Sports Illustrated Overload

Image courtesy of InsideSportsIllustrated.com

At some point in 2006 I began to save issues of Sports Illustrated and store them under my bed. This worked out fine until recently when I came home for summer break and realized just how much space they were taking up.

I gathered every issue I could find and began to go through them. I saved the most important issues (Jason Collins coming out and the Bills beating the Patriots among others) but I only kept only the cover of the vast majority of them.

Looking through all the issues provided me with a perspective on how sports are covered by the magazine, what sports/stories/events get attention most often and what sports get preference at different times of the year. I noticed that sometimes SI is too quick to jump on a story (Jeremy Lin made the cover two weeks in a row last winter). I recalled the disappointing ends of seasons for the vast majority of teams that are featured (’08 Cubs, ’06 Mets). I observed that some athletes get far more attention than others (Peyton Manning is featured about twice per NFL season).

Because I un-subscribed for a short time and likely lost or threw away many of the issues, I had only 244 total. The amount of covers per sport was no surprise considering when playing seasons occur and competition with other sports. Because they have the summer to themselves for the most part, the MLB was the subject of the most covers.

The breakdown looked like this:

MLB: 66

NFL: 59

NCAA Football: 31

NBA: 28

NCAA Basketball: 24

Olympics: 8 (Four of which were Michael Phelps)

Golf: 8 (Six were Tiger Woods, two Phil Mickleson)

Auto Racing : 3

Boxing: 2

Tennis: 2

NHL: 2

Lance Armstrong: 1

Horse Racing: 1

Miscellaneous: 5

So I guess we’ll start with the elephant in the room…the NHL graced the cover only twice in my six years of collecting SI’s. That works out to about .8% of all issues. Tiger Woods made the cover at three times the rate of the “fourth major sport”. Even Michael Phelps doubled up hockey and he only matters for a month every four years!

I can’t totally blame SI for their lack of hockey coverage. They’re supposed to provide interesting and well-written features that provide an in-depth look at athlete; something that goes beyond the sport they play and reaches into their soul to find out who they are and why. I do not envy any writer who’s trying to extract any information beyond un-clever nicknames from a hockey player.

 And I should mention that many of the covers teased NHL features to be found within the magazine. Perhaps there just aren’t enough decent-looking NHL players to earn a cover shot. Or maybe most America’s indifference toward the NHL goes beyond ESPN’s lack of coverage. Maybe people just don’t care.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of going through all the old issues was figuring out what became of the teams and players featured on the cover. Obviously every Mets cover must now serve as a painful reminder to fans of the team that hope is the first step on the road to disappointment (like they didn’t already know that). Some covers were eerily predictive; none more so than the one of Brett Favre crying at his retirement press conference with the title: “Hard to Say Goodbye.”

A few covers featured young athletes in an attempt to introduce American to someone who they believed would be the future of that sport. I distinctly remember being excited about the future of baseball while reading about a 16-year old Bryce Harper in 2009. I wonder if in 2015 we’ll look at the Jabari Parker cover the same way we look at that Harper one now. Maybe we’ll laugh at it the way I did when I glanced at a picture of Tate Forcier in the top corner of a fall 2009 issue (what happened to that guy anyway?).

Through all the old covers I looked up and all the features I re-read, the greatest discovery was remembering why I saved all the magazines in the first place: a young Taylor’s love of Sports Illustrated. The day I found it resting in my mailbox after stepping off the school bus was the best day of any given week. I read it cover to cover, each week I used it as a portal to the world I wanted to live in; the world of sports journalism. Now that fantasy is a reality.

The best part of this nostalgia was remembering the cherry on top of each issue: the back page masterpieces written by Rick Reilly. It reminded me that Reilly wasn’t always the lazy, unoriginal hack he is now. At one point, he was the greatest sports writer in the world despite never really writing about sports.

I glanced back at a few of his old columns while remembering how excited I used to be to read what he had to say on a weekly basis. Upon opening to the last page and viewing one of his old articles, memories came rushing back to me.

The article is entitled “Making up for Lost Time.” It tells the story of a young man named Corey Lemke who was killed in motorcycle accident. Corey was a star wrestler in high school and golfed in college before being killed. He was also best friends with his father. The story can’t be more than 500 words but Reilly didn’t need any more than that to perfectly encapsulate the Lemkes’ relationship. By the end of the article, I felt as though I had lost a son.

This article was not only a reminder of what a brilliant control Reilly once had over the English language and it’s emotional power; it was a reminder of why I fell in love with sports writing in the first place. It’s about more than the features and interest stories on teams and their potential. It’s about the human side of every person sports touches. A postal worker in Arizona who loves the Cardinals more than anything might have just as beautiful a story to tell as any famous or prevalent pro athlete. It’s the job of the sports writer, especially one with a platform like the one Sports Illustrated has, to tell those stories.

Oh, the things you’ll discover under your bed.