This is guest post by Bob Albrecht.  He's a pro.

I’ve taken about a week before chiming in publicly -- or even discussing privately Rick Reilly’s graduation speech to avoid one of two scenarios: Getting defensive over criticism of a man whose words have made me well up with tears on many occasions (I’m man enough to admit that) or joining a running of the bulls-like throng condemning Reilly for saying something stupid.

If you’ve yet to hear what ESPN’s Reilly had to say during his speech to the final graduating class of the University of Colorado School of Journalism, here it is: "Don't write for free. Doctors don't doctor for free. Professors don't profess for free."

Even ignoring the fact that Reilly’s face is positioned on ESPN’s front page next to that of Bill Simmons, who rode a wave of dedicated followers cultivated at his personal Boston Sports Guy site to a handful of multimillion dollar contracts to write for ESPN.com, the comment was a bit ridiculous and grossly over-simplified (give the kids credit, Rick, they’re college grads after all).

What Reilly, a CU alum, should have said is this: Don’t write for free -- forever. If you have to do it to get started, fine; it’s tough times out there and the New York Times may not be banging on your door to offer up a plum gig in the London bureau (to which this 25-year-old journalist can attest). But at some point -- writer or not -- you’ve got to get paid.

The problem: That took more words. It wasn’t pithy. And Reilly is a master of the one-liner.

This controversy got far more mileage than it deserved when it was obvious from the get-go it was a stupid line Reilly probably would put differently if he had put forth a little more effort to separate his distaste for robed bloggers spouting uninformed opinions from people putting in real work to hone their craft and get their work seen -- by anyone.

As such, it’s time to move on from Reilly the punching bag. Especially  in this space of AFRCN APPRL, which holds in high esteem a campaign called Nothing But Nets that started with a 2006 column Reilly wrote for Sports Illustrated. I’ll defer to Reilly to explain why nets are so important in Africa:

“See, nearly 3,000 kids die every day in Africa from malaria. And according to the World Health Organization, transmission of the disease would be reduced by 60% with the use of mosquito nets and prompt treatment for the infected. Three thousand kids! That's a 9/11 every day! Put it this way: Let's say your little Justin's Kickin' Kangaroos have a big youth soccer tournament on Saturday. There are 15 kids on the team, 10 teams in the tourney. And there are 20 of these tournaments going on all over town. Suddenly, every one of these kids gets chills and fever, then starts throwing up and then gets short of breath. And in seven to 10 days, they're all dead of malaria. We gotta get these nets. They're coated with an insecticide and cost between $4 and $6. You need about $10, all told, to get them shipped and installed. Some nets can cover a family of four. And they last four years. If we can cut the spread of disease, 10 bucks means a kid might get to live. Make it $20 and more kids are saved.”

I thought of Reilly and Nothing But Nets as I opened my email Tuesday morning to AFRCN APPRL's “We R 1” baseball T-shirt celebrating one year of making tees with goods bought from Africa. The tie to sport made me think about grace and the importance of moving on, living to play another day, if you will. Reilly and others who occasionally put their foot in their mouth -- see: anyone who has ever lived -- deserves that.

Kudos to the AFRCN APPRL crew for making a shirt to honor the only sport that saves the nets for Africa.