The Unpopular View

I realize that I'm putting my man card on the line here, but I have something to say.

I hate the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

I know is sounds completely crazy but it's true.

I'm 34 years old and I've been Sports Illustrated subscriber since 1981. My first issue was sometime in February and it was the one with the basketball hoop filled with cash. It was about the Boston College point-shaving scandal. Not the last time it would happen.

But I digress. Since then, SI has been part of a weekly ritual. It has been modified at different points in my life. When I first started getting it, it would thumb through looking at the pictures, cutting out the ones I really liked. Later in life, it was a quiet hour or so spent on the couch reading the articles that seemed interesting. Now it's a worth a couple train rides on my way to or from work. All that is very interesting, I know.

I subscribed to SI because 51 weeks a year, they deliver interesting stories about actual sports. Then for one week a year - admittedly a slow one sports-wise - they bag the sports coverage for women in swimsuits.

Now, I'm a red-blooded, American male, and I love me some porn. In fact, I've been a consumer of porn for longer than I've been an SI subscriber.

An aside: I think it was 1979 or 1980ish when my friends Brian and Scott swiped an issue of Playboy from their Dad or older brother's collection. We looked at it and then we buried it. Yes, you read that right, we buried it. To this day I don't really understand it although in looking back, it seems like a protection instinct. Like a dog burying a bone.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, I was loving me some porn. While the women in the swimsuit editions are certainly attractive, they have way too many clothes on so qualify as good pornography.

So I believe in specialization. Do what you do well. Sports Illustrated, you keep delivering interesting sports news. And take it easy on the NASCAR, will ya? And porn, you keep doing what you do well - showing me hot naked chicks and innovating in the online marketplace.

And . . . I'm spent.