Top stories
magazine Sports Illustrated
usinfo | 2013-06-27 10:48
| Sports Illustrated | |
 The first issue of Sports Illustrated, showing Milwaukee Braves star Eddie Mathews at bat and New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum in Milwaukee County Stadium. |
|
| Editor, Time Inc. Sports Group | Terry McDonell |
| Staff writers |
Staff Managing Editor SI.com: Paul Fichtenbaum Managing Editor SI Golf Group: James P. Herre Creative Director: Christopher Hercik Director of Photography: Steve Fine Senior Editor, Chief of Reporters: Richard Demak Senior Contributing Editor: David bauer Senior Editors: Mark Bechtel, Trisha Lucey Blackmar, Stephen Cannella, MJ Day (Swimsuit); Dick Friedman, Mark Godich, Jim Gorant (Golf Plus); Stefanie Kaufman (Operations); Kostya P. Kennedy, Richard O'Brien, Diane Smith (Swimsuit) Senior Contributing Writer:Frank Deford Senior Writers: Kelli Anderson, Lars Anderson, Chris Ballard, Michael Bamberger, George Dohrmann, David Epstein, Michael Farber, Damon Hack, Jon Heyman, Lee Jenkins, Peter King, Thomas Lake, Tim Layden, J. Austin Murphy, Dan Patrick, Joe Posnanski, S.L. Price, Selena Roberts, Alan Shipnuck, Gary Smith, Phil Taylor, Ian Thomsen, Jim Trotter, Gary Van Sickle, Tom Verducci, Grant Wahl, L. Jon Wertheim, Alexander Wolff Associate Editors: Darcie Baum (Swimsuit); Mark Beech, Adam Duerson, Gene Menez, Elizabeth Newman, David Sabino (Statistics) Staff Writers: Brian Cazeneuve, Albert Chen, Seth Davis, Chris Mannix, Ben Reiter, Melissa Segura Deputy Chief of Reporters: Lawrence Mondi Writer-Reporters: Sarah Kwak, Andrew Lawrence, Rick Lipsey, Julia Morrill, Rebecca Sun, Pablo S. Torre Reporters: Kelvin C. Bias, Matt Gagne, Rebecca Shore |
| Categories | Sports magazine |
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Publisher | Frank Wall |
|
Total circulation (2012) |
3,204,945 |
| First issue | August 16, 1954 |
| Company | Time Inc. (Time Warner) |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York, USA |
| Language | English |
| Website | www.SI.com |
| ISSN | 0038-822X |
Sports Illustrated is an Americansports media franchise owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. 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.
There were two magazines named Sports Illustrated before the current magazine began in 1954. In 1936, Stuart Scheftel created Sports Illustrated with a target market for the sportsman. He published the magazine from 1936-1938 on a monthly basis. The magazine was a life magazine size and focused on golf, tennis, and skiing with articles on the major sports. He then sold the name to Dell Publications, which released Sports Illustrated in 1949 and this version lasted 6 issues before closing. Dell's version focused on major sports (Baseball, Basketball, Boxing) and competed on magazine racks against Sport and other monthly sports magazines. During the 1940s these magazines were monthly and they did not cover the current events because of the production schedules. There was no large-base general weekly sports magazine with a national following on actual active events. It was then that Time patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill that gap. At the time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism and did not 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.[2]
The goal of the new magazine was to be "not a sports magazine, but the sports magazine". Many at Time-Life scoffed at Luce's idea; in his Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, Luce and His Empire, W. A. Swanberg wrote that the company's intellectuals dubbed the proposed magazine "Muscle", "Jockstrap", and "Sweat Socks". Launched on August 19, 1951, it was not profitable (and would not be so for 12 years)[3] 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.
Mark Ford, President of the Sports Illustrated Group in 2010.
