WHEN Sports Illustrated lost its star writer Rick Reilly to ESPN earlier this week, it was more than just one media giant raiding another.
Reilly was said to be the highest paid writer in the history of Sports Illustrated parent Time Inc., with a $1 million annual contract that covered five years.
SI was said to be willing to go as high as $1.5 million a year – or $7.5 million over the life of the next five-year contract – to keep him happy. But with Time Inc. unable to offer Reilly a TV network gig, he was a goner – jumping at the reputed five-year, $10 million package offered by ESPN.
In his new gig, Reilly will do everything from write a column for the last page of ESPN The Magazine, to Web stories, to work on the development of his own interview show on an ESPN channel.
“It’s tough leaving SI after 23 years, but I just had this itch I had to scratch,” he said, speaking of his urge to do TV.
Details for his package with ESPN were conduced at the highest level, with John Walsh, senior vice president and executive editor of ESPN Internet Group, and John Skipper, senior vice president and general manager of ESPN.com. Gary Hoenig, editor-in-chief of the magazine, worked on giving him the last page and other incarnations in print and the Web, but wasn’t involved in salary negotiations.
Reilly was divulging few details.
“I’m sworn to secrecy, but I’m drinking imported beer now and getting the deluxe car wash,” he said.
During Reilly’s last contract negotiation with SI, the magazine tapped into synergy with Time Warner and used a potential movie development deal with Warner Brothers to sweeten the pot. Reilly wrote a script.
A variety of leading men were rumored to be interested in join ing the project, from Michael Keaton to Mel Gibson, but, as he tells it, the proposal “had more false starts than Marion Jones.”
Now, however, George Clooney has teamed with Renée Zellweger to do “Leatherheads,” Reilly’s film about the early days of football that’s slated to premiere in April.
It will take a few extra months before Reilly can scratch the itch to do TV.
He is committed to turn out his weekly column on the last page of SI until Dec. 1, and Time Inc. will enforce a six-month non-compete rule, meaning Reilly can’t start his new job at ESPN until June 1.
It wasn’t a total washout for Sports Illustrated. Last Friday when Reilly was busy informing SI Managing Editor Terry McDonell that he was leaving, the magazine was announcing that it had hired Dan Patrick to do an SI column and SI radio gig. Patrick had been at ESPN, but he left months earlier to work on a syndicated TV show.
And one other SI veteran, Gary Smith, is staying put despite a strong rush by ESPN several months ago.
The veteran writer signed a new contract several months ago for what is said to be $600,000 for three or four 10,000-word feature stories per year.
Smith is a past National Magazine Award winner for feature writing and earlier this year turned in a riveting piece on Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal star who quit football and enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.
Blue eyes
There was quite an eclectic bunch who turned out last week at Chat Noir Restaurant on the Upper East Side to give a big send off hosted by Lord David Evans for the new book “Sinatra: Frank and Friendly” by the veteran British lensman Terry O’Neill.
The coffee table book, with its rich photography, was edited by Sunday Times of London’s magazine editor Robin Morgan.
The attendees ranged from New York lawyer Lisa Murtagh of law firm Clifford Chance, who is also the reigning Rose of Tralee in Ireland, and Sarah Ivens, the British-born editor-in-chief of OK!
But one person not in attendance was Stephen Triffitt, who starred as Frank Sinatra in the London show “The Rat Pack.”
When U.S. immigration officials figured out that his visit involved work, he was promptly put on the next plane back home to London since he didn’t have a work permit.
Evans was able to scramble and find Frank Sinatra impersonator Billy Kay in Atlantic City.
Evans capped the night by announcing that his charitable trust had made a $100,000 donation to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital to help train young doctors.