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There's plenty about O'Reilly's athletic "stardom" online. His football "records" turn out to be with a "club" team at Marist. Big deal!

His baseball career is even fuzzier. I've spent a lot of time researching it. (or trying to. LOL!)

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Bill O'Reilly
Weekdays, Noon-2PM
oreilly@foxnews.com

Strong parenting and nightly family discussions around the dinner table prepared Bill well for a broadcasting career more successful than even his mother could have imagined. From his teenage business mowing lawns, Bill graduated to house painting and lifeguarding. His lifelong interest in sports began in childhood also, when he revered star athletes like Joe Namath and Willie Mays. As he grew, Bill played goalie for his high school ice hockey team, switched to football in college where he played as quarterback, punter, and place-kicker, and even enjoyed a brief career as a semi-pro baseball pitcher."
Last edited by micdsguy
Bill O'Reilly


O'Reilly brags that he made the Marist College football team as a freshman, and in the 2005 Super Bowl program, O'Reilly wrote that he "won the division punting title as a senior." That sounds impressive, but the college did not have an NCAA team when O'Reilly attended. He played for their "club" team, which is similar to athletics in a tavern league -- no scholarships, no school backing at all, and all expenses were paid by the players themselves. What few statistics were kept were very haphazard, and nobody is sure what "division punting title" O'Reilly imagines he won.

http://www.nndb.com/people/434/000022368/
Last edited by Dibble
Olbermann revealed O'Reilly's "resume padding" in Super Bowl program essay
From the February 7 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: We segue now into our nightly roundup of celebrity and entertainment news, "Keeping Tabs." And it turns out the 2005 Super Bowl was not entirely scandal-free. This year's wasn't about the commercials, the halftime show or even the Philadelphia Eagles' pathetic clock management. It was about the Super Bowl program and Bill O'Reilly. The Fact or Fiction host and noted loofah user wrote the so-called end piece of the score card sold at yesterday's little game. He waxed poetic about the inspiration that his own football career at Marist College in New York provided observing that he once punted a ball backwards. But that, quoting here, "I won the national punting title for my division as a senior." O'Reilly concludes that "I guess you could say the end zone was the beginning of the no-spin zone."

But Mr. O'Reilly has done a little spinning of his own here. Others might call it resume padding. The football office at Marist told me today that football was not a varsity sport there until 1978 -- seven years after O'Reilly graduated. When he played, it was a so-called club sport where players paid all their own expenses, and schedules and, most importantly, statistical record keeping were haphazard.

So when he says he was the top punter in his division in the country in 1970, it does not mean what it sounds like. He was not in the NCAA Division I or II or the smaller-college NAIA Division I or Division II. O'Reilly in Marist played in something called the National Club Football Association. So writing in the Super Bowl program that you won the punting championship in your division would be like me writing in one of my articles in one of the World Series programs that I led the nation's high school baseball players in on-base percentage in 1973.

I did, too. My on-base percentage that season was 1,000. I came to bat once and got hit in the backside with a pitch.
The info on his athletic career conveniently comes from 3rd party sources. Press releases, bios, etc. The football BS was exposed last year much to Al Frankin's delight. Marist has a D-1 team now, but it was strictly club when O'Reilly attended.

By all accounts, O'Reilly didn't play HS or college baseball, but many sources allude to him playing semi-pro baseball as a pitcher. Some say that he was so fast that pro teams scouted him. That's very unlikely for a kid who never pitched in HS or college.

I can't find anything much about the semi-pro team he supposedly played for in NYC. The only mentions of it on the web are in regard to O'Reilly, who must have been the team's only player.

My guess is this BS came from pre-web bios that survive today to his chagrin.

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