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Like a lot of you, I fondly remember Sports Illustrated. In an age of 24" screens and no Internet. SI was a window behind the curtains of a sports world we all craved to know more about. But most, for me, it wasn't the fantastic pictures we got, it was the writing. They all just wrote so beautifully. I like to write, but for the most part, what they did was an art, I can only aspire to.
Peter King in his Monday Morning column allowed Rick Reilly to write a small piece that summarized what was so right about SI, and what is so wrong about what we get now. I hope you enjoy it.
By Rick Reilly
“So what was it like this — what was it called — Sports Illustrated?”
Looking back on it, working there, it seems like a dream now. We were just sportswriters and yet we flew first class. I flew on the Concord once. And your boss would get mad if you didn’t spend your entire yearly expense account.
“Expense account?”
It was a pile of money they’d give us to take athletes and coaches out to dinner.
“Athletes went out to dinner with you?”
All the time. Or we’d drink with them. Once, I bought Ickey Woods a first-class flight from Cincinnati to Fresno just so I could sit next to him on the flight. Anything to find out more good stuff for your story.
“What was so icky about him?”
Just his name.
“Wait. So how would you find these athletes to ask them to dinner?”
In the locker room?
“You got to be in the locker room with the actual athletes?”
Of course! Don’t you?
“Nah. Here at ClickCrazy.com we just all sit in this big boiler room and watch sports on TV and then rewrite it into 300 words. But we get $25 a story.”
Rick Reilly in Washington D.C., April 2019. (Getty Images)
Oh. Well, at SI, you could go wherever you needed to, as long as you wrote the best story in the country about that subject. All my heroes worked for SI: Jim Murray, Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford.
“The old car?”
Uh, that’s the DeSoto. Anyway, the leeway they gave writers was unreal. I once got six weeks to write a 10-page feature on Patrick Ewing and I never used a single quote from him.
“Ten pages of what?”
The magazine.
“You mean a ‘zine?”
No, a magazine. Like, with paper and staples. It came in the mailbox. You have a mailbox, right?
“I don’t think so. But you had to tweet and blog and podcast all those six weeks, too, right?”
None of that stuff existed. All they cared about was you writing a killer piece. They’d put it with these amazing photos. We had the best photographers in the world. They’d go through 1,000 rolls of film to get 5 pictures.
“Film?”
Analog pixels. We had fantastic editors, too. Your piece would get three layers of editing.
“Layers of editing? We don’t even have editing.”
I noticed. Then it would go through the fact checkers and—
“Whoa! People had whole jobs just checking facts?”
I mean, you didn’t want to get a letter.
“People wrote you letters? Like, with stamps?”
Yeah. And they’d sign them with their name and address.
“But how can people troll writers doing that?”
They couldn’t. It was lovely.
“So all these good stories and photos, then what?”
Well, then they’d ship it out and millions upon millions of people would savor it. SI was part of the fabric woven through American sports fans. They’d read it cover to cover.
“On their phones?”
On their couches.
“So how much time would it would take to put out all this stuff?”
Fastest turnaround was four days.
“What?! Four days? That’s so whack! Here at ClickCrazy.com, we’d have 20 stories about that game by then.”
And do people remember those stories years later? Do they save them in boxes? Do people come up to the ClickCrazy.com writers 10 years later and tell them how their stories moved them to tears?
“No. But sometimes we get a funny comment at the bottom.”
Oh. Cool.
“So what happened to this Sports Illustrated thing?”
The internet. Apple. ESPN. People forgot how to savor. After a while, young people only knew us for the swimsuit issue.
“Oh, yeah! We just bought that! We’re gonna slap that on our new ads. It’s gonna say: ClickCrazy and the SI Swimsuit Issue: The Perfect Pair!
And both have hardly any material, right?
“Oooh. Can I use that?”
Now THAT was good writing.
Hope you liked it.
Peter King in his Monday Morning column allowed Rick Reilly to write a small piece that summarized what was so right about SI, and what is so wrong about what we get now. I hope you enjoy it.
By Rick Reilly
“So what was it like this — what was it called — Sports Illustrated?”
Looking back on it, working there, it seems like a dream now. We were just sportswriters and yet we flew first class. I flew on the Concord once. And your boss would get mad if you didn’t spend your entire yearly expense account.
“Expense account?”
It was a pile of money they’d give us to take athletes and coaches out to dinner.
“Athletes went out to dinner with you?”
All the time. Or we’d drink with them. Once, I bought Ickey Woods a first-class flight from Cincinnati to Fresno just so I could sit next to him on the flight. Anything to find out more good stuff for your story.
“What was so icky about him?”
Just his name.
“Wait. So how would you find these athletes to ask them to dinner?”
In the locker room?
“You got to be in the locker room with the actual athletes?”
Of course! Don’t you?
“Nah. Here at ClickCrazy.com we just all sit in this big boiler room and watch sports on TV and then rewrite it into 300 words. But we get $25 a story.”
Rick Reilly in Washington D.C., April 2019. (Getty Images)
Oh. Well, at SI, you could go wherever you needed to, as long as you wrote the best story in the country about that subject. All my heroes worked for SI: Jim Murray, Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford.
“The old car?”
Uh, that’s the DeSoto. Anyway, the leeway they gave writers was unreal. I once got six weeks to write a 10-page feature on Patrick Ewing and I never used a single quote from him.
“Ten pages of what?”
The magazine.
“You mean a ‘zine?”
No, a magazine. Like, with paper and staples. It came in the mailbox. You have a mailbox, right?
“I don’t think so. But you had to tweet and blog and podcast all those six weeks, too, right?”
None of that stuff existed. All they cared about was you writing a killer piece. They’d put it with these amazing photos. We had the best photographers in the world. They’d go through 1,000 rolls of film to get 5 pictures.
“Film?”
Analog pixels. We had fantastic editors, too. Your piece would get three layers of editing.
“Layers of editing? We don’t even have editing.”
I noticed. Then it would go through the fact checkers and—
“Whoa! People had whole jobs just checking facts?”
I mean, you didn’t want to get a letter.
“People wrote you letters? Like, with stamps?”
Yeah. And they’d sign them with their name and address.
“But how can people troll writers doing that?”
They couldn’t. It was lovely.
“So all these good stories and photos, then what?”
Well, then they’d ship it out and millions upon millions of people would savor it. SI was part of the fabric woven through American sports fans. They’d read it cover to cover.
“On their phones?”
On their couches.
“So how much time would it would take to put out all this stuff?”
Fastest turnaround was four days.
“What?! Four days? That’s so whack! Here at ClickCrazy.com, we’d have 20 stories about that game by then.”
And do people remember those stories years later? Do they save them in boxes? Do people come up to the ClickCrazy.com writers 10 years later and tell them how their stories moved them to tears?
“No. But sometimes we get a funny comment at the bottom.”
Oh. Cool.
“So what happened to this Sports Illustrated thing?”
The internet. Apple. ESPN. People forgot how to savor. After a while, young people only knew us for the swimsuit issue.
“Oh, yeah! We just bought that! We’re gonna slap that on our new ads. It’s gonna say: ClickCrazy and the SI Swimsuit Issue: The Perfect Pair!
And both have hardly any material, right?
“Oooh. Can I use that?”
Now THAT was good writing.
Hope you liked it.
