Sports Illustrated c/d s/d

I seem to remember that the Beasties were the first public figures of note I knew of to trash it. Then it all kept rolling in.

My dad's been a subscriber since forever, so I grew up used to that, Newsweek and TV Guide. Ever since then it's been a constant letting go. ;-)

Search SI's occasional investigative journalism: the steroids article, and the one on Salt Lake City's use of Olympics money. Search the baseball coverage (the reason I subscribe), which is still pretty damn good, for my money.

They could use some better fluff writing along the lines of ESPN's various shows. Barring that, rerunning classic interviews could be cool (pretty much anything Bill Lee ever said to any reporter is entertaining enough to read, even if you have no idea who he is.)

You're OTM about the investigative articles, though.

If SI signs on Skip fecking Bayliss, then they'll have all NINE CIRCLES OF SPORTS HELL.

Bill Scheft, that's the guy. Writes his columns like a bad (and badly done) stereotype of Borscht Belt stand-up.

Search also the Bud Selig article from last year.

(Reilly's column that issue was even on the increasing pointlessness of the SI SI, in a way.)

Oh, yeah, the photography: in a slow sports-news week, those photos at the beginning are often the best part (some athlete you've never heard of in a sport you have no interest in can still make for a great photo; less often makes for a great article.)

I thank Si for giving us Heidi Klum... that's about it.

https://frontofficesports.com/sports-illustrateds-publisher-lays-off-entire-staff-future-unclear/

To the degree that it was a steady presence in my life decades ago--from '74 (still have their "715!" issue, one of my first as a subscriber) till the end of the decade, and then again for a time in the '80s--this reaches me much more than the other related story this week. But I'm being hypocritical. I haven't even looked at the online version for a decade, when I used to check in on the guy who did their monthly MVP/Cy Young rundowns, and I never considered for a second paying money for an online subscription when that was inaugurated.

The SI vault has been such a valuable online source for some great baseball longreads for me in the past couple of years. This is appalling.

A Sports Illustrated cover was, for decades, the number one starmaking vehicle in sports. It was what Carson was for a comedian or SNL was for a band. *Sports* is worse off without those things. That things got this bad this quickly is unfathomable and totally avoidable.

— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) January 19, 2024

Something you have to pay for, I assume? I guess the plug will be pulled on that too. The writing though the '70s there--and, primarily because of SI, I read about most everything in the magazine then; not just baseball but the other three major North American leagues, college basketball and football, golf, tennis, even horse racing--was of a very high quality, and they never dodged controversy.

SI became trash when they got away from long form articles that explored the kinds of stories that couldn't be done in the sport section of newspapers or television news programs, and redesigned to look as much as possible like a fugly early 2000s website of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Their archives from the 60s and 70s are pure gold. Their current incarnation deserves to die.

No not at all. All free.

Meanwhile the name is being used to hawk $250m hotels, coming soon to a college town near you:

https://bnnbreaking.com/sports/ann-arbor-set-to-discuss-proposed-sports-illustrated-resorts-hotel-development/

I hope the archive stays up then--I've consulted their cover archive before...I think the magazine was still pretty solid (and still itself) through the '80s, and maybe into the '90s. But yes, the online version always struck me as a mess just in terms of how it was organized, and the couple of times I sought it out more recently, it was ugly.

I sold most of my subscriber issues at a family garage sale in the early '90s (major regret), but at least had the presence of mind to save all baseball covers, plus a few others (Ali, Howe, Wilt, Nicklaus, a few more).

I read about most everything in the magazine then; not just baseball but the other three major North American leagues, college basketball and football, golf, tennis, even horse racing--was of a very high quality, and they never dodged controversy.

https://vault.si.com/.image/t_share/MTY5MDk4NTAwMzk3MDE2MzUz/42147---cover-thumbnail-image.jpg

I mentioned it in my thread on ilb but I honestly thought the story about Roy Halladay’s life and untimely death was just incredible. I never grew up reading SI, it has almost no cultural cachet at home and I’d never known about it besides the swimsuit issue. To read this, with all its pain and just…capturing of a life, how that life came to be and existed and ceased …was breathtaking.

Outside of Bright House Field, Halladay coached his teenage sons, Braden and Ryan. He echoed his father’s insistence on persistence, but he did not push them quite so hard. Big Roy mentioned that Little Roy had been throwing 90 m.p.h. at 17, but Braden at the same age struggled to hit 80. Little Roy didn’t want to hear it. He was a father, too, and he would teach his boys his way.

(xpost) Bridge is blood sport--no one gets out alive...The pre-Ali version was probably a little staid (I have a few issues a friend gave me). Had something more like this in mind:

https://i.postimg.cc/76pFwTW0/joe.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/76pFwTW0/joe.jpg

"The Mad World of Bridge" headline kills me.

Other Exposé Pitches:

"The Insane Underworld of Pinochle"

"My Uno Nightmare"

"Go Fish...or Go Nuts!"

Leroy Neiman’s artwork was as tied to Sports Illustrated like say Norman Rockwell was to the Saturday Evening Post.

There is a mountain of plastic football phones somewhere out in landfills from the tv ads for years.

Strange that CNN chooses Cheryl Tiegs to interview tonight. I'm not saying she's not part of the magazine's history (three covers), but obviously a part not viewed very fondly today. Is that what the magazine's going to be remembered for above everything else? I hope not.

Just checked, and Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford, Tex Maule, Mark Kram, and Ron Fimrite are all dead. Tiegs just happened to be next on their list.

i would assume that jordan is second in covers after ali? but if they'd interviewed him, he'd be all like 'i bought a pallet-full of that first cover then dumped them on the porch of the JV coach who slighted me'

i suppose getting an SI cover was a much bigger deal for the swimsuit models. bridge players aside, most other cover athletes were already well-known

Wikipedia's list stops at 2016 for some reason:

Michael Jordan - 50
Muhammad Ali - 40
LeBron James - 25
Tiger Woods - 24
Magic Johnson - 23
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 22
Tom Brady - 20

My guess would have been Tiger at #2.

i honestly know no one who is/was now at SI apart from emma baccellieri, who is fantastic

i'm sure she will ultimately find a better place of employment, but that's not exactly the point

I went onto their site today--still operational--and Verducci has a HOF piece; don't know if he's actually staff, but obviously you know him.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2024/01/16/myths-baseball-hall-of-fame-voting

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/media/sports-illustrated-new-publisher/index.html

I'm sure it won't be the same, but, as has been pointed out, it hasn't been the same for at least a couple of decades. Glad I didn't put much effort into getting hold of the last issue.