And, just to follow up on that with a big dose of AFAICT: he made it to the finals of each Grand Slam tournament, something no one else has done in a dozen years — by which I mean that, after winning the Australian Open a record tenth time, he won the French Open (as the oldest man ever to do so), thereby racking up a unique Triple Grand Slam; and then he won the US Open (as the oldest man ever to do so), thereby racking up a record number of Grand Slam titles — and then, upon winning the Year-End Championship (as the oldest man ever to do so), he racked up a record 400th week as the #1 tennis player in the world, finishing a record eighth year at #1 (as the oldest man ever to finish a year at #1).
Even without the parentheticals, that’s worth discussing. But with the parentheticals, you’ve got a story: sure, you start with how the guy with the most weeks at #1 in the 2010s is the guy with the most weeks at #1 in the 2020s — but you springboard from there into talking about how any number of other athletes keep competing at the highest levels despite getting older and older — and then, to make it an And The Adventure Continues story, you circle back around in this December issue to look at how he’s now gearing up for what would be a record eleventh Australian Open win in January.
The problem is, SI doesn’t go for non-American tennis players. Steffi Graf won the Grand Slam and an Olympic gold medal in 1988, and I doubt she was even considered seriously. SI has had any number of opportunities to give it to, say, Roger Federer in the past as well.
Now that they’re very close to announcing it, I’ll give my final predictions:
I still think it’s Mahomes, mainly because nobody “stands out” this year.
A close second is Cory Seager and Bruce Bochy, but it’s only their first World Series; it took the Giants three to get someone as SOTY.
The wild card: I still think they are considering some “group award” of somebody from the NHL Golden Knights, somebody from the WNBA Aces, and maybe throw in somebody from the NFL Raiders and, given the recent owners’ vote, someone from the MLB A’s as well, representing “America’s Newest Sports Hot Spot, Las Vegas.”
The real wild card: Brittney Griner. Maybe if the Liberty had won the WNBA title, she’d have more of a chance, but she’s been off the radar for too long now for anyone to really care.
I think Messi has more of a chance than the last two, but if Pele never got it, I doubt he ever will.
If SI wants to “break the mold,” it will give it to Bronny James, Arch Manning, and Olivia Dunne, representing “the future of college sports - the NIL future, that is”.
That might be a strong contender. They might throw Deion Sanders into it to boost the name recognition as well as controversy since his season isn’t going so well.
I would vote for Max Verstappen purely from a performance point of view but I don’t think the F1 audience is big enough. There would be too many people who had never heard of him. I’m also not aware that he does any charity work, which is often cited as a factor in the selection.
I would put my money on the Kelce brothers if I had to bet on who the selection will be. They’re active in their communities, they played against each other in the Super Bowl, and they’re immensely popular even without the Taylor Swift connection. They can be easily worked into a story about the NFL’s efforts to expand its audience. I can’t see them giving it to Roger Goodell even though he’s spearheading those efforts so they can use the Kelces as the face of the expansion instead.
Verstappen is also not American, which is mostly a deal killer by itself.
The last time a non-American won it solo was Gretzky 40 years ago. If the likes of Federer don’t even get a whiff, it’s not going to happen for an F1 driver
I kind of think the right answer is something along the lines of “Las Vegas”. As previously mentioned, you can highlight the Golden Knights and Aces titles. You can mention the A’s moving to Vegas. You can even mention the F1 debacle there featuring Verstappen. And while I’m not sure it’s clearly a 2023 thing, the rise of sports betting as a legal thing in most states is a big deal between all the new sponsorships and whatnot.
If you want to go dark, you could make “NIL” the winner as a concept instead of a person. NIL is definitely getting wild. Any chance to put Livvy Dunne on another magazine cover would certainly appeal to the bean counters.
Since there’s no truly breakout star either of those seem like a somewhat reasonable guess. Even Mahomes is having a down year (I know he’s playing incredible, but the offense isn’t that productive) and the Super Bowl is quite a ways in the past.
Messi might get it as a lifetime achievement award, and he did have a big year. The Miami/MLS story is pretty huge. If SI is ever looking for a chance to break the mold, I think this is a more likely candidate than Verstappen.
Sleeper candidate might be Travis Kelce for obvious reasons.
ETA:
Actually, this is a pretty compelling one. between the podcast, the documentary and the Super Bowl they were everywhere even before the Swifties. Now with the Christmas album being a thing, I can definitely see that being a narrative too juicy for SI to pass up.
Agreed. It’s dumb. Honored for losing. He brought ratings and 3 more wins. What he forgot to bring was defense. The story leading up to this was Colorado losing some of its top recruiting prospects.
Not even on my radar. I did have “maybe some college athletes, in light of NIL” on my longshots list, but what he did at Colorado has nothing to do with NIL.
He is the second college football coach to win the award, after Joe Paterno in 1986.
I don’t know if that’s true. On3.com seems to be a decent source for NIL valuations - and scanning the list of Colorado football players versus other schools (especially other tier 2 PAC-12 teams like Arizona and UCLA), the Buffalos seem to be doing extremely well. Sanders was instrumental in putting together a team via the transfer portal, and has been very vocal about making sure his recruits saw the value he brought them in terms of media exposure and NIL recognition.
It remains a dumb choice. Seems it would have been a better choice if they had made it more of an NIL thing. There are a couple paragraphs about it in the SI article, but it’s certainly not the focus.
The cynic in me says this could just be a publicity-grab attempt: make a choice meant to get people talking, and meant to get people to buy the magazine and see the case that gets made for the controversial pick — you know, while figuring that people will want to passionately debate whatever specific points get made in the issue? — because to fully argue that it makes no sense, and why another pick would’ve made plenty more sense, folks will maybe plunk down money to be part of the conversation.