Growing up, I waited for Thursdays the way the other kids in school yearned for Fridays. On Thursdays, I knew Sports Illustrated would be waiting for me in the mail. I’d snatch every copy as if it were the last piece of bacon at a breakfast buffet, jump face-first on my blue comforter and devour it. Sports Illustrated accounted for a large percentage of all the reading I did as a kid.
Sports Illustrated accounted for a large percentage of all the reading I did as a kid.
It bewildered teachers why I wouldn’t even open “The Canterbury Tales” or “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” but would read every word of a 5,000-word opus by Frank Deford about a high school football coach I didn’t know existed or turn to Peter Gammons to learn exactly why my New York Mets hero Dwight Gooden had lost his fastball. Tom Sawyer couldn’t possibly compete.
That is why it is an absolute tragedy to hear on Friday that some 70 years after its first iconic cover, which featured future baseball Hall of Famer Eddie Matthews, Sports Illustrated may soon be dead. We are not talking about a typical reduction in talent or a decline in quality. (Layoffs have plagued the magazine in recent years. Then there was the recent scandal where Sports Illustrated was accused of using artificial-intelligence-generated stories and fake bylines and eschewing journalism for poorly worded drek around which to frame ads.) The Arena Group, which had a license from Authentic Brands Group to publish SI, is laying off a huge portion of the writers and editors. Authentic Brands Group bought the magazine for $110 million in 2019.
The magazine’s union said in a statement on X that workers have been told that Arena plans to “lay off a significant number, possibly all” of the staff represented by the union.
Authentic Brands Group insists SI isn’t dead: “Authentic is here to ensure that the brand of Sports Illustrated, which includes its editorial arm, continues to thrive as it has for the past nearly 70 years,”…
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