SI is down to just 38 issues this year

The SI college hoops preview issue is out. Kind of shocking how slim it is. No regional covers - just one. One overview, one feature, a top 10 and a women's feature/overview with a top 10 breakout.

 

SI is a shell of what it once was. Sports media with internet is oversaturated. The creative aspects of SI just are not what they used to be. Seems to commercial and political now. ESPN and SI should try going bare bones. ESPN go back to the old simple studio set for Sportcenter and SI go back to the old simple fonts of the 70s. Everything is too glitzy and flashy now. There is beauty in simplicity.

 

Back to SI, it is kind of sad when looking back at old issues. Still read it, although not sure I would pay for it anymore. Guess a couple of decades ago it was kind of a monopoly. For weekly sports magazines there was SI and TSN. There was no internet.

 

Guess they fired the fact checkers, too.

How Julio Jones became one of the NFL's very best

"At the state championship during his junior year, Julio was the prohibitive favorite to win the triple jump, but he was off his mark that day. His first two jumps were fouls for overstepping the takeoff line—one more and he would be disqualified—and he found himself needing to hit 43 feet to get to the finals. The crowd was stunned.

Julio lined up for his last attempt. But instead of walking back 40 feet from the jumping board, as everyone in the history of track has done, he stood 10 feet back. Julio took two walking steps, careful to stay behind the line, and leaped. He landed at exactly 43 feet."

What?

 

But that's the way it was done in the "good 'ol days." Heck, I always hated the regional covers because they were just a sales gimmick. Watered down what making the SI cover used to mean.

I still maintain that the "shell of itself" that SI is today is still far thicker than most mainstream print publications.

This week's SI is 112 pages. For shits and giggles I looked at an old issue I have for sentimental reasons (Jan. 11, 1999, Tennessee's Peerless Price on cover, NFL playoff coverage inside). It's 88 pages. Do that comparison with any two newspapers.

The one that still bedevils me is Car & Driver. Thick as all get out. Chocked full of information. And ads. They run 2-4 pages of letters each issue.

 

Is that 112-page issue a double issue? Usually issues are 64 pages so a double issue should be 128.

 

Yeah, I think I saw those words somewhere in 7-point type.

 

And no pulling of punches when reviewing C&D advertisers' products (cars, tires, gadgets, etc.). Been reading it since I was a college freshman. The "Letters" section alone is worth the subscription.

 

I hate the regional covers as well, kind of waters down the coolness of being on the cover. I was more shocked at just going 10 deep on the college hoops preview. For women's basketball it's okay because there typically aren't more than nine teams besides UCONN that have a shot. But at least give us the 16 top seeds in the tourney predictions and the rest of the field in small type. There is a good shot this year's national champion isn't even mentioned in the preview.
It does seem that with ESPN and SI - and other orgs - the national college stuff is being deemphasized. Probably a good time to launch a regional sport site an SEC football and baseball centric site. College hoops in the Northeast and the ACC.

 

Ok, I'm dense. Why would they be de-emphasizing collegiate sports? Seems like if they can't foot the bill for big pro sports anymore, they'd want to keep national interest up in collegiate sports.

I feel some Tourette's coming FUCK DUKE.

 

Recent layoffs have hit college coverage in particular. I don't know the whys of it. Various fans are uber-parochial and give greatest numbers to local/regional news sources? I know I've paid less attention to college stuff for a variety of reasons - the bigger TV money hasn't been an equalizer, but only magnified the superiority of the top programs, in football and hoops. Women's hoops is even more lopsided with UConn and everyone else. There isn't a lot of mystery or parity. I follow my locals and keep an eye on the contenders. You need to give people a reason to watch, college sports has made it easier to tune out with mismatches and Mega-programs. The NFL makes the better teams play tougher schedules. In college, the better-funded programs are able to create more favorable schedules. I wouldn't mind seeing all of the previous years football conference winners square off opening weekend. SEC v. Big 10, ACC v. American, Sun Belt v. MAC, Pac 12-Big 12, MW-CUSA. Figure the TV money for these games would make paying off a cupcake opener easy. Most of the top-end teams play at least one big-time opponent already.

 

And editors.

All due respect to the writer, who I have never heard of, that story was nearly unreadable. It was like someone won a Gary Smith parody contest. He announced three or four times, in italicized interludes, how great his story is.

I bet you’re already in disbelief!

That sentence (I’m paraphrasing from memory) was after a section about how Jones was really good in playground games as a kid.