Writing a book👇
Former: Exec Editor
@SInow
, Editor-In-Chief
@FOS
I got “steamrollered” changed to “steamrolled” in the SI style guide ✊ adam.duerson
@gmail
.com
When I was laid off at
@SInow
a year ago, I was told: You’ll never forget the place; you’ll have DREAMS about it. A year later: confirmed. Can’t stop thinking about it. So...
A few gut punches here for
@lions
fans. Megatron says:
*He'd have played on if DET were better; doesnt cheer for 'em
*Smoked weed after ea game 🤷♂️
*Kitna called it in '08 preseason: Lions would go 0-16 w their O
*Lions asked him to lie about a concussion
On Josh Gordon:
"As a soph. at Baylor he was receiving (and reselling) as much as 6 lbs of weed—vacuum-sealed & wrapped in Mylar, sprayed w kerosene & covered in coffee beans—every week from a dealer back home. He was bringing in $10,000+ in profit/mo." 😮
You run a nonprofit. Your phone rings. A voice: "If
@Kaepernick7
gave you $25,000, what would you do with it?"
That call is happening again and again.
@GregBishopSI
&
@Ben_Baskin
tell the story we've all been ignoring
Fact check/copy read:
*errant dash; pls fix
*double space?
*"eliminated": right word here?
*"destroy": sourcing?
*no you haven't; he played on Jan. 1 (and had a 122.3 passer rating)
*lacks cohesion; pls refile asap
New name for old magazine-
@SInow
will become "Sports ELIMINATED." Kaepernick gets Ali award. Heck, I've played in as many NFL games this year as he has, but then he's done a lot to destroy
@NFL
so makes sense.
Oh, hey, I’ve got a new thing: Starting today, I’m the editor-in-chief at
@FOS
! Structurally, *everything* about sports is changing; it’s a great time to be in the business of covering business. Excited to get going w/
@FOSAdam
and co.
A layoff thread, 1/1
Folks, I’m done. I’ve joined the esteemed ranks of *former*
@SInow
editors—a brilliant and vast group whose members have each deserved better, but who were PAID (!!) to think and dissect and parse and nitpick. Imagine that. It was surreal to the last second.
Back in the '90s, Gary Vider posed for pics w/ the likes of Jordan, Elway, Lemieux, Nancy Kerrigan... These were the perks of being a kid reporter for
@SIKids
—except Gary Vider wasn't one. Today's
@SInow
Daily Cover: Confessions of a Kid Scam Artist
My friend
@GrantWahl
writes meaningful stories that are widely read. He writes more often than almost anyone else I know. He dominates his beat. Dominates. I edited Grant frequently. If you're hiring, call me. I can talk for hours about GW.
Imagine hundreds of these invitations. Every week. God damn, I will miss you,
@GrantWahl
. I wish I said YES more often, but every time I did I became a more knowledgable, more reasonable, more enlightened soccer fan. Grant is a huge reason that you and I love this game.
Take a minute today to remember the old print
@SInow
NCAA tourney preview cover (the “Waldo” cover, in office parlance), which used to require endless hours of photo-cutting by a crack imaging team… and today could probably be executed on an iphone in 10 minutes.
VENT: An astonishing amount of old
@SInow
is gone from the web, & that sucks. One in four articles, gone. Loads of old videos. Majority of the 60th anniversary package. The Vault? Barely functions. Stinks for someone doing a book about the place—but far more for 70 yrs of writers
.
@steelers
CB Joe Haden on the audacity of the
@Browns
in cutting him this off-season: “They were going to pay Brock Osweiler $16 million and he’s not even on the team [after being signed and cut this summer], and they wanted to cut money from ME!?”
This JON GRUDEN story by
@bySLPrice
is just packed w/ goodness. Here's JG on his 24yo kid, Deuce, who's a
@RAIDERS
strength coach: “He’s like his mom, a tiny little lady. But he’s a beast.”
THANKS, DAD!
Deshaun Watson “just wants out.” Cal McNair is “Tommy Boy.” And Jack Easterby thinks the Krafts are paying for a media takedown. (They’re not.)
WHOAH Texans followup from
@JennyVrentas
&
@GregBishopSI
2/2
I’m tremendously proud of all we did. The
@SInow
Daily Cover was my baby: . If you’re looking to employ someone like me—in sports or not, longform or short, on planet earth or elsewhere—pls reach out.
@adam
.duerson
@gmail
.com
Couple months ago, I started working with our writers—and freelancers; pitch me!—on a Daily Cover concept for
@SInow
. Biased opinion: We've done a ton of cool stuff in a short time. So many good reads in here. Dig in
At least SIXTEEN current NBA players have their own signature shoe. But women? There was the Air Swoopes, more than a quarter century ago...and not much more.
@elindsay08
with a smart look back, and ahead
A little work update: Yesterday was my last day at
@FOS
. Thank you to all the lovely people I worked with; I’m very proud of what we did together. … Now? I’m gonna take a breath and be a dad for a bit.
