RIP BOZO: The Death of Sports Illustrated

This week, the Arena Group sent an email to all Sports Illustrated employees saying “We will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand,” essentially killing the prestigious brand that, for years, had been as vibrant as a coma patient.

For generations, Sports Illustrated acted as the gold standard of sports journalism. Some of the greatest writers joined forces to build a brand that was capable of creating superstars by simply putting them on the cover of their magazines.

As sports media becomes solely built on uninformed hot takes going viral by people pissed at the nonsense these TV hosts are saying or journalists cozying up to power to be the first to break news on which G-Leaguer is signing a 10-day contract as opposed to challenging or ever questioning those in power¹—the loss of Sports Illustrated is a big deal.

Thoughtful, interesting, intelligent sports musings are gone. Most of the biggest voices in the space don’t even watch the games they passionately debate. It’s low-IQ, outrage bait designed to trigger smarter people’s instinct to correct mistakes.

But Sports Illustrated hasn’t been the hub of the sports culture in decades and the sudden desire to memorialize them as this sacred institution seems like an opportunity to make the news about yourself.

Every post about how you felt when you got SI in the mail when you were a kid has nothing to do with the website that recently fired all its writers. Sports Illustrated was recently busted for using AI content. They fired their CEO. Sports Illustrated has been a pile of shit for years and what happened last week doesn’t really matter.

It’s like if Fox announces they’re canceling The Simpsons and everyone rushes to shout at Fox for canceling a show that meant so much to their childhoods without acknowledging they haven’t aired a decent episode in almost 20 years.

Yes, of course it sucks that these VCs purchase media companies and inevitably murder them when they realize they cannot maximize profits. From Gawker to Pitchfork to SI, it sucks seeing these negligent parents adopt these media brands and continually commit filicide over and over again is infuriating.

However, Sports Illustrated fell off a cliff long before the Arena Sports Group purchased them. SI got their ass beat by ESPN and failed to survive the rise of 24-hour sports television. Without the best talent and with waning relevancy, Sports Illustrated has been a zombie for a long time.

We also all understand what these VCs do when they purchase these brands but we never bat an eye when the CEOs of these beloved brands sell to them knowing damn well all of their staff will be unemployed the second they sign on the dotted line.

Sports Illustrated didn’t even try to revive itself.

Why should I weep for them when they gave up?

Rolling Stone, GQ, Teen Vogue, there are plenty of older established brands who have managed to not only survive this long but continue to reinvent and pivot as the digital world changes. We’re letting years of ineptitude get off scot-free while SI has actively been contributing to the annihilation of sports media with awful, Chat-GPT, SEO-obsessed nonsense.

Someone’s going to read this and think I’m being pessimistic or cynical but it’s far more cynical to treat the death of this brand that’s been on life support, as if the sky is falling and society will never recover from this loss.

If anything, this is an opportunity to discover new, emerging sports media brands who actually care about originality over lazy regurgitation or reporting over providing press releases for powerful people.

Hey, there are sites like Deadseriousness where I’m here every day with smart (adjacent) and funny commentary and sports and pop culture. If you claim to care about independent media then prove it by supporting people who are out here in the trenches actually doing the work.

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