Well, it’s July so it’s not too early to start our annual thread of who will be the 2019 SI Sportsperson of the Year.
It’s almost always an American individual or team so I don’t think it’ll be the Toronto Raptors. Liverpool were an amazing success this year, but there’s no way they’ll get it either.
I’m thinking it’s the USWNT. I thought they might not get it after that 13-0 blowout vs Thailand, which wasn’t very sportsmanlike, but that seems to have been forgotten.
The St Louis Blues? Might be a dark horse if SI wants to avoid the political controversy of the USWNT. They do want to sell magazines.
Rapinoe seems like a likely choice, particularly if the equal-pay story stays in the news for a while. I agree that the Raptors won’t be the choice, but Kawhi himself might be. He was the finals MVP and seems to have started a new era of player empowerment by getting the Paul George trade to happen.
In my inexpert and most likely wrong opinion it would be the team not an individual.
It seems to me that the fact that they won the last two WCs and half of the total number ever played will work against them. If the team that’s perceived to supposed to win goes on to win it’s not that compelling a story. Especially 6 months later.
I would not count out Tom Brady. He won the award in 2005. 14 years later he wins another Super Bowl. Particularly if by December he looks like he is making another run at it.
The only reason I don’t think the USWNT are the frontrunners is, they have already won it (1999), and SI doesn’t really like having repeat winners unless they really do something special, like Tiger winning four consecutive majors.
Rapinoe has to be considered, but I think she has a strike against her - the fact that she doesn’t “respect” the anthem. I am convinced “how many copies of this issue can we sell” plays a part in the choice (although it’s not the only factor; otherwise a swimsuit model would win every year), and giving it to her would be like giving it to Colin Kapernick; can they handle the potential backlash? Then again, is it possible that there could be a “counter-backlash”? For that matter, would people consider the decision based on something other than athletic ability, especially with her “you can’t win without gays” comment and her anti-Trump stance? And perhaps SI wants to “shