Rick Reilly is the punching bag of ESPN columnists, mostly because he’s cheesy. And because he got caught begging for credit on live TV. And because he loves one-liners. And so on. The latest Reilly piece, however, deserves to be viewed by the masses.

Per Rick Reilly’s own admission, he’s been defending Lance Armstrong for years. In spite of the boatloads of accusations and evidence, Reilly has lived by Lance’s word – which, of course, seems ironic, when Armstrong’s word was the only thing standing between himself and a guilty juicing verdict. Well that and a ton of passed drug tests, but athletes circumventing drug tests isn’t anything new these days.

Rick Reilly doesn’t do many things well for us nowadays, but unearthing the amazing nickname Broncos receiving duo Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker have for themselves counts for something.

ESPN came out with their top 10 posts of 2012 (traffic-wise) today and in a shocking turn of events, ESPN.com users enjoy sex at the Olympics, the deaths of Jovan Belcher and Junior Seau, Tim Tebow – mostly separately – and…Rick Reilly?

Rick Reilly is the most hated man on the internet. This is a fact. After the Carolina Panthers defeated the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, Reilly hoped to redeem his now less than stellar reputation with some real news scooping. Like, say, by taking a possibly unwarranted shot at Cam Newton.

Before Rick Reilly strong-armed Stuart Scott into crediting his Twitter feed for reporting news everyone already knew, he was already a target of the blogosphere – mostly due to his recycled columns and absurdly cheesy one-liners. We didn’t think the target on his back could get any bigger, or that other well-known journalists would jump aboard the Reilly hate train. Well, both of those things happened.

ESPN’s Rick Reilly is a fan of saying ridiculous things. And considering he was a given the biggest stage possible last night, you’d figure he’d have to come up with something that was a little more ridiculous than the average ridiculous thing that he says. So, with the Super Bowl as his backdrop, Reilly took a deep breath, and said something completely freaking ridiculous.

When we heard yesterday that Internet punching bag Rick Reilly would join internet punching bag Skip Bayless to debate the merits of Tim Tebow on internet punching bag ESPN2 program First Take, we were intrigued. It was a morbid kind of intrigue, sure, but intrigue nonetheless. Well, today, the two men were united. And…it went about like you thought it would.

There’s only one explanation for Rick Reilly “debating” Skip Bayless on tomorrow’s very special live-from-Denver episode of First Take: the ESPN braintrust wants to give every media-focused sports blogger some sort of simultaneous, rage-induced heart attack. It’s a genius move, really, wiping out all of your detractors at once like that. Well played, Bristol. [Rick Reilly]

On August 30th, in a piece for ESPN.com, Rick Reilly wrote the following about Colts quarterback Peyton Manning: “If you think he’s going to miss a start because of a neck problem, you’ve been chugging paint thinner. This guy hasn’t missed a start since 1994 at Tennessee. Do you know how long ago it was when Manning didn’t start for the Colts? Google was two days old. Kim Kardashian was 17. Russell Crowe was skinny! If Manning doesn’t start Game 1, I will come to your house and eat things that are stuck in your carpet.”

Welp, Peyton Manning missed week one. And while it’s not occurring “in your house,” there is indeed a video of Rick Reilly eating things off a carpet. And yes, it is about as unsettling as it sounds.