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.[4]
After more than a decade of steady losses, the magazine's fortunes finally turned around in the 1960s when Andre Laguerre became its managing editor. A European correspondent for Time, Inc., who later became chief of the Time-Life news bureaus in Paris and London (for a time he ran both simultaneously), Laguerre attracted Henry Luce's attention in 1956 with his singular coverage of the Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, which became the core of SI's coverage of those games. In May 1956, Luce brought Laguerre to New York to become assistant managing editor of the magazine. He was named managing editor in 1960, and he more than doubled the circulation by instituting a system of departmental editors, redesigning the internal format, and inaugurating the unprecedented use in a news magazine of full-color photographic coverage of the week's sports events. He was also one of the first to sense the rise of national interest in professional football.[5]
Laguerre also instituted the innovative concept of one long story at the end of every issue, which he called the "bonus piece". These well-written, in-depth articles helped to distinguish Sports Illustrated from other sports publications, and helped launch the careers of such legendary writers as Frank Deford, who in March 2010 wrote of Laguerre, "He smoked cigars and drank Scotch and made the sun move across the heavens ... His genius as an editor was that he made you want to please him, but he wanted you to do that by writing in your own distinct way."[6]
Laguerre is also credited with the conception and creation of the annual Swimsuit Issue, which quickly became, and remains, the most popular issue each year.
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 Daybowl game round-up that enhanced the viewing of games on television
• In-depth sports reporting from writers like Robert Creamer, Tex Maule and Dan Jenkins.
• Regular illustration features by artists like Robert Riger.
• High school football Player of the Month awards.
• Inserts of sports cards in the center of the magazine (1954 & 1955)
• 1994 Launched Sports Illustrated Interactive CD-ROM with StarPress Multimedia, Incorporates player stats, video and highlights from the year in sports.
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 news-stands and in mailboxes only a few days later.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during Gil Rogin's term as Managing Editor, the feature stories of Frank Deford became the magazine's anchor. "Bonus pieces" on Pete Rozelle, Woody Hayes, 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.
Regular segments
Who's Hot, Who's Not: A feature on who's on a tear and who's in a slump.
Inside the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, College Football, College Basketball, NASCAR, Golf, Boxing, Horse Racing, Soccer and Tennis (sports vary from issue to issue) has the writers from each sport to address the latest news and rumors in their respective fields.
Faces in the Crowd: honors talented amateur athletes and their accomplishments.
The Point After: A back-page column featuring a rotation of SI writers as well as other contributors. Content varies from compelling stories to challenging opinion, focusing on both the world of sports and the role sports play in society.
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 ChrisopherHercik. 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 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.[10]
Nevertheless, Sports Illustrated remains the predominant sports publication in print journalism with a consistent weekly circulation topping 8 million per issue.
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).
Mike Krzyzewski&Pat Summitt were named co-sportsmen of the year for 2011 for their work as NCAA basketball coaches. Drew Brees was the sportsman of the year for 2010. He led the New Orleans Saints to their first Super Bowl win after the 2009 season. Derek Jeter was Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year in 2009. Jeter led the New York Yankees to their 27th World Series Title in 2009 while batting .334 in the regular season and taking home the 2009 Silver Slugger and Gold Glove for American League shortstops.
Sportsman of the Century
In 1999, Sports Illustrated named Muhammad Ali, the Sportsman of the Century, at the Sports Illustrated's 20th Century Sports Awards in New York's Madison Square Garden.
