Sports Illustrated
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Sports Illustrated is an iconic weekly American sports magazine owned by media giant Time Warner. It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice.
Its swimsuit issue, which has been published since 1964, is now an annual publishing event that generates its own television shows, videos and calendars.
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[edit] History
Two other magazines named Sports Illustrated were started in the 1930s and 1940s, but they both quickly failed. In fact, there was no large-base, general sports magazine with a national following when TIME patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill the gap. At the time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism and didn't think sports news could fill a weekly magazine, especially during the winter. A number of advisers to Luce, including Life Magazine's Ernest Havemann, tried to kill the idea, but Luce, who was not a sports fan, decided the time was right.[1]
After offering $200,000 in an unsuccessful bid to buy the name Sport for the new magazine, they acquired the rights to the name Sports Illustrated instead for just $10,000. The goal of the new magazine was to be "not a sports magazine, but the sports magazine." Launched on August 16, 1954, it was not profitable and not particularly well run at first, but Luce's timing was good. The popularity of spectator sports in the United States was about to explode, and that popularity came to be driven largely by three things:
- economic prosperity
- television, and
- Sports Illustrated.
The early issues of the magazine seemed caught between two opposing views of its audience. Much of the subject matter was directed at upper class activities such as yachting, polo and safaris, but upscale would-be advertisers were unconvinced that sports fans were a significant part of their market.[2]
[edit] Innovations
From its start, Sports Illustrated introduced a number of innovations that are generally taken for granted today:
- Liberal use of color photos - though the six-week lead time initially meant they were unable to depict timely subject matter
- Scouting reports - including a World Series Preview and New Year's Day bowl game roundup that enhanced the viewing of games on television
- In-depth sports reporting from writers like Robert Creamer, Tex Maule and Dan Jenkins.
In 1956, Luce asked Time, Inc. senior European Correspondent André Laguerre to come to New York and help define the magazine's character. Many of the staff had serious doubts that the English-born Frenchman could possibly know anything about American sports, but Laguerre won them over, and during his term as Managing Editor (1960 - 1974), SI became a model for other middle-class American magazines. Its writers developed their own characteristic style by daring to tell people what was important. Many would say that the magazine legitimized sports -- and being a sports fan -- for a huge segment of the American population. The steady creation of landmark stories (e.g., "The Black Athlete - A Shameful Story" by Jack Olsen and "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton) showed that sports fans could be readers, and a generation of sportswriters patterned their own writing after what they read in SI.[3]
[edit] Color printing
The magazine's photographers also made their mark with innovations like putting cameras in the goal at a hockey game and behind a glass backboard at a basketball game. In 1965, offset printing began to allow the color pages of the magazine to be printed overnight, not only producing crisper and brighter images, but also finally enabling the editors to merge the best color with the latest news. By 1967, the magazine was printing 200 pages of "fast color" a year; in 1983, SI became the first American full-color newsweekly. An intense rivalry developed between photographers, particularly Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer, to get a decisive cover shot that would be on newsstands and in mailboxes only a few days later.[4]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Gil Rogin's term as Managing Editor, the feature stories of Frank Deford became the magazine's anchor. "Bonus pieces" on Pete Rozelle, Bear Bryant, Howard Cosell and others became some of the most quoted sources about these figures, and Deford established a reputation as one of the best writers of the time.[5]
[edit] Creative decline
After the death of Henry Luce in 1967, the creative freedom that the staff had enjoyed seemed to diminish. By the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine had become more profitable than ever, but many also believed it had become more predictable. Mark Mulvoy was the first top editor whose background contained nothing but sports; he had grown up as one of the magazine's readers, but he had no interest in fiction, movies, hobbies or history. Mulvoy's top writer Rick Reilly had also been raised on SI and followed in the footsteps of many of the great writers that he grew up admiring, but many felt that the magazine as a whole came to reflect Mulvoy's complete lack of sophistication. Mulvoy also hired the current creative director Steven Hoffman. Critics said that it rarely broke (or even featured) stories on the major controversies in sports (drugs, violence, commercialism) any more, and that it focused on major sports and celebrities to the exclusion of other topics. The proliferation of "commemorative issues" and crass subscription incentives seemed to some like an exchange of journalistic integrity for commercial opportunism. More importantly, perhaps, many feel that 24-hour-a-day cable sports television networks and sports news web sites have forever diminished the role a weekly publication can play in today's world, and that it is unlikely any magazine will ever again achieve the level of prominence that SI once had.[6]
[edit] Sportsman of the Year
Since its inception in 1954, Sports Illustrated magazine has annually presented the Sportsman of the Year award to "the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement." Roger Bannister won the first ever Sportsman of the year award thanks to his record breaking time of 3:59.4 for a mile (the first ever time a mile had been run under four minutes). Dwyane Wade is Sports Illustrated's most recent Sportsman of the Year in 2006. Previous winners have included Tom Brady in 2005, the Boston Red Sox in 2004, David Robinson and Tim Duncan in 2003, Lance Armstrong in 2002, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in 2001, and Tiger Woods in 1996 and 2000.
