The Battle of the Sports World—ESPN vs. Sports Illustrated
...re was more of them out there. But after reading the November 29th issue I completely changed my mind. For starters, the cover was atrocious. The magazine used a blurry photograph of a scene from the fight that broke out during the Indiana Pacers/Detroit Pistons basketball game. And in the magazine business the front cover is the most import thing, it’s supposed to grab the reader and make them want to read it. And it didn’t get much better once you turned the page. This issue was nothing but 90 pages of filler. It seemed as if the editor ran out of ideas for this week’s edition and decided “ahh, so what if we have one bad week.” The issue had five “feature” stories (aside from a handful of miscellaneous things like letters to the editor and sidebar stories) that focused on professional basketball, college and pro football, motor sports, and tennis. And four of the five had a sarcastic tone, it was like reading a downer. I was under the impression that sports magazines were supposed to highlight not only the stats and scores, but to give readers different aspects of the sports industry and its players, ones that we normally don’t see. And I understand that the world of sports isn’t always all glitz and glamour, but it isn’t dull and boring either. For me, it was as if the writers of SI were all just trying to knock out a quick story instead of trying to entice us because their articles reflected an angry, annoyed, or pissed off tone. For example, in “The Ugliest Game” (pg. 44), the writer talks about the downward path of the sports world. It highlights the fight that broke out during the Pacers/Pistons game (as well as several other fights—including the brawl during the South Carolina/Clemson college football game) and how sports in today’s society are “turning your stomach.” It was almost enough to make we want to stop watching sports all together, but instead I gave up Sports Illustrated. ESPN magazine helped to renew my faith in the sports world and made me believe that there are sports magazines out there that do what it’s supposed to, provide stats, scores, highlights, and feature stories about the industry you can’t find anywhere else. This new generation of sports magazine is sports journalism at its best. Af...