These recent Winter Olympics have me thinking about the death of Sports Illustrated. Again. Specifically, the iconic covers they’d run that seemed to capture the entire point of Olympic excellence in one photo.
Michael Phelps had several I can picture off the top of my head. The “Golden Age” one where he wore about four pounds of gold medals on his chest. The “King of the Pool” one where he was mid-butterfly and his face took up the whole cover. The famous Usain Bolt “Warp Speed” cover. And those are more recent.
Growing up I remember the Jackie Joyner Kersee “Super Woman” cover. The Flo-Jo “Fastest Woman in the World Cover”. The original Dream Team cover is one of the most famous sports photo shoots ever.
When the USA Hockey Men’s Team won their first title in 46 years on Sunday and we got this instantly iconic, incredible photo of Jack Hughes (up top), my first thought went to Sports Illustrated, and how if this happened when I was a kid, that photo would have been on the cover and then I’d have instantly taped it to my bedroom wall.
And when I told that to my son, who got up at 8AM on a Sunday (no small feat for a 13-year-old boy who would happily sleep until 11AM), I began explaining to him how IMPORTANT Sports Illustrated used to be to a generation of young dude sports fans.
These iPad watching, Netflix streaming, YouTube shorts online kids don’t know what they missed.
Hell, nobody under 35 knows. But dads and 80s/90s sports fans KNOW.
There was nothing like rolling home from school on a Wednesday or Thursday and grabbing that sweet, fresh issue of Sports Illustrated out of the mailbox. Yes, the physical mailbox. Tangible. In print and glorious.
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Who was on the cover? What was Rick Reilly’s column about? Did Gary Smith write something? What’s Ralph Wiley covering? Did Steve Rushin write from Greenland? What about Jackie Mac? Or Gammons? Or Pearlman? Do we know any of the Faces in the Crowd?
I’m telling you, every SI mail day was an event.
Titans wrote for the magazine. Legends were on the cover. New voices wrote new stories. If your favorite team or player had a feature it felt like you won something.
You’d read the whole thing, always back to front, because of Reilly. You looked forward to the preseason rankings, to finding out who’d be on the cover after a championship or major, to the March Madness breakdown. And getting the swimsuit issue in the middle of a cold, barren New England winter was a mini-holiday for young, pre-Internet men. Cindy Crawford. Kathy Ireland. Tyra Banks. Goddesses.
We had the commemorative issues and the themed issues and yes, the never-miss Olympic Issues. We had the goofy sweatshirt giveaways, the SI phone. We had it all.
It mattered. The writing, the photos, the covers, the feel of it. It spoke to millions of us. It meant something. It was a weekly shared conversation for a generation of us.
You could walk into any group of dudes in school, at the basketball court, at the mall, wherever, and just say, “You see SI this week?” and you’d have a 30 minute conversation.
And when moments like the men’s hockey gold medal game happen, and when overall dominant performances by Team USA happen in signature sports: USA women’s hockey winning gold on a golden goal, Alysa Liu winning figure skating, Jordan Stoltz dominating speed skating, Breezy Johnson (an all-time skiing name) winning gold winning in women’s downhill…
Well, I miss that Thursday mail day. I miss flipping through the magazine to read all the inside stories on the gold medals and medal winners we all just watched.
Yes, there are a million websites covering and dissecting every single moment of the Olympics. You can find out anything at any time. Watch any highlight at any time. There’s a benefit to that, sure.
But Sports Illustrated was about patience and discovery and elite writers doing elite curating. And that’s what made it great.
We didn’t have to search fifty sites and ten social media platforms to read about the best behind-the-scenes stories.
We had SI.
NOTE: While writing this story I discovered that SI still prints random issues throughout the year. I had no idea. I thought they’d stopped printing years ago. I don’t think I’ve seen an issue or seen someone reading an issue in at least five years. Maybe more. Either way, yes, I’m aware it’s still technically “around”. And the website is too. That you probably didn’t know that either and that sadly speaks to how much the once-crucial brand has disappeared from our lives.
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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
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