Rick Reilly Summary

Cheerleaders are athletes too. They practice just as much as everyone else, sometimes even more. They get hurt just like everyone else, but only more severely. In “Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!” Rick Reilly attempts to get people of his side of cheerleading as a sport or in his mind not a sport. He does not want girls cheering on the other athletes at sporting events when they could be in the event instead. Rick Reilly conveys his message through a sandwich of logos, pathos, logos statements; this was very effective in my eyes even if at points he turned the majority of readers away with sarcastic anecdotes, but he manages to bring most back through his use of assertions.
Rick Reilly begins his article by attempting to make people think cheerleading is one of the most dangerous sports that high school’s offer. He backs this idea through the concepts of logos. He uses a report by The Physician and Sportsmedicine to back his point that cheerleading is dangerous. This was a good use of authority. Rick Reilly follows this up with an assertion that cheerleading is more dangerous than football (100). This start was a good way to
get readers on his side. People would start to be interested in what he was saying and start to feel the same way he does about the issue.
If he continued these strategies he would have won almost every reader, but he strayed off track. Rick Reilly was trying to affect the readers on an emotional level, but his use of pathos hurt him more than it helped. He needed to keep his emotion out. Once the reader senses Rick Reilly’s emotion they will become defense full of the subject even if they are on the border. His use of sarcasm and shots straight at cheerleading are not taken kindly. Rick Reilly calls cheerleading “dumb” (100) and says cheerleaders wouldn’t even notice if a UFO landing behind them (100). These blunt attacks had a disastrous effect on the reader’s current idea on the topic, but it did make sure that everyone was now listening. By making the reader hate him it made them focus on the topic and start taking what he was saying seriously.
Now that he brought in the reader he had to get them back on his side. This required a complete tone shift. Rick Reilly changes everything when he starts asking the reader questions about why cheerleaders (girls) are not as good as boys (100). Instead of being mad at him they were now wondering why girls do have to wear short skirts and tight tops, and have are told to cheer on the guys. This use of pathos did a great job of changing the reader’s emotion. He was half way to converting people from liking cheerleading to finding it degrading.
It was at this point where Rick Reilly had to complete his sandwich by bringing the reader back with more logos. He makes the assertion that this is a new age. Girls can do things they do not just have to stand on the sidelines. There are female sport stars like Mia Ham and the William sisters. Mia Ham was in commercials with Michael Jordan arguing who is better. Rick Reilly’s point that this is a new gage the reader could not deny was true. He had to slowly move the reader closer and closer to his belief. Rick Reilly then compares cheerleading to the Harley Davidson Olympics, saying that neither is really a sport. Neither is very hard, anyone can count “Two! Four! Six! Eight!” at the same time is the point he was trying to make. This assertion was a good use of logos. It made cheerleader seem not very important. It is just there to fill up space on ESPN’s off days. If readers were not completely turned away earlier they should be starting to believe in his beliefs and ideas.
The use of pathos seems to be a tricky process. Rick Reilly still has not mastered it. He brings too much of his own ideas into those statements. When that happens he either becomes way too sarcastic or stretches the truth to fit his points. One of these emotional points was “Sorry, Mr. Roosevelt, we just gave away your daughter’s chemistry scholarship. But you should have seen Amber here do “We’ve got sprit!””. He was implying that cheerleaders are taking away scholarships from students at school only for academics. This statement is false. Colleges are given money to give out scholarships to certain things, not everything. If a scholarship was taken from cheerleading it would probably go to football or volleyball or any other sport. This point was an exaggeration that was used to mislead the read into being angry at cheerleading. I do not believe it work, because it was too blunt. This style of written can turn readers away quickly.
After leading more readers away he needed a fast turnaround to get them back with him. Rick Reilly used logos to bring the reader back again. He repeats his earlier statements that cheerleaders can be athletes in other sports. He says cheerleading holds them back from other sports. Cheer season is yearlong and takes a giant toll on the body. This makes it impossible for the girls even have a chance to try other sports. Someone might not believe in Rick Reilly’s belief that cheerleading is not a sport, but I do not know one cheerleader that does not wish they could be able to play another sport as well as cheer. This helped him gain respect from the people that did not like him.
Rick Reilly uses assertion very well as he talks about the health issues of cheerleading. This logos helps support his point. He talks about how cheerleaders are always at every game no matter what the weather is like outside. They aren’t just outside they have to wear “short skirts” and be happy while they are doing it. I know when I am in bad weather outside in bad weather I usually get sick. Unless cheerleaders have developed an amazing immune systems just by being cheerleaders this point is valid. Rick Reilly has been helping himself with comments like this one.
Rick Reilly changes his strategy to end his article.
He starts throwing punches and being aggressive with his statements. He uses authority to say that cheerleaders are not all perfect. There were professional cheerleaders that do drugs, and do whatever it takes to be skinny, even if it’s not healthy. This is a good point, but he goes about the wrong way of saying it. He uses sarcasm to back this statement and it just comes out wrong. After that he shows his true reasoning for writing the article. He comes out and says it might be a hard topic to write against. Cheerleaders are like baseball, an American tradition, but someone needed to stand out against them and be the bad guy. Women have had equal rights for a long time now and do not have to show off the guys any more. This is the point he has been trying to make throughout the whole
article.
In this article Rick Reilly’s use of logos and pathos helped and hurt him. The logos were his savor in this article. Through the paper the statement involving this would continuously bring the reader back and get people back on his side. He had mastered this technique, but needs to work on how he uses his pathos. He was using way too much sarcasm to take him seriously when he used this. His statements were mainly true and his opinions had backing. Rick Reilly was saying it would be safer if they didn’t “throw each other around like Frisbees”. I know one girl personally that had a cheer accident and was injured for over half a year. Most the girls walk away from practice sore and complaining someone either dropped them or fell on them when doing a stunt. Rick Reilly’s statements here are not made up. His statements using pathos ideas might be a little out there, but he is just writing what he feels and gets carried away sometimes. This article for the most part was effective in persuaded audiences cheerleaders should not cheer; not that cheerleading is not a sport. I am not sure if Rick Reilly would be happy about that, but “fudge and kittens” can be hard to make sound bad.

Bibliography
Reill, Rick “Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!.” English 101 First-Year Composition. 3rd ed. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/ Hunt Publishing Co., 2008, 81-82. Print.