HOPKINS, Minn. — It's been a constant pillar of sports journalism for decades, holding stories of our favorite athletes and teams – but the future of Sports Illustrated is now unclear.
Authentic Brands Group owns the SI brand, and has been licensing it to the Arena Group. On Friday, the group announced that it's license had been revoked, and because of that, the staff working on the SI brand would be laid off. It's unclear how many people it will affect.
What is clear is the magazine's lasting legacy on generations of sports fans, including Kelly Wells of Ultimate Collectibles in Hopkins.
"Some of my favorite memories growing up, I go to my cousin's house and they had like a lifetime subscription to Sports Illustrated," Wells said. "So I would try to sneak in minutes here, there, to read all the most interesting to me – the baseball and basketball mostly – just try to get in as many of those as I could before I went home."
They carry plenty of copies of Sports Illustrated, including ones of some of Minnesota's sports heroes.
"We love the Kirby Puckett giant bat one, of course, here we love the ones where we won the World Series in ’87 and ’91, and they gave us a couple of couple of covers," Wells said.
From Puckett to Mauer, Tarkenton to Garnett – generations of us grew up on these magazines.
"Sports Illustrated is such a deeply woven part of the fabric of the professional sporting experience for so many people," said Jon Krawczynski, senior writer for The Athletic.
Krawczynski says his love of sports – and passion for sports journalism – started with SI.
"A picture's worth a thousand words, right?" he said. "Those covers are worth 10,000, 20,000 words, because they are the defining images of the defining sports moments of our lives."
Many of those moments, especially in Minnesota, were captured by Steve Rushin.
"I've been writing for Sports Illustrated for 37 years," he said. "I'm 57 years old, so it's a thing that I've done more than pretty much anything else in my life."
Like many sports fan, he's saddened, but not shocked.
"It feels like I've been blindsided by a snail, because we've seen this coming for a long time in all of print media," Rushin said.
Now, he's left with memories, and wondering what happens now. The Arena Group released a statement, saying they plan to continue producing Sports Illustrated until this is resolved.
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