One Man's Sports Illustrated Problem

From the mailbox to the trash—faster than a Clemens heater.

I have a long history with Sports Illustrated. When I was a kid, my family had subscriptions to SI and Time. Besides my dad’s lumber wholesaler trade mags, they were the only glossy magazines that ever hit the coffee table in my house.

Before I was even interested in reading, I’d thumb through it looking for pictures of my favorite stars: Robert Parish, Dewey Evans, Mosi Tatupu. When I was ten or so, my dad got me a subscription to SI for Kids—it never actually made it to the coffee table, because as soon it was out of the mailbox, I had my plastic scissors out, clipping pictures of Michael Jordan and (still my all-time favorite football player) Christian Okoye, the “Nigerian Nightmare.”

Yep, SI was a staple. Like clockwork, it would appear every Thursday, fifty-two weeks a year. That is, until I was 12, when, mysteriously, one week each February, it would be conspicuously absent. I’m still not sure if it was my mom or my dad who secreted away the annual swimsuit issue. Back then (this was before body paint came along, kids), a picture of a reasonably-proportioned woman in a one-piece was enough to give my adolescent heart palpitations.

That was 1990—and it was the last time I got any excitement from SI. Sure, it was still around when I was in high school—my dad and I didn’t agree on much in those days, but we bonded over our mutual distaste for that sickeningly maudlin columnist, Rick Reilly. “Oh, what an asshole,” my dad would muse from his easy chair, shaking his head as he scanned the back page. That may have been where my passion for media criticism began.

When I went to college in ’96, my interest in SI petered out. For the first time, I had unlimited access to both ESPN and the worldwide web (that’s really what they called it). Even the swimsuit issue lost its appeal. Hell, compared to the Internet, it may as well have been the Talbot’s catalogue.

Recently, I started getting SI in my mailbox again. I’m not sure why. I didn’t subscribe. As far as I know, I’m not paying for it. Week after week it comes, and week after week it travels the six feet from the mailbox to the trash can. I don’t know if Rick Reilly even writes for them any more, but if he does, well, I’m glad. He deserves to toil in obscurity.

It’s not that anything about the magazine itself has changed—frankly, I wouldn’t know, because, by the time I get it each week, the content is irrelevant. Take the May 31 issue, which ran with the headline, “Rondo Power,” a reference to Celtic’s point guard, Rajon Rondo. You’d think I’d be interested, given that I’ve been following my hometown C’s closely through the playoffs. When the piece was written, the Celtics were up three games to none in their best-of-seven series against the Orlando Magic. Sports talkers everywhere had given up on the Magic, who looked pitiful despite having been one of the hottest teams in the NBA at the end of the regular season.

Naturally, the editors at SI ran with one of the big storylines—Rondo’s ascendance as one of the game’s top guards, and his brilliance to that point in the series. Unfortunately for them, in the time it took to produce and distribute the magazine, the Magic had won the next two games, and the prevailing storyline was, uh-oh, the pressure is on the Celtics to avoid going to a decisive game seven. When SI showed up on Thursday, May 27, it couldn’t have been less relevant. The next day the C’s won the series, but with little help from Rondo, who was sidelined with back spasms. His back-up, Nate Robinson, was the hero.

The article on Rondo, by Ian Thomsen, may have been great, but by that time, I wanted to know how the Celtics were going to handle their west coast nemesis, the Lakers, in the finals. Reveling in the game three blowout of the Magic in the semi-finals was the farthest thing from my mind.

When the June 7 issue of SI came this week, the matte outer cover—in an appropriately desperate fashion—was offering a free preview of In The Paint, “The ultimate Body-Painting Collection from the SI Swimsuit Issue.” I looked at it for a second, thinking it actually contained a sneak peek of some hot painted ladies—a relatively timeless subject—but no. What was the big scoop on the glossy cover inside? As if they were trying out-do last week’s irrelevance, it was the World Cup Preview. I didn’t even know they had one of those. I’m not hating on soccer here, but… well, yeah, I guess I am.

That’s it, SI. We had some great times back in the day. But now, as long as you’re printed and hand-delivered, (especially in a sports-crazed city like mine) you’re necessarily going to be too little, too late. (Unless, by chance you’re looking to replace Rick Reilly, in which case, you’re as great as ever, and I could probably make myself available.)