Which magazine

[Kevin26385]

1.ESPN The Magazine
2.Sports Illustrated

Im looking for a sports magazine obviously, i know really nothing about both magazines..But i want to get into one of them.

Keep in mind, the "best bang for your buck" and the thing i want..is more football. Does either magazine favor the NFL or NCAA over other sports..because i definitly rather have that. While im interested in other sports, im obviously way more focused on football.

And if you think both are garbage, please tell me why...and if theres another magazine i dont know about.

thanks

[mjb2124]

Re: Which magazine

SI and it isn't even close for me.

I've found the ESPN articles lacking in depth/quality compared to the SI articles.

[Altimus]

Re: Which magazine

SI.

ESPN Insider content is good though.

[JohnnytheSkin]

Re: Which magazine

SI hands down. The sports reporting is great, and the some of the stories (like the recent Pat Tillman aritcle) are award worthy.

[Beantown]

Re: Which magazine

SI.

Sporting News isn't too bad, either. Only good part about ESPN is the Insider content you get with a subscription.

[CM1847]

Re: Which magazine

I have never read ESPN the Magazine regularly, but you do get a free subscription to ESPN.com Insider when you subscribe and the tremendous amount of online content you can access to would make it worth getting ESPN the mag just for that. Of course getting SI and an Insider subscription seperately would be the best, but just getting ESPN the mag would be cheaper.

[longshadow11]

Re: Which magazine

The Sporting News gives the most in-depth coverage of sports. It's not as flashy as SI, but I think it's more of a hardcore mag for sports fans. Less pictures, more facts. Another good magazine is USA Today's sports weekly magazine. I think it is actually called Sports Weekly. I like them all, actually, except for ESPN's magazine. Something about it rubs me the wrong way.

[ODogg]

Re: Which magazine

SI and as has been said, it's not even close. I had a subscription to ESPN magazine and it was awful. Don't waste your time with it.

[Dispatch]

Re: Which magazine

ESPN the mag, the magazine might not be as good but all the info on the website makes it all worth it.

[pk500]

Re: Which magazine

Neither ESPN or SI. Both suck.

ESPN The Magazine is nothing but a promotional vehicle for the network and the athletes it televises, filled with vapid stories and shoddy writing.

SI is an elitist piece of sh*t that covers only baseball, football, basketball and golf and pays lip service to everything else. It does have a few good features, but it also has the most overrated columnist in America, Rick Reilly, and many of its features say very little despite having a lot of words.

Plus SI's weekly news coverage sucks. Sure, it breaks one "major" story per year, like the steroids in baseball story, but its weekly news coverage is so lacking. SI is a lot like TV news in that regard; load up for "sweeps month" and then fall flat the rest of the year.

The photos in SI are dynamite, though.

If you want a good combination of news, columns and features for the "big four" sports and NASCAR, go with The Sporting News. It's the only magazine written by real newspaper reporters, not ESPN "personalities" or former English lit majors who were failed athletes living out their fantasies by trying to be "literate" about sports, like in SI.

Honestly, I think it's insane to buy any American general sports magazine when there's so much quality reporting and feature writing on newspapers' Web sites and other sports Web sites and blogs. I read better stuff and get better news coverage daily on the Web than almost anything in SI or ESPN except for Gary Smith features in SI. Smith is a brilliant writer.

Take care,
PK

[NYJets]

Re: Which magazine

ESPN the Magazine is pretty much horrible. I guess it has some cool pictures in it, that's about it. It comes with Insider though, and Insider is pretty good.

I've never subscribed to SI, I do like reading it though, it's much better than ESPN.

Sporting News might be the best, and if you look around you should be able to find a free subscription somewhere online.

[Sandman42]

Re: Which magazine

1. Sporting News
2. SI
3. ESPN

[cjonesfan921]

Re: Which magazine

Like Cisco said, ESPN The MAg for that reason. I never got into SI though so that has something to do with it. I really like Sporting news.

[sportsdude]

Re: Which magazine

eh, I get ESPN. The articles are all feature/profile articles, meaning they rarely talk about specific sporting events and more or less focus on an athlete in some way, which is stuff I like. The writing isn't always great, and I shuddered when I saw the most recent article ont the Chicago Bears was written by Rachel Nichols. I enjoy the inside look at the athletes, plus I like reading the fact boxes on individual sports at the end of the magazine. but all the stuff in between the table of contents and the articles is crap.

I don't like SI as much simply because I find the writing is often stale, though well executed. I can't stand Rushin and his WNBA apologist columns and Reilly is beginning to mail in most of his columns. Verducci is a good baseball writer, but he seems to flip flop over the course of a season. And SI articles tend to be more about what happens inside the lines than ESPN articles. And even though Gary Smith isn't quite the writer he used to be, his articles are still great reads, just check out the Pat Tilman piece.

Sporting News is good, but they've declined in recent years. They've been losing money and subscriptions and the magazine has been hit hard by it. Plus they were just in the middle of a takeover, so who knows what direction they'll go under new ownership, I can only hope it's a good one. Plus, sometimes it feels like it's over before it began, meaning that there isn't always enough content to satisfy me. But for all around coverage, they're solid, which SI is most definitely not, and ESPN isn't good at it either.

[oakfan162]

Re: Which magazine

Between the two? SI.

Sporting News wins overall just for there hockey coverage alone. Their writers actually know what to cover around hockey.