A Reilly-shaped hole at the back of SI

Even after Rick Reilly's departure, my ritual is the same: when I get my weekly copy of Sports Illustrated in the mail, I flip straight to the back page.

But instead of Reilly, smiling at me with that cheesy smile as if he had just told a joke or was about to, I find these Wall Street Journal-esque caricatures of guys like S.L. Price, Jack McCallum, and Chris Ballard. And instead of the Life of Reilly, it's the Point After.

These men are all great writers in their own right, no doubt about it, but they are not Reilly. They know it, their editors know it, and we, the readers know it. They do not anchor the magazine the way Reilly did, like the last runner on a relay team: lying in wait for the home stretch, ready to grab the baton and carry the team to victory.

Now having said all this, I believe Reilly has lost a step or two in the last few years. His laugh out loud pieces and his tear-jerker columns had become fewer and farther between. I might even say that at $2 million per, Reilly is a bigger loss to SI than he is a gain to ESPN.

But that's neither here nor there.

The point is that there is a vacuum near the end of each new issue of Sports Illustrated, and someone needs to fill it permanently. Selena Roberts (formerly of the New York Times) and Dan Patrick are probably the leading candidates, but it's tough to know if either can fill Reilly's shoes.