DARE I SAY....................EN FUEGO!!!!!

As in life, times change! In the sports magazine world times have certainly changed, ESPN the Magazine has made a HUGE dent in the market share that Sports Illustrated has had for decades. I have been a subscriber to ESPN the Magazine for over a year now and I have picked up the magazine on the newsstand for several years. I love this magazine; even in its infantile stages I knew this was going to be a great source of sports information!

Content of the magazine in every issue is well rounded, well written, objective and most importantly interesting! I look forward to ESPN in my mailbox, just to see what they have come up with next! In each issue they have a decent sized article on every major sport, football, baseball, hockey and basketball. The subjects are all “A” quality, there may be an article with Roger Clemens, Scottie Pippen, Brett Hull, Brett Favre, top quality interviews and writing of sports athletes that you want to read about. ESPN doesn’t just ask the same old questions like, “Scottie what was it like being traded from Chicago to Houston?” with ESPN they go deeper than that! You get stuff like, “Scottie, have you ever just wanted to let Charles Barkley have it? Or “Aren’t you tired of playing with Michael Jordan?”. As the reader you get questions answered that you have always wanted to ask yourself!

The writers in the magazine include your regular Sportscenter personnel; Rich Eisen, Dan Patrick, Kenny Mayne, Linda Cohn, Rece Davis and Stuart Scott just to name a few. It is real interesting reading the writing of anchors you see everyday on Sportcenter. You soon learn that these people are great writers with some very interesting personal takes on the sports world. Writers such as Gene Wojciechowski, Mike Lupica, Tim Keown, Sally Jenkins, Dick Vitale and Peter Gammons contribute with some wonderful articles, these writers are tops in their field!

As well as the larger articles in the issue, ESPN gives you “snapshot articles” on off season sports in the back of the magazine. For example in the summer there will be a page dedicated to off season hockey news and issues, in the winter, you will find a baseball page, all this to keep you the reader updated on the news of your favorite sport. Dan Patrick caps every issue off with an “Outtakes” article in which he interviews popular figures in sports on some pretty wacky things! I highly recommend his book “Outtakes”, it can be found at your nearest bookstore, it ROCKS!

The value of this magazine is fantastic. The cover price of ESPN the Magazine is $2.99 per issue, but I got my subscription for under $20.00 for one year. My goodness, this is a STEAL for a magazine of this quality! Even $2.99 off the newsstand is a great price! The pictures in the magazine are fantastic, many are full spread (2 pages) and all are full color of some awesome angles you can’t get on TV!

If I were to have a “knock” on the magazine it would be that there are a TON of advertisements. If you can get through all of the Levi’s, ABC, Gatorade and Altoids ads, you will find some wonderful photographs, fantastic writing and interesting facts and figures at a very, very reasonable cost!