It’s July, and it’s not an Olympic year, so I figure it’s not too early to start talking about this.
Here are my early choices:
Shohei Ohtani, unless he or the Angels crash and burn in the second half of the season. This seems to be the obvious choice.
If - if - the Aces defend their WNBA title, somebody from the Aces and Golden Knights, as some sort of Vegas story, especially with the A’s about to move there.
Patrick Mahomes, for his second Super Bowl win.
Brittney Griner.
Maybe two or three of the top NIL earners in college (representing different sports) can sneak in, but I don’t think SI has ever given the award to a college athlete, and if so, I doubt that it starts now.
It won’t be an NBA player, since Curry won it last year.
I’m thinking Ohtani unless there is a serious injury or scandal. Not only is he having an amazing year, but he’s also about to get very very wealthy in free agency. It should be the peak of speculation as to where he will sign around the time of the magazine being published
I would agree. Winning a World Cup as a crowning achievement is enough that it should override the fact Messi is not a US citizen and the US’s disinterest in Men’s football. It’s the world’s #1 sport and the GOAT in it has done something spectacular.
Edit, although it happened in 2022, it was late: what’s the cutoff period?
I’ve always thought it was basically Jan 1-until the end of the World Series. That gives them time to select the sportsperson and get the magazine ready for December publication.
I haven’t read the physical magazine in a few years, I think the Sportsperson issue basically covers the person elected and the top sports stories of the year and doesn’t really cover much of what happened in sports that previous week.
The 2022 award was awarded (that sounds wrong but it’s too late and I’m too tired to find a more elegant way of phrasing it) in Dec 6 2022, the unforgettable of 2022/12/18 was still 12 days away.
As much as I’d love to see Messi win the award, I’m a bit doubtful he would. He is well in the twilight of his career and his prime athlete years were in 2010-2020. The “momentum” is with Ohtani right now and Ohtani is the hot guy in his best playing years, playing great ball at the time the magazine is published, even if Messi is more deserving from the long perspective.
On top of Messi winning a world cup, he’s moving to Miami and spiking ticket prices across the league as well as subscriptions to streaming.
If Inter Miami can drag themselves into the playoffs out of last place in the league and make noise there, or possibly in the Leagues Cup with Liga MX (which hasn’t started before his arrival, so no hole to dig out of) there’s a not bad argument for him.
It’s a pure fantasy, since ultramarathoning is such a niche sport; but the editors of SI could make a strong case for the Colorado runner Courtney Dauwalter, who’s having an Otani-type year in her sport. The last race she failed to win was the 2022 Barkley Marathons, and since then, she’s run seven ultras, ranging from 62 to 160 miles, setting two course records and two fastest known times (FTKs). Two weeks ago, she became the first woman to run the Western States Endurance Run – American ultrarunning’s equivalent to the Boston Marathon – in under sixteen hours, shattering by 78 minutes a record that had stood since 2009.
She’s also personable, friendly, famous for her love of candy and the baggy shorts she prefers to race in. (And from a cynical, selling-magazines point of view, she’s attractive, female, and American.) Not that I would expect the gurus at SI to pick her over a big-sport athlete like Ohtani or Mahomes, but objectively, she belongs in the conversation.
Just realistically, looking at the history of the award (particularly over the last 20 years), it’s nearly always given to an athlete (or, on occasion, team) in one of the three big American team sports (baseball, basketball, football - a hockey player hasn’t won it in over 30 years), and nearly always to an American athlete. SI is a U.S. magazine, with a U.S. readership, and I have no doubt that “will awarding it to this person help to drive sales and visibility?” is part of the calculus.
For that lock to be broken, it seems to take at least one of the below:
An Olympic athlete (no Olympics this year)
An athlete who symbolizes a significant cultural movement or cause (Megan Rapinoe, Naomi Osaka); this is more likely to happen in years when SI decides to recognize athletes who worked towards various causes, as they did for the 2020 award
An athlete whose performance and visibility (particularly in the U.S.) is so great that they can’t be ignored (Serena Williams in 2015)
Note that a male soccer player has never won the award, nor has a soccer player or team that doesn’t represent the U.S. That said, professional soccer (including following non-U.S. teams) has grown dramatically in popularity in the U.S. in recent years, and that may eventually change that three-sport lock on the award.
Is the “Sportsperson of the Year” similar to Time’s “Person of the Year” – i.e. the individual who, for good or bad, had the most impact on his or her sport? In that case I’d nominate PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan, and the cover should feature a photo of him counting an enormous pile of money covered in oil and blood.
Not really. According to Wikipedia, the recipient is “the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement.” The award doesn’t always technically go to an athlete – it’s gone to a coach from time to time, and 60 years ago, it was awarded to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. While SI has, on occasion, given the award to controversial athletes, it’s meant to be an award that goes to someone for their positive contributions.
I don’t see SI ever doing something like the “or bad” clause in Time’s award – they want to sell magazines. And, honestly, I don’t see Time going all-in on giving the award to a terrible (if highly influential) person again, either; people still get upset about them giving the Man of the Year award to Hitler 85 years ago.
An argument could be made that Ohtani deserved it in 2021 when Brady got it. At this point it seems like he is a shoe in to be MVP again(barring injury) and his team is actually in the playoff hunt. He continues to do things no other ballplayer in history has done. It’s possible a bigger story could happen in the next 5 months but I’ll still put my money on Ohtani.
Ohtani isn’t American, so the odds are stacked against him. No foreign athlete has won the award without an American co-winner in over forty years. (Wayne Gretzky in 1982.) Furthermore, baseball players are rarely given the award by themselves unless they win the World Series.
Another strike (pun intended) against Ohtani is that there really isn’t much of a human interest aspect to him outside of sports, at least none that I know of
SU generally likes someone who is known for charity work or has an overcame obstacles story.
And, yeah, I don’t see the Angels being an embarrassment this year but this Texas Rangers team looks to be for real and the Astros are loaded so it’s gonna be hard for them to even make the playoffs
I was being tongue in cheek — I don’t really expect that Sports Illustrated would give an award to Tonya Harding or the Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics. And I agree with you on Time, they abandoned their own pretense when they didn’t name Bin Laden in 2001.
Nikola Jokić could be a contender. This year he carried the Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history following two consecutive years of winning the NBA MVP award, and from briefly glancing over the list of past winners, it generally seems like the ones who play basketball won the SotY award in the same year that they also won the NBA championship, so that’s a factor in his favor. The only strikes against him are that he’s not American, and that an NBA player won last year.
In all likelihood though, the award will go to Mahomes, due to him being the first player in 23 years to win both NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP in the same season, plus the fact that he’s American.
