Here is a harsh truism, straight from a Marine:

Obese women in bikinis and trans freaks in French-cut suits do not sell magazines.

NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THAT SCHLITZ

No. Body.

Now, you can’t say I’m being unkind or that I haven’t been consistent in my messaging. In fact, this past May I waxed poetic about my memories of past Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions…and offered my unvarnished but eloquent opinion of the 2023 issue – replete with fat bodies, transgenders, and geriatrics:

BARF

Golly. I could have told them what was coming.

Well, okay – I did (My family doesn’t call me “The Spook” for nothing.).

…Some women might be making all the proper “so inclusive, so diverse” noises, but they aren’t buying this. Men sure aren’t. Did any women outside of the U.S. women’s soccer team and their parents ever buy this rag on a regular basis to begin with?

…Here’s my unsolicited Beege advice: You’re not making anyone happy with your virtue signaling except the people (I can’t even say “women” – is that not THE PROBLEM?!) who are actually in the issue. Sales HAVE to suck. If you have the money to burn, carry on.

If you are interested in “business,” bring the gorgeous girls back. Everybody wins, as everyone always bitched about “objectification” in any event, and even with lesbian basketball players included, they still do. Get my drift? You can’t win for losing, so stop being losers.

Bet you’d sell at least that issue again plus chalk a win up for REAL WOMEN.

And so it came.

𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: The entire staff of Sports Illustrated will be fired, per @richarddeitsch

“We appreciate the work and effort everyone has contributed to the SI brand and business.” pic.twitter.com/YSxhAkFzFp

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 19, 2024

What a surprise, no?

God. And to think of the hallowed moments they’ve squandered for the sake of WOKE.

Post your favorite Sports Illustrated cover: pic.twitter.com/Sndbar5M2g

— Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) January 19, 2024

The lyrical writing that touched your heart, whether you were a sports fan or not. Stories of great hearts that broke hearts when those hearts finally failed.

Pure Heart: The thrilling life and emotional death of Secretariat

In waging the most glorious Triple Crown campaign ever, Secretariat made racing history. In the doing, he took the author on an unforgettably exhilarating ride.

Just before noon the horse was led haltingly into a van next to the stallion barn, and there a concentrated barbiturate was injected into his jugular. Forty-five seconds later there was a crash as the stallion collapsed. His body was trucked immediately to Lexington, Kentucky, where Dr. Thomas Swerczek, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Kentucky, performed the necropsy. All of the horse’s vital organs were normal in size except for the heart.

”We were all shocked,” Swerczek said. ”I’ve seen and done thousands of autopsies on horses, and nothing I’d ever seen compared to it. The heart of the average horse weighs about nine pounds. This was almost twice the average size, and a third larger than any equine heart I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t pathologically enlarged. All the chambers and the valves were normal. It was just larger. I think it told us why he was able to do what he did.”

Tears my heart out to this day reading it.

The writers, like Roy Blunt Jr (whom one can see in Garden & Gun these days) interviewing Yogi Berra…

…Yet, yogis don’t tend to appear in a form that is 5’7½” tall and weighs 190 pounds. Jimmy Cannon, the late sportswriter, said Berra was built like a bull penguin. When Larry MacPhail, the Yankee president from 1945 to 1947, first saw Berra, he was reminded of “the bottom man on an unemployed acrobatic team.”

Whereas yoga springs from Hinduism, Berra is a Roman Catholic who tries to attend Mass every Sunday and who once visited the Pope. Yogi told of his meeting with Pope John XXIII in a now-famous interview:

Reporter: “I understand you had an audience with the Pope.”

Yogi: “No, but I saw him.”

Reporter: “Did you get to talk to him?”

Yogi: “I sure did. We had a nice little chat.”

Reporter: “What did he say?”

Yogi: “You know, he must read the papers a lot, because he said, ‘Hello, Yogi.’ ”

Reporter: “And what did you say?”

Yogi: “I said, ‘Hello, Pope.’ “

…and George Plimpton’s fabled Finch story, about a mythical pitcher from nowhere who had a 198 mph fastball. Even their regular features where sports insiders wrote interest pieces, like, cataloguing the modern tragedy of Pensacola’s own Trent Richardson.

Trent Richardson arrived in the NFL with great pedigree, a two-time national champion drafted out of Alabama in 2012 as the third overall pick. He was the highest-selected running back since Reggie Bush six years earlier, and signed a fully guaranteed four-year, $20.4 million contract, which included a $13.3 million signing bonus. Even a year later, when he was traded to the Colts for a first-round pick, his stock was still high. The overwhelming sentiment was that the Colts had clearly won that trade.

Richardson, of course, lasted two seasons in Indianapolis. He wound up in Oakland last season, and was picked up by the Ravens this offseason, only to be cut earlier this month. Now an NFL career that began with so much promise appears to be, at best, hanging on by a thread.

Human ATM
Richardson was the focus of a recent segment on ESPN’s E:60 that caught my attention and brought back a lot of memories, especially from the chapter of my life as an agent. Richardson discussed the financial pressures from friends, assorted family members and hangers-on—pressures that took his focus away from where it should have been. He detailed 10 people living in his house and losing approximately $1.6 million of his money in a 10-month stretch between January and October 2015 (when continued football earnings were far from secure); he was faced with requests to pay rents, car payments, and even to prevent a house from being repossessed.

Decades and decades of memories (and Notre Dame covers…yes) and phenomenal writing.

…the magazine, first published in 1954, was owned by Time Inc. until 2018.

Its iconic covers pictured the seminal moments in sports history, from the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980 to dubbing a 17-year-old high schooler named LeBron James “The Chosen One” in 2002.

Michael Jordan was the outlet’s most pictured cover athlete — appearing on the magazine front 50 times.

Long considered a standard of excellence in sports journalism, it employed legendary sports writers like Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Peter Gammons, Sally Jenkins, Leigh Montville and Jim Murray.

From pretty straightforward, no political slant to the rag, no proselytizing sports news world and once a year hootchie issue…to this.

It's so telling that the top title above the magazine name includes "Changing Minds."

Don't think it worked, huh?

I think the most fascinating part was also how the owner licensed the right to publish, and now the union is broken too.

— Laurie (@laurieinri) January 19, 2024

And then being accused of stooping to this – I mean, whut?

…In November, the magazine came under fire when it scrubbed its site of AI-generated content that included bylines and photos of fake authors, per a report from Futurism.

The flames they’re going out in are dumpster-fire quality, and they are going out. The company that owns them “terminated the agreement it holds with The Arena Group to publish the magazine in print and digital, per Front Office Sports.”

Current scuttlebutt is some employees will been contacted by the “People” team – as in magazine? Oh, perish the thought.

It’s just stunning – although I can’t say they weren’t warned time and again.

“Dad what was it like to read Sports Illustrated back in the day?” pic.twitter.com/KSLQc74bqY

— High Yield Harry (@HighyieldHarry) January 19, 2024

I can say woke ruins everything it touches.