New SI - Santana

The fight where Savage stole the Intercontinental belt from him by hitting him with the foreign object removed from his shorts, is the one that drove me away from wrestling forever. He & Ricky the Dragon were my 2 favorites.

 

For everyone who was glad to see Reilly go saying he had lost something off his fastball or was mailing it in, I would say that the majority of the back page columns since he left have barely been mediocre by his standards, at best. And some, mostly the ones by Roberts, have been worse than even the ones that Reilly smacked big, fat postage stamps on.

That said, what's he doing at ESPN? I don't think I've seen or read anything from his since he made the move.

 

He can't start working for them until June, I believe. Probably had a non-compete clause in his SI contract.

And you're right about Reilly's replacements, btw. Ever since he left, the back page has been a dud.

 

I liked Verducci's Clemens story this week. I remember people here debating whether he should have been more skeptical of Clemens when writing the workout stories, issues Verducci addresses in the story.

And I really liked Ballard's dunk story, especially the line about Davis' jam over Kirilenko entering the Museum of Dunks in the Little Men Disgracing Big wing.

 

NASCAR extravaganza? It was a season preview, and 13 pages out of the entire 96-page magazine -- a much lower percentage of the total book than most sports receive for their previews. And while Roberts is still clearly trying to find her way, many of the pieces SI has done in recent weeks -- Rick Majerus, Gene Upshaw vs. NFL vets, dribble-drive motion, the father who put his inline skating son on steroids -- have been exceptional. Yes, the Players section is often worthless, the Dan Patrick stuff is trash, and the book misses that bit of levity Rick Reilly often brought. But overall, it's still very good, and worth the money. Especially when compared to the competition.

 

Strangely, I miss Rushin far more than Reilly, an he had lost alot off his fastball too.

 

At times, I think SI's harshest critics on this board have not read the magazine regularly since 1996. They just glance at in in the dentist's office and piss and moan. I actually thought the pigeon racing story was interesting. Different. Dunks story was well done. Timely, considering it was tied to the dunk contest.

Roberts column was, again, underwhelming.

 

Again, as the one who started this, I just started reading it again as of last week. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

 

Agree. SI's lengthy features are mostly excellent reads, although you have to get through the fluff at the beginning of the mag to get to them.

But they really do miss Reilly in the back. Roberts isn't going to cut it on that page...she's not interesting or witty enough.

 

I miss Rushin as well, it's just that you never really heard of people immediately flipping to page 8 when their issue arrived. Whether or not both lost their fastball, I'd still take them turning into a Pedro-esque nibbler than their replacements' "fastballs."

 

It seems to be a three-person rotation with Selena, Ballard and SL Price. I'd like to see them widen it out to see what other people could do in that spot.