[edit] The cover jinx
When Major League Baseball player Eddie Mathews, pictured on the cover of Volume 1, Issue 1, suffered a hand injury a week later that forced him to miss seven games, the "Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx" -- also known as "The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx" -- was born, as some noted that bad things seemed to happen to people soon after they appeared on the magazine's cover. Other notable cover coincidences include:
- January 31, 1955 - The week that an issue featuring her was on the stands, skier Jill Kinmont struck a tree during a practice run and was paralyzed from the neck down.
- November 18, 1957 -- The University of Oklahoma had won 47 consecutive games, which remains the longest winning streak in the history of college football. The cover carried the headline "Why Oklahoma is unbeatable." In their very next game, Oklahoma lost to the University of Notre Dame, which was in the middle of a down period. Notre Dame had also been the last team to defeat Oklahoma before the streak began, in 1953.
- May 26, 1958 - SI's 1958 Indianapolis 500 preview issue featured Pat O'Connor, who was killed in a 15-car pileup during the first lap of the race.
- February 13, 1961 - Laurence Owen was billed as "America's Most Exciting Girl Skater." Two days after the cover date, Owen and the rest of the United States figure skating team perished in a plane crash. The International Skating Union canceled the 1961 World Championships as a result.
- December 14, 1970 - The University of Texas, 10-0 and enjoying a 30-game winning streak, fumbled nine times in its next game, a 24-11 loss to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl.
- April 6, 1987 - Following a surprising 86-win season for the Indians in 1986, the cover showed Cleveland Indians sluggers Joe Carter and Cory Snyder, and carried the words "INDIAN UPRISING" and the sub-headline, "Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League!" The Indians lost 101 games that year, retaining their own curse, the Curse of Rocky Colavito.
- October 5, 1987 - Lloyd Moseby of the Toronto Blue Jays appears on the cover, with the words "Toronto Takes Off -- Lloyd Moseby and the Jays soar past the Tigers." When the magazine came out, the Jays were 3 1/2 games ahead of the Tigers, with seven games remaining. The Blue Jays went on to lose all seven. Detroit swept Toronto the last three games of the season, all by one run, and won the division by one game. In 2006, the Sports Illustrated website named this the third-biggest late-season collapse in baseball all-time, illustrating the story with an image of this cover.
- November 30, 1987 - A cover illustrating the victory of the then-#2 Oklahoma Sooners over the #1 Nebraska Cornhuskers lauded Oklahoma and featured Oklahoma's Charles Thompson on the cover. On February 27, 1989, Thompson again appeared on the cover: this time in handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit after his arrest on suspicion of dealing cocaine (he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison). The article accused head coach Barry Switzer's Sooner program as being out-of-control, and Switzer resigned soon afterwards.
- September 4, 1989 - Major League Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti's words about Pete Rose appeared on the cover the week Giamatti died of a heart attack.
