It’s a day of legends scaling back at ESPN.

On the same afternoon Brent Musburger was demoted from his role as lead college football analyst, Rick Reilly announced he’ll be giving up his ESPN.com column to exclusively focus on television. He’ll write his final column on June 30.

Life’s 2 short 2 work full-time. Letting my column go + will just do features 4 MNC + SC. Thx 2 John Skipper 4 this! http://t.co/H8v0GJrmcx — Rick Reilly (@ReillyRick) March 12, 2014

Reilly came to national prominence during his 22 years at Sports Illustrated, the final 10 of which were spent writing the back-page column. During his time at SI, Reilly won the NSSA National Sportswriter of the Year award 11 times. He left for ESPN in 2008.

In recent years, Reilly has earned criticism for various offenses such as misquoting his father-in-law, recycling old ideas and relying on the same jokes While the critiques were fair, the assumptions drawn from them were not. First, they ignored that Reilly was the closest thing sportswriting ever had to a rock star. If you’re of a certain age, you grew up reading Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated and thought, “he must have the greatest job in the world.”

But because our culture likes to build up, then tear down, it’s popular now to accuse Reilly of mailing it in. You could view his retirement from column writing as confirmation of that. Or you could look at the clear alternative: Writing about the same topics for 30 years isn’t easy. Tony Kornheiser shifted his focus to television and radio for that very reason. Reilly himself hints at that in a tweet sent after his announcement.

I’ve written sports for 36 years + over 2 million words. Time 2 write something new. Had SO much fun. Tried to make a difference. THANK YOU — Rick Reilly (@ReillyRick) March 12, 2014

Seriously, read this article Reilly wrote in 1992. It’s fantastic. If you think you can write something better than that, feel free to critique him all you want. If you can’t, dial it back a bunch. Not that Reilly minded the criticism, or so he says.

Thanks to everybody who liked the column and even those who hated it. You fired me up. It was a privilege. — Rick Reilly (@ReillyRick) March 12, 2014

Reilly’s new deal with ESPN will have him continuing his human interest features on Monday Night Countdown, as well as doing other work for SportsCenter and Sunday NFL Countdown.

He’ll be inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame on June 9.