Over Time

4 ideas

1. André Laguerre builds Sports Illustrated's golden age

   André Laguerre was managing editor of Sports Illustrated from 1960 to 1974. He took a struggling magazine and made it essential by committing to weekly coverage of the major games and by running a long, literary 'bonus piece' at the back of each issue. He hired young writers like Deford, fresh out of Princeton in 1962, and gave them time, travel budgets and length, showing how one editor's standards can define a publication's voice for a generation.

2. Access to athletes made the stories possible

   Magazine sportswriting depended on writers being able to travel with, drink with and talk casually to athletes who were not yet rich or shielded by agents and publicists. As salaries rose and players became protected brands, that informal access disappeared. Candid, intimate portraits gave way to managed quotes and press-conference material.

3. Television stole the weekly's reason for existing

   Much of a sports weekly's value came from telling readers what had happened and showing it to them in photographs. Once cable television, and ESPN highlights in particular, delivered results and images instantly, that function vanished. Print was left to compete only on interpretation and narrative, a smaller and harder market.

4. Sports as a way into character

   Deford treated the game as the least interesting part of a sports story. The real subject was the person: ambition, vanity, decline, family and failure seen through a competitor or coach. Reading athletes this way turns sportswriting into biography and social portraiture rather than scorekeeping.

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