Sports Illustrated Magazine: A Franchise History

Sports Illustrated magazine has emerged as one of the great publishing success stories of the past 50 years, evolving into a pop cultural phenomenon and a financial monolith generating over one billion dollars in profits since 1984. However, its triumphant trajectory was not always a foregone conclusion.

Launched in 1954 by Time Inc. patriarch Henry Luce, SI was initially dismissed by many mainstream sports fans as a snobbish, upper-crust publication. One writer even likened it to "a slick cookbook for the two-yacht family." But in the late '50s and early '60s, a new breed of smart, irreverent sportswriters, working under the legendary managing editor Andre Laguerre, transformed the magazine's prose, unapologetically embracing the central role of sports in modern society.

Laguerre's vision, largely shaped in a series of small, untrendy bars in midtown Manhattan during the '60s and '70s, was instrumental in establishing the blueprint for modern sports journalism and the quintessential middle-class American magazine of the postwar era. This period also saw the debut of the controversial swimsuit issue, which remains the highest profile special issue in American magazine publishing.

The transformation of Sports Illustrated, orchestrated by this superb team of larger-than-life sportswriting legends like Dan Jenkins, George Plimpton, Frank Deford and Roy Blount, Jr., as well as cutting-edge photographers such as Walter Iooss, Jr. and Neil Leifer, is one of the great untold stories of American journalism.

As Ray Cave observed, this evolution "legitimized sports" to the point where one could "read a sports magazine, and still be considered able to read, for starters." The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine, the first book to chronicle this captivating narrative, documents the development of one of the most fascinating and dominant franchises in American sports, from its obscure beginnings to its present-day prominence.

Filled with never-before-told inside stories about the game behind the games, this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about sports, good writing and the high stakes world of modern media business. Author Michael MacCambridge, a former columnist and critic at the Austin American-Statesman, brings his expertise in movies, music and popular culture to this engrossing exploration of Sports Illustrated's remarkable journey.

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