NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Best-selling author Rick Reilly, who is in his 20th year as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, will bring his humorous insights into the world of sports, to Vanderbilt University Monday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m.
Titled “Funny You Should Ask,” the talk is free to Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff with tickets available in Sarratt Box Office. Tickets for community members are $10 and available through any Ticketmaster outlet. The event will be held in the ballroom of the Student Life Center, located off of 25th Avenue South, on Vanderbilt’s campus. Vanderbilt University Speakers Committee is sponsoring the talk.
Reilly writes the weekly “Life of Reilly” column, which runs on the last page of Sports Illustrated magazine. His current book is Who’s Your Caddy?, which rose to No. 3 on The New York Times’ best-seller list. In it, he tells about caddying for everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Donald Trump to a $50,000-a-hole-gambler. His previous book, The Life of Reilly: The Best of Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly was also a New York Times bestseller.
The New York Daily News has named Reilly “one of the funniest humans on the planet” and Publishers Weekly called him “an indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray and Lewis Grizzard, with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson.”
Reilly has covered a wide range of sports stories from ice skater Katarina Witt behind the Iron Curtain, actor Jack Nicholson in the front row and wrestling priests in Mexico City to hitting the links with President Clinton and playing golf with O.J. Simpson.
His first novel, Missing Links, a comic golf romance, was hailed by The New York Times as offering “three laughs per page” and has been printed seven times in hardcover and nine in paperback. The book is scheduled to be the basis for a sitcom on the F/X cable network.
During his career Reilly has flown upside down at 600 miles per hour in an F-14, faced fastballs from Nolan Ryan, jumped from 14,000 feet with the U.S. Army Parachute Team, driven a stock car 142 miles per hour, competed against 107 women for a spot in the WNBA, worked three innings of play-by-play for the Colorado Rockies, anchored a half hour of ESPNEWS, driven a monster truck over six parked cars and played 108 holes of golf in one day.
He has also won numerous awards, including the New York Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award for Best Magazine Story. He is co-author of The Boz, the best-selling autobiography of bad-boy Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth; Gretzky, with hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings; I’d Love to but I Have a Game with NBC announcer Marv Albert and The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Barkley.
Reilly began his career in 1979 taking phoned-in high-school volleyball scores for his hometown Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera while a sophomore at the University of Colorado – he graduated from there in 1981. He wrote for two years at the Camera, the Denver Post and the Los Angeles Times, respectively before moving to Sports Illustrated in 1985.
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Media contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-NEWS
Princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu