by Perhaps it was the wordless image of the United States Olympic hockey team celebrating the “miracle on ice.” Maybe it was the perfect framing of Dwight Clark doing “The capture” to send the San Francisco 49ers to the 1982 Super Bowl. Or it could have been the declaration that a 17-year-old LeBron James was “The chosen one”, 20 months before playing his first NBA game.
For sports fans of a certain age, the memory of running to the mailbox to see what was on the cover of the latest weekly issue of Sports Illustrated is indelible. For decades, the magazine’s photographers, writers and editors had the power to anoint the stars and offer the definitive account of sports’ biggest moments, often with a single photograph and a few words on the cover. It was the most powerful real estate company in sports journalism.
“When I was a kid getting SI, you didn’t have that immediate 24-hour news cycle hitting you over the head,” said Nate Gordon, former Sports Illustrated graphics editor and now chief content officer for The Players Tribune. “You’d get that cover and say, ‘Man, this is what happened last week.’ That’s so cool.'”
To the extent that any magazine had that power, it is now severely diminished. But the road has been particularly difficult for Sports Illustrated, with its shrinking staff and reduced print frequency. Last week, most employees were laid off or told their employment would be uncertain after 90 days, leaving the future of the publication in flux.
However, Sports Illustrated’s power to define sports discourse faded long before 2024. A combination of factors such as the growth of sports on cable channels, the presence of more team-controlled media, and the dominance of the Internet they had been steadily eroding the influence of the magazine and its cover for years. But it’s hard to overstate the power it once had.
Robert Beck was one of Sports Illustrated’s last remaining photographers when the magazine laid off all of its photojournalists in 2015. He is best known for his frontal photography of a Brandi Chastain in sports bra celebrating the United States soccer team’s penalty shootout victory in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final.
Dozens of photographers were at the game, and Beck was far from the only one to take a photo of Chastain’s celebration, although unlike others, he captured her image from the front, rather than from an angle. It was the photo’s placement on the cover of Sports Illustrated that made it famous.
“As far as Joe Normal knows, he believes Robert Beck got the only photograph of that,” Mr. Beck said.
Famous athletes such as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have appeared on the magazine’s cover dozens of times. For Fred Vuich, one image of Mr. Woods stands out.
Mr. Vuich was on his first assignment for Sports Illustrated at the 2001 Masters. Parked on the 16th hole for Sunday’s final round, he thought he would get a chance to see Mr. Woods capture his fourth consecutive major, the Tiger Slam. , with a birdie. But Mr. Woods missed the birdie putt and Mr. Vuich did not have enough time to reach the distant 18th green.
Instead, using an unpowered silent camera to avoid disturbing Woods’ backswing, Vuich took a wide tower shot of his tee shot on the final hole, nearly surrounded by fans. The editors of Sports Illustrated put it on the cover, along with one word: “Masterpiece.“
“That photograph marked my career,” Vuich said, pointing out similarities in its composition with the cover photograph of First issue of Sports Illustratedin 1954, which showed Milwaukee Braves third baseman Eddie Mathews standing small in the frame of home plate in a crowded stadium.
In addition to capturing classic moments, Sports Illustrated could introduce athletes to the world at large. James was still in high school when he first appeared on the cover in 2002.
“The cover pushed me onto the national stage, whether I was ready for it or not,” he said in a book published in 2009 with journalist Buzz Bissinger.
Superstar athletes, long before and after James appeared on the cover, clamored for a spot and promised photographers and writers hours of their time. Sports Illustrated’s influence was such that its annual swimsuit issue helped fuel the rise of supermodels such as Kathy Ireland, Tyra Banks and Brooklyn Decker. But with great power comes great responsibility, and one superstar never forgave the magazine after feeling she treated him unfairly on her cover.
Jordan hasn’t given interviews to Sports Illustrated writers for three decades, after a cover story told him to do so. “Bag it up, Michael.” and called his short baseball career “embarrassing.” Steve Wulf, who wrote the accompanying article but not the cover, has been apologizing for it ever since.
Other athletes had more complicated relationships with the cover of Sports Illustrated. In 1989, the magazine put the state of Michigan Tony Mandarich on the cover and called him “the greatest offensive line prospect of all time” shortly before he was selected second overall in the NFL draft.
Mandarich recalled in a 2009 autobiography seeing 50 copies of the magazine at the newsstand at Los Angeles International Airport. “I recognized then that I was an article in the national press, great national press,” he wrote. “That was another intoxicating experience, which fueled my arrogance and my sense of superiority.”
Three years later, as he was leaving the league, Sports Illustrated stated that Mr. Mandarich “The incredible failure of the NFL”. In his autobiography, Mandarich admits it was accurate, but said he “felt the quick emotional kick in the gut that I think Sports Illustrated intended when it published it.” She would boycott Sports Illustrated journalists for 12 years.
Some were also frightened by the so-called Sports Illustrated cover hex, which was said to cause injury or poor play to those who appeared on the cover. Hex himself once appeared on the cover (with a photograph of a black cat) and was the topic of a long article exploring if it was real.
Over the years, as the publishing economy changed, so did cover selection.
“It became less of a news thing and more of a personality thing,” said Al Tielemans, a staff photographer for nearly 20 years. He described an evolution in which editors wanted the key moment of the game, and then a nice photo of the star of the game, and then a photo of the most famous person in the game, and finally just a photo of a star’s head. .
Last year, perhaps in an attempt to generate a buzz among celebrities and possibly as a result of the increased time needed to print the magazine, Sports Illustrated Deion Sanders named Athlete of the Year. At one point, his Colorado Buffaloes, in his first year as coach, were 3-0 and ranked 18th in the college football standings. But when the magazine came out with Mr. Sanders on the cover, the Buffaloes were 4-8.
The internet and social media platforms like Instagram mean more photos are being shown to more people than ever before. Now that fans see every angle of every game, with highlights and shots instantly available on social media, no image has the same power that the cover of Sports Illustrated once did.
In 2014, Mr. Tielemans shot a memorable cover of a 13-year-old girl, Mo’ne Davis, pitching in the Little League World Series. She dreamed of having a 20- or 30-year career as a photographer at Sports Illustrated, which she achieved. But he hoped to eventually be replaced by a new generation of photographers who would shoot their own famous covers.
Instead, when he was fired in 2015, he wasn’t replaced at all.
