• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, March 7, 2006

When ESPN The Magazine debuted several years ago, it contained enough loud colors and graphic whirligigs to induce seizures in small children. Its stories teemed with the shortcut English and post-post-post-ironic affectations that SportsCenter anchors had already transformed into soul-numbing cliché. Perusing it made my eyes twitch and my nasal passages constrict; I'd sooner have devoted my leisure minutes to reading product manuals.

So I was decidedly bemused when ESPN The Magazine started mysteriously appearing in my mailbox last year. After some investigation (I'm a "journalist," you see), I learned that, in a nifty bit of circulation-inflating magic, the mag was being sent to me as part of my online ESPN Insider subscription dealie. Okay, fine--it's not like I wasn't already dragging two metric tons of published tripe out to the recycling bin every week, anyway.

But as I've paged through recent issues with increasing frequency, I've had to backtrack on this opinion. With minimal fanfare, ESPN The Magazine has evolved into a legitimate sports publication with a distinct editorial proposition, as opposed to just another notch in ESPN's multimedia belt.

Whereas the mag used do everything to appeal to young male readers short of handing out tequila shooters, it finally seems to have relaxed its pacing somewhat. The end product, in most cases, now retains the brand's signature 'tude without lapsing into fraternity banter. It's official: sports fans over 25 can now freely enjoy ESPN The Magazine without fear of sensory overload.

As someone who'd choose a first-place finish in his violently competitive rotisserie baseball league over the elimination of cholera or the revival of the American family farmer, I regard the March 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine as manna from above. In addition to the expected player blurbs, the fantasy-baseball espectacularo conveys a glut of information not readily available elsewhere: a listing of managers who most often give base runners the green light, a look at hitters' contact rates. Yes, the newsstands are currently littered with tens of publications purporting to offer can't-miss advice, but few push beyond niceties like "Bobby Abreu's 30/30 days may or may not be behind him." Go out on a limb there, why don't you?

Elsewhere in the issue, ESPN focuses its attention on the continuing cultural assimilation of Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko. While the World Baseball Classic doesn't merit the three pages devoted to it, the issue more than atones with tart features on under-the-radar Welsh brawler Joe Calzaghe and Calgary blueliner Dion Phaneuf. As for the already-stale post-Olympics wrap, the mag wisely offers little beyond photos.

One area where ESPN The Magazine hasn't much improved, however, is in the humor department, where its "funny" pieces lack even the watered-down wit of ESPN's online offerings, much less the sharp counterpunches of blogs like Deadspin or The Soxaholix. Too often its writers embrace the easy one-liner; at this fragile point in our cultural evolution, knocks on Jessica Simpson's intellect pack the same comic yowza! as gibes about Judge Ito.

Additionally, now that the magazine has emerged as a successful entity unto itself, I don't see the point in giving added facetime to TV mainstays like Dan Patrick or Stuart Scott. The "boo-yah" stuff doesn't translate all that well to the printed page...which isn't to imply that it's tolerable on the tube, either.

Just about every discussion of ESPN The Magazine eventually devolves into an appraisal of its virtues and flaws vis-à-vis Sports Illustrated, so here goes: At this point, I don't think sports fans have to regard it as an either/or proposition. SI is newsier and more reserved in its approach; ESPN is quicker to recognize trends and eager to sustain its newbie-sports cred. Sports Illustrated remains my favorite publication by a wide margin, but I'm wondering whether they're starting to hear footsteps. The consecutive snowboarder-dude Olympics covers last month would seem to suggest a conscious (and astonishingly clumsy) effort to court ESPN Nation.

After struggling to find their voice and audience over the last several years, ESPN The Magazine folks must have reacted gleefully to such transparent imitation. Either way, the gap has narrowed considerably.