Sports Illustrated (Reggie Bush cover)

It's clunky and hence falls flat. The guy is bending over backward to be creative, and has botched the image.

Incomplete pass.

And the only time I've ever seen or heard snot crackle is when you're bent over a toilet and blowing chow after having drank too many tequila shots.

 

Feel free to post an article, LJB. I'd like to see it. Picking out one story won't prove anything either way, but it would be an interesting comparison. I'm guessing that you won't post an article from Curry Kirkpatrick, for instance, who was perhaps the most over-the-top writer SI has ever had. Take a look at a couple of his pieces from that era -- which were usually excellent, by the way -- and tell me how efficient and no-frills they were.

I would also point out that in the 80's, there were people saying the same things that you're saying now -- that the writing wasn't as good as it used to 10 or 20 years earlier, when guys like Roy Blount and Dan Jenkins were in the magazine every week. I'm not saying SI doesn't have its problems. One of them is that the writers are stretched too thin, with the website, the special sections like Golf Plus, etc. But there is still more consistently high-quality writing there than in any other sports publication. Also, that Jurevicius story was a perfectly decent piece, as others have said. Picking that as an example of how far SI has fallen just doesn't fly.

 

It held your attention for 34 years.

Most people get tired of their spouses long before that.

If that was somehow intended as an indictment of SI, it achieved the opposite effect, IMO.

 

Damn, dude, you are riding this horse to death. I mean, LJB hasn't even posted the article yet, and you're already back on this kick.

Go back and read the first set of posts. Someone asked for the example I mentioned. But I'd have an example if it were a month ago, two months ago or six months ago.

If you want me to come up with a classic example of going too far, that would be the Pearlman piece about David Wells, but I believe that one's been shredded to death here, so I left it alone.

But riddle us this, joe. Why are you so defensive about this Jurevicius piece? It's clearly not a masterpiece. I already said I liked parts of it that weren't excessive, and I have no problem with Jurevicius. He was solid for me as a fantasy pickup last year, at least until all of Seattle's starters were healthy.

 

I made several points in my post. You ignored all of them except the last one, about Jurevicius. I don't think I'm the one beating the dead horse.

And since you're so curious, I have nothing to do with the Jurevicius story. I hadn't even read it until you mentioned it on this thread.

 

There's an apples and oranges comparison.

 

Your "points" were that my points were BS. Of course I ignored them.

I thought it was an OK story in places. I guess with the preseason not starting yet, it was written as it was: a Charmin-soft feature with lots of places to squeeze. Except where it was clunky.

 

Dye, seriously, read this post again. It doesn't say your points are BS. Except for the last two sentences, it has nothing to do with you. I was trying to move the discussion along past the debate over that one story.

 

I read what you said about the 1980s. I can't comment on what the magazine was like in the 1960s.

If I have any magazines left from the 80s, I'll try to look at one or two of them. There simply isn't time to do any more than that, even if I have any of the older issues left.

 

I agree with you to a point. Where you really see it, however, is in newspapers. There's too many writers that think they are Rick Reilly clever and they fall miserably on their face. I often cringe reading newspapers - especially from writers that try to turn a high school football game into a Sportscenter piece.

I like when writers take a little anecdote and make it a clever lead, but way too often people ruin their stories by trying to make it clever.

You see it a little bit in SI, but I will say that when SI writers slip up on trying to be creative, they don't fall flat on their face. Hoffer's use of "snot-crackling dusk" is a stretch, I'll give you that, but I don't think it was horrible.

 

BH33, are you trying to serve up a big, fat softball?

You definitely see it in newspapers, to the point where the facts get thrown out the window. I've seen a headline that referred to "Heisman winner" Darnell Autry. This spring, there was a reference to A-F's favorite team, the Fighting Illini, losing in the first round each year from 1987 to 1990. Yeah, if you throw out that Final Four appearance in 1989, that would be true.

Just. Write. The. Stories. If you can't be clever successfully, then maybe it's time to try another approach.

Now, I know the next 30 responses are going to be: "We CAN'T just write like AP!" For those who do, just drop the words "just, like and AP," and you'll be correct.

 

Yes, I'm certain the journalism community at large is really wringing its hands over SI being stretched too thin.

All other points well noted, I will find a non-Kirkpatrick piece, if that will make you right. It doesn't matter to me. I just want you to be able make a tangible comparison. Serious, it's night and day. I'm not even that old, and I sound like a 91-year-old grandmother, but the shit was better then. It just was.