Sports Illustrated: From Inception to Icon

On August sixteenth, nineteen fifty four, when Sports Illustrated releases its first issue featuring Eddie Matthews of the Braves on the cover, starting a tradition of having great cover art for the magazine that became iconic, and how the sports magazine has gone from Low's to highs to Lowe's again. We're going to cover all of that today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. And today's trivia question is what four presidents have been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Now, whether you have subscribed to Sports Illustrated in the past, there's no doubt you've heard the name as it has become iconic and its covers in the past have been something that sportsmen around the world have clamored to be a part of. But how did it all start? Well, it actually goes back to nineteen thirty six when Stuart Skyfdel created a sports magazine marketed strictly to sportsmen called Sports Illustrated, and he would publish a monthly magazine from nineteen thirty six to nineteen forty two, mainly focusing on golf, tennis, and skiing, trying to hit that market of successful men that enjoyed sports. But he had a problem as there was a paper shortage and he had two magazines at the time, so he had to pick one or the other, and he picked the other one and sold the rights to Sports Illustrated to Dell Publications, who released their first episode in nineteen forty nine, seven years after Stuart's final run, and they were focusing on baseball, basketball, and boxing at the time, but they would only run it for about six months and they realized the problem that came was people consume sports on a timely basis, and you could not be timely with the monthly magazine. And the thought of at the time was sportswear beneath serious journalism, and so many didn't want to take on that task. Then, years after the Dell production had stopped, the founder of Time Magazine, Henry Lewis, saw that there was a gap to fill in his market. He owned Time and Life magazine and he was looking for something to fill that gap in the sports world, as it could be used for a weekly magazine. Although there were some at his company that thought this was a terrible idea, as Loose was not a sports fan, but he knew that there was a market for it seeing the growth of football and baseball across America. So they planned to meet in nineteen fifty four at the Pine Lakes Country Club, the oldest golf course in Myrtle Beach, and at the pro shop they actually mentioned this meeting of where Sports Illustrated started, and this is where they decided to launch the very first issue where they had a photo of Eddie Matthews at the plate playing the Braves at Milwaukee Country Stadium and he's swinging his bats and you can see the stands full all the way to the top at a night game. It's a truly iconic photo, and interestingly enough, there is no article or anything about the cover in this issue. It was just a cover because the photo looked amazing. And this cover would actually be used six more times during the run of Sports Illustrated, and the first issue was sold for twenty five cents. Now for the first twelve years, Henry Lewis knew that sports was going to be a big thing. He saw the growth happen in the NFL and Major League Baseball, and so he took Sports Illustrated, focused on the four main sports in America baseball, basketball, hockey, and football. And even though for the first twelve years it was not profitable and it estimated that Lews spent over thirty million dollars to help keep it afloat, he made the right choice as they were doing something that no one had done before and everyone was gonna want now. That same year they actually started the Sportsman of the Year and that first year it was given it to Roger Banister, who broke the four minute mile that same year, and this Sportsman of the Year has been something that athletes have always been honored with getting. But everything really turned around in the nineteen sixties when they hired European editor Andre Lagier to be the managing editor. Now, Andre had worked with Time magazine before and had its experience working with sports as he had covered the Winter Olympics previously, and what he really focused on was great photos and great writing and this set them apart. And another aspect of this that really helped is that printing in color got advancements in the nineteen sixties which allowed them to print faster and allowed them to print weekly so that they could so they could be a current magazine, which was major in sports as fans wanted to be current, another aspect that Andre also brought. In nineteen sixty four, he published the very first Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and he did this to fill slow time in the winter months, and he knew that their audience was mainly men and having a beautiful woman on the cover would attract men to buying the magazine as well. And while Andrea was at the helm of the editing bay is when Sports Illustrated really took off, and by nineteen eighty three, Sports Illustrated was the first American fully colored weekly news magazine and over the years, being on the cover was a great honor for all athletes, and the athlete with the most covers was Michael Jordan, who's had fifty covers over the life of the magazine. Muhammad Ali is second with forty and Lebron James is third with twenty five. Seem to be featured the most on the magazine was the Los Angeles Lakers, followed closely behind by the New York Yankees, and there was also four presidents that were featured on the cover of the magazine In JF. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, and they expanded throughout the years. They started Sports Kids, Sports Illustrated Almanac, and Sports Illustrated Presents, Sports Illustrated Women, Sports Illustrated on campus, and would later start Sports Illustrated dot com. Which was really the demise of Sports Illustrated was the Internet and the digital age. Now, Sports Illustrated is still around. They still have the website, but it's been sold multiple times and people just trying to use the name to get cash scrap. One thing that many writers from the golden age of Sports Illustrated said that what caused the downfall of Sports Illustrated was that they didn't adapt to changing times. They what made them successful was they were the first in the market in sports magazines, and so they weren't They were able to establish themselves, but they were one of the last of the markets in online sports magazines, which killed them when the digital age took over and magazines are not what they used to be. They've also gotten some controversy where they've got rid of their writing staff and had freelancers that were high schoolers or even had ai write articles for them, and it just shows how the quality of what used to be Sports Illustrated has gone downhill majorly and it's nothing like it was before. And the only thing people think about when they think about Sports Illustrated now is the swimsuit issue, which really has nothing to do with sport. Now, I want to thank you for listening to Day the Sports History. If you like this, please subscribe wherever you're listening. That way, you never miss an episode because we come out every day Monday through Friday. We want you to keep up on all the sports history there is to offer. We'll see you next week. And did you catch the answer to today's question, what four presidents have been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated JF? The answer is j F. Kennedy, General Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.