open thread posted above...
Post a Comment