All-decade awards and honors
• Top 20 Female Athletes of the Decade (2009)
• Top 20 Male Athletes of the Decade (2009)
• All-Decade Team (2009) (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, college basketball, college football)
• Top 10 Coaches/Managers of the Decade (2009)
• Top 10 GMs/Executives of the Decade (2009)
• Top Team of the Decade (2009) (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, college basketball, college football)
• Top 25 Franchises of the Decade (2009)
• Major League Baseball honors
• National Basketball Association honors
• National Football League honors
• National Hockey League honors
• College basketball honors
• College football honors[13]
Top sports colleges
For a 2002 list of the top 200 Division Isports colleges in the U.S., see footnote[14]
Cover history
The following list contains the athletes with most covers.[15]
The magazine's cover is the basis of a sports myth known as the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx. To find the number of times an athlete has appeared on the cover go to:
Most covers by athlete, 1954-2012
Athlete Number of covers
Michael Jordan50
Muhammad Ali38
Tiger Woods24
Magic Johnson23
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar22
Tom Brady19
LeBron James18
Kobe Bryant17
Most covers by team, 1954-May 2008
Team Number of covers
New York Yankees71
Los Angeles Lakers67
Dallas Cowboys48
Boston Red Sox46
Chicago Bulls45
Boston Celtics44
Los Angeles Dodgers40
Cincinnati Reds37
San Francisco 49ers33
Most covers by sport, 1954-2009
Sport Number of covers
Baseball-MLB 628
Pro Football-NFL 550
Pro Basketball-NBA 325
College Football 202
College Basketball 181
Golf 155
Boxing 134
Hockey 100
Track and Field 99
Tennis 78
Celebrities on the cover, 1954-2010
Celebrity Year Special notes
Ed Sullivan
1959 On cover as golfer
Gary Cooper
1959 Scuba diving
Bob Hope
1963 Owner of Cleveland Indians
Shirley MacLaine
1964 Promoting the film John Goldfarb, Please Come Home
Steve McQueen
1971 Riding a motorcycle
Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson
1977 Promoting the film Semi-Tough
Big Bird
1977 On the cover with Mark Fidrych
Arnold Schwarzenegger
1987 Caption on cover was Hot Stuff
Ice Cube
1999 On cover with Shaquille O'Neal
Chris Rock
2000 Wearing Los Angeles Dodgers hat
Stephen Colbert
2009 Caption: Stephen Colbert and his Nation save the Olympics
Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale
2010 Promoting the film The Fighter
Brad Pitt
2011 Promoting the film Moneyball
Fathers and sons who have been featured on the cover
Father Son(s)
Archie Manning
Peyton&Eli Manning
Calvin Hill
Grant Hill
Bobby Hull
Brett Hull
Bill Walton
Luke Walton
Jack Nicklaus
Gary Nicklaus
Phil Simms
Chris Simms
Dale Earnhardt
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
Cal Ripken, Sr.
Cal Ripken, Jr.&Billy Ripken
Mark McGwire
his son Matt
Drew Brees
his son Baylen
Boomer Esiason
his son Gunnar
Chuck Liddell
his son Cade
Presidents who have been featured on the cover
President SI cover date Special notes
John F. Kennedy
December 26, 1960 First Lady Jackie Kennedy also on cover and Kennedy was President-Elect at the time of the cover.
Gerald Ford
July 8, 1974 Cover came one month before President Richard Nixon announced he would resign from the Presidency.
Ronald Reagan
November 26, 1984 On cover with Georgetown Hoyas basketball coach John Thompson and Patrick Ewing
Ronald Reagan
February 16, 1987 On cover with America's Cup champion Dennis Conner
Bill Clinton
March 21, 1994 On cover about the Arkansas college basketball team
Tribute covers (In Memoriam)
Athlete SI cover date Special notes
Len Bias
June 30, 1986 Died of a cocaine overdose just after being drafted by the Boston Celtics
Arthur Ashe
February 15, 1993 Tennis great and former US Open champion who died from AIDS
Reggie Lewis
August 9, 1993 Celtics player who died due to a heart defect
Mickey Mantle
August 21, 1995 Died after years of battling alcoholism
Walter Payton
November 8, 1999 Died from rare liver disorder
Dale Earnhardt
February 26, 2001 Died in a crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
Brittanie Cecil
April 1, 2002 Fan killed as the result of being struck with a puck to the head while in the crowd at a Columbus Blue Jackets game
Ted Williams
July 15, 2002 Boston Red Sox who died of cardiac arrest
Johnny Unitas
September 23, 2002 Baltimore Colts great who died from heart attack
Pat Tillman
May 3, 2004 Arizona Cardinals player who was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.
Ed Thomas
July 6, 2009 Parkersburg, Iowa high school football coach that was gunned down by one of his former players on the morning of June 24, 2009.
John Wooden
June 14, 2010 UCLA Basketball coaching legend who died of natural causes at 99 years of age.
Junior Seau
May 2, 2012 NFL Football one of the greatest linebackers, suicide at 43 years of age