- October 31, 1994 - Because of the players' strike in 1994, the Japan Series is featured in the space usually reserved for Major League Baseball's World Series. A picture of a Seibu Lions pitcher in demolishing the Yomiuri Giants, 11-0, in Game 1 is shown from October 22. The issue was released on October 25, and on October 29, the kyojin wins the Fall Classic in six.
- June 5, 1995 - Three days after his appearance, San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Williams, the National League leader in home runs, batting average and RBIs, fouled a pitch off his right foot, breaking it, and forcing him to miss 2 1/2 months.
- March 5, 2001 - Within a week after Nomar Garciaparra's cover appearance , it was announced that he had torn a tendon in his hand, forcing the Red Sox shortstop to miss all but 21 games of the 2001 season.
- November 17, 2003 - Peter King wrote an article praising the Kansas City Chiefs' 9-0 season (at that point). The following week, after wide receiver Chad Johnson declared the Cincinnati Bengals were going to beat the Chiefs, the Chiefs suffered their first loss of the season. The Chiefs went on to win the AFC West with a 13-3 record and gain home-field advantage in the playoffs, but lost in the Divisional Playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts. The Kansas City press and fans soon declared that King jinxed the Chiefs' hopes of glory that season.
- September 26, 2005 - The cover picture shows Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb laughing with Terrell Owens who had feuded before. The text said "Brotherly love? The soap opera Eagles come together and win big." Later in the year Owens then criticized McNabb saying that the Eagles would be undefeated if Brett Favre were the Quarterback. Owens was suspended for the season and eventually released by the team. McNabb had it worse and suffered a sports hernia which ended his season. The Eagles finished 6-10. The second headline showed the Philadelphia Phillies and their shortstop Jimmy Rollins, who were in the thick of the NL wild card race. They lost the wild card race by 1 game to the Houston Astros.
- November 20, 2006 - In the yearly college basketball preview, the Kansas Jayhawks are featured on one of the five regional covers, and are picked to win the national championship. Almost immediately, before the issue even arrives in most mailboxed, the Jayhawks lose their home opener to heavy underdog Oral Roberts
While the list of "examples" of the jinx is extensive, an individual record 49 cover appearances by Michael Jordan, team record 61 covers by the New York Yankees, and school record of 105 covers by the UCLA Bruins [1] have not hindered their success.
SI addressed their own cover jinx in a 2002 issue featuring a black cat on the cover. Then St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner was asked to pose with the cat, but refused. Warner and the Rams won their next two games to win their second NFC Championship in three years.
[edit] Writers
- Marty Burns
- Jack McCallum
- Frank Deford
- Gary Smith
- Peter King
- Arash Markazi
- Rick Reilly
- Phil Taylor
- Gary Van Sickle
- Tom Verducci
- Paul Zimmerman
- Ed Hinton (1995-2000)
- Steve Rushin
- Steve Hofstetter
[edit] Spinoffs
Sports Illustrated has helped launched a number of related publishing ventures, including:
- Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine (circulation 950,000)
- Launched in January 1989
- Won the "Distinguished Achievement for Excellence in Educational Publishing" award 11 times
- Won the "Parents' Choice Magazine Award" 7 times
- Sports Illustrated Almanac annuals
- Introduced in 1991
- Yearly compilation of sports news and statistics in book form
- SI.com sports news web site
- Sports Illustrated Women magazine (highest circulation 400,000)
- Launched in March 2000
- Ceased publication in December 2002 because of a weak advertising climate
- Sports Illustrated on Campus magazine
- Launched on September 4, 2003
- Dedicated to college athletics and the sports interests of college students.
- Distributed free on 72 college campuses through a network of college newspapers.
- Circulation of one million readers between the ages of 18 and 24.
- Ceased publication in December 2005 because of a weak advertising climate
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 17-25).
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 6, 27, 42).
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 5-8, 160).
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 108-111, 139-141, 149-151, 236).
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 236-238).
- ^ (MacCambridge 1997, pp. 8-9, 268-273, 354-358, 394-398, 402-405).
[edit] References
- MacCambridge, Michael (1997), The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine, Hyperion Press, ISBN 0-7868-6216-5 [March 15, 2004].
