See Ya

Looks as though Sports Illustrated has decided to cut the fat:

No, not that fat.  This fat:

The owner of Sports Illustrated has ended the employment of the publication’s entire staff, leaving the very existence of the nearly 70-year-old magazine in doubt.

Then follows a while bunch of publishing industry gobbledegook (good luck trying to understand this nonsense — it reads like the article’s author didn’t understand it either):

The licensing group that owns the sports mag has terminated its agreement with The Arena Group to continue publishing the magazine three weeks after Arena missed a $2.8 million payment, a deficit that breached the magazine’s licensing deal, according to Front Office Sports.

Authentic bought SI out from Meredith in 2019 for $10 million. If it continues publishing, the magazine will turn 70 years old this August.

An email announcing the decision says in part, “We were notified by Authentic Brands Group (ABG) that the license under which the Arena Group operates the Sports Illustrated (SI) brand and SI-related properties had been officially revoked by ABG.”

Got all that?  There will be a test.  Not that it matters, because here’s the crux of it:

“As a result of this license revocation, we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand.”

Crap magazine, terrible writing, stupid stories, and let’s not forget the idiotic decision to put fatties in the Swimsuit Issue instead of hotties like oh, Leryn Franco.  Ergo, from this:

…to this:

“Oh noes… why did people stop buying our magazine?  They must all be Christianist Trumpists!”  or some such twaddle.

SI  never recovered from the loss of writers like Pete King, Frank DeFord and Rick Telander, to name just some.  And the arrival of Internet reportage shot them in the gut, just as what happened to many print magazines in other industries.

Won’t be missed.  Mediocrity and crap hardly ever is.

Master

If you’ve got nothing special to do for a couple of hours this evening, take a look at Ronnie O’Sullivan, yet again wearing his opponent down by sheer persistence and peerless skill, even though down by three frames at the beginning of the video.

What’s amazing is that Ronnie was not at his best and it showed in a couple of careless misses, but even against an opponent who was the class of the field all week (scored more centuries than anyone ever has), the Rocket just held on and battered away, becoming the oldest Masters winner ever.  And that with an elbow injury so severe he couldn’t raise the trophy afterwards, needing his kids to do it for him.

Pure magic.


If you want to do the marathon, here’s the whole match.  Watch it over three days, like I did.  (Of course, it’s been colder than the Witch of Endor’s tits this week, so I had little else to do.  YMMV.)

Playing Field, Leveling Of

NASCAR fans or non-Formula 1 devotees can skip this post.

Consider the final standings for the 2023 F1 season:

 

If that looks like a runaway train for both Max Verstappen and Red Bull, then it was.  Verstappen won 19 out of the 21 races of the season, and Red Bull’s Perez won one.

Which has led to an interesting game among fans, thinking about leveling the field, so to speak, for the 2024 season.  Here are the favorites:

  • Level the driver playing field and find another Perez-level driver for Red Bull to replace Max.
  • Force Max to wear an eye patch and strap one arm to his leg.
  • Force Red Bull to use Trabant engines. (“Then they’d only come 3rd.”)
  • …and Reliant Robin 3-wheel technology.  (“Okay, 4th.”)
  • Fire Max and sign Daniel Ricciardo.  Or Logan Sargeant.
  • …and so on.

Let’s see;  only 90 days till the new season begins.

In the meantime, there are the college football championships and the Super Bowl… which I care about as much as most of you care about F1.

Looking Backside

Now that the 2023 Formula 1 season has ended, Max Verstappen has been crowned King Of All Drivers, etc., some questions still remain.

Asks Onetime Drummer Knob:

Simple answer:  Liberty fucking Media.

Long answer:  Liberty fucking Media, a bunch of woketard American businessmen who bought into the trope that grid girls were “exploiting” womyns and glorifying “unnaturally beautiful” women because of the race organizers’ consistent refusal to make grid girls “more representative” of womyns by adding Lizzo-style fatties to the mix.

Imagine introducing this:

…to this:

…and I think you’ll see where I’m going, here.

So Liberty fucking Media just banned the whole institution from F1, the wokist assholes.  Which worked everywhere except Monaco, where the race organizers told them to take a hike.

Expect to see Monaco dropped from the F1 circuit at some point soon.  Oh there’ll be Reasons, e.g. “the Monaco streets are too narrow to race the new F1 cars*”, but it’s going to happen.


*The streets aren’t too narrow;  it’s the cars that have got fat and bloated.

…like Lizzo vs. the old-style grid girls.

Yeah, Whatever

Here’s a big nothingburger for you:

The Jockey Club have taken the dramatic decision to cut the Randox Grand National field size by 15 per cent to safeguard the Aintree spectacular’s future.

Next April, the world’s most famous race will see a maximum of 34 runners go to post instead of 40. The Jockey Club, who run Aintree, believe it is imperative to make the move now and say they have taken the decision in the interest of the health and safety of all human and equine participants.

News flash: nobody cares.  The only reason most people (including me and my Readers) show any interest in Aintree at all is this:

 

Yep;  Train Smash Women, in all their magnificent failures.  The races?  Only for the owners and jockeys.