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After a long career at Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly is about to start working for ESPN. But Reilly hasn't always thought highly of the Worldwide Leader, as he expressed in this 2004 interview:

"ESPN, I think, in a lot of ways is conducting journalism-by-rolodex," Reilly said. "It's like, 'Hey, we know these guys. We party with these guys.' It's been my complaint about a lot of televised journalism, which rules the roost now, is that they're in bed with all these leagues. So ESPN can't really give you the hard-nosed story about Major League Baseball. And they can't really break a big NFL negative story because they're in bed. They want the contract for the next year. Were they to lose the NFL contract, they'd be in real trouble. Same with the NBA."

Reilly made a good point, and one that's been expressed by a lot of media analysts. So it will be interesting to see what his own approach will be once his paychecks start coming from ESPN. Reilly was never an investigative journalist who uncovered scandals inside sports leagues, but he also wasn't afraid to rip the sports leagues when he felt it necessary. Will he still do that when he's employed by a company that has multibillion-dollar contracts with those leagues?