4/4
There were 16 other OUTSTANDING HUMAN BEINGS laid off w/ me today. My heart breaks for each of them, but I’m excited for their new opportunities. Change can be good, but first, often, something radical has to happen. Pls pls pls call me about them. ✌🏻
Here: the letters from readers in the 2 weeks after
@SInow
put Willie Mays on the cover in 1955 standing beside the white wife of manager Leo Durocher. (19th Hole, as they called reader mail, was essentially print-Twitter, sometimes vile.) Really strong essay here from
@BWDBWDBWD
went deep into the archives to interrogate Willie Mays’ public apoliticism, that time Jackie Robinson all but dismissed Willie as a coon, and what we can learn from the quietly subversive way he Stuck To Sports.
It’s my latest for Front Office Sports:
After Eli's last play (probably) as a starter, his wife grabbed a hot dog and two Bud Lights from the Manning suite and tossed em in a bag to bring home to him...
I asked
@Ben_Baskin
to find out what the QB's last days looked and felt like. He done good.
This image has haunted me for almost a year and a half. Today, we share the fruits of our labor: Episode One of
@TimRohan
's nine-part SI: TRUE CRIME podcast about the death of
@Titans
QB Steve McNair
In 2021, I had the pleasure of working with one legend writing about another:
@SteveRushin
on 90-year-old Willie Mays. Steve was reading about the Beatles at the time and reflecting on Mays saw a similarity: The celebrity who left other stars starstruck
"I felt ‘out of body.' My heart would be going, I’d be sweating, I felt like everybody in the room was looking at me. My speech was slurring. I didn’t wanna eat. I was gasping for air. It’s hard to spit words out.”
—Percy Harvin on anxiety and the NFL
Huddled inconspicuously among 658 Dutch Jews that arrived in Auschhwitz on a snowy Sunday in January, 76 yrs ago, was Eddy Hamel—the first American to reach the top level of European soccer, at Ajax. Sit down for this one, from
@Mike_McKnight_
There's cheating. ...And then there's this guy, who 44 yrs ago, at the Summer Games in Montreal, rigged his épée to register nonexistent hits. On woulda-been-Olympics-week, I'm thrilled to have
@MichaelFarber3
tell this story of jaw-dropping brazenness.
Hey look! We called this one too, four years ago!
#NotReally
(But seriously: Until this week, this Dec 6, 2013 issue had ranked pretttty high on my list of "can't believe we put X on the cover" regrets. Redeemed!)
“There’s nothing that makes multimillionaire coaches at taxpayer-funded public schools go ballistic faster than being interrogated about their swanky salaries…”
@MMcCarthyREV
w/ a relevant media truth
1980: Colorado coach Chuck Fairbanks—a real spendthrift; he refused to wear a shirt more than twice—commissioned the design of a new
@CUBuffsFootball
helmet logo, but the program never adopted it. Never seen this outside of this
@SInow
story.
@UniWatch
Writing is funny: This story started as a footnote in reporting for another feature and turned into a rabbit hole. The result is a jaw-dropping tale about horse racing and (rampant, brazen) cheating and suicide and misogyny and, maybe, murder
One friend from Prince's high school days remembers him weighing whether to pursue basketball or music—then calling one day to declare for the latter. "He also called to say he was dating my ex-girlfriend.”
On Prince and hoops, five years after his death:
A Cuban chef in Tampa wanted to help a gold-medal Olympic boxer defect from 🇨🇺. She sent this guy 👇for the extraction. She involved
@marcorubio
. It kept getting weirder. Crazy longread from
@GregBishopSI
Nine yrs after police concluded Steve McNair was killed by his mistress, that case is still very much alive: fresh leads/rumors, lingering suspicions/allegations, persisting pain... We go DEEP on Steve McNair beginning Oct 17 in a new nine-part
@sinow
pod:
This is a gutpunch of a morning read. Eddie DeBartolo blows the horn of Gondor, and all the 49ers greats flock home to say goodbye to Dwight Clark, who's being ravaged by ALS.
@SI_ChrisBallard
I’ve been through a few book launches with
@GrantWahl
. Today’s is the hardest, by far. Lots of love to
@MarkMravic
and
@alexander_wolff
for putting together this collection of Grant’s best work, out today. Pls go buy one
This is a biz trend story about the rise/fall of theme restaurants like All-Star Cafe. This is a true crime story about hair-brained kitchen workers. This is a celeb story (Obama, Tiger, Sheen). This is a baseball card story (hello, T206). I love this
“Grant cooked, Celine chose the wine and the two of them made everyone in the room feel like the president of France.”
@LAT_ChrisStone
nailed what it was like to be around
@GrantWahl
, whose cross-pollenating dinner parties were one of the joys of The Job
3/3
Ppl will write about today, perhaps mercilessly. But, look. I’ve been around. Every round of layoffs—20? more?—has been *the end of SI*. And, I think, each prediction was wrong. Yesterday, SI was STRONG. I leave behind some brilliant colleagues; SI will be strong tmrw.
1. This quote: “There was no relationship [with Bill O'Brien],” says Hopkins. “Make sure you put that in there.”
2. Um:
@SINow
's first bandana'ed cover??
The clicks and likes and comments on this story... About a runner. Who so few people know—not an A (or Z) lister. Whose tale is too nuanced to do justice in a tweet. Surprise: people like good/unique/differentiated things. Quality trumps quantity, every day, always.
This was my final story at SI. Thanks to
@adamduerson
and
@SI_MarkBechtel
for seeing it into print. And to the Fixx family for sharing the journals for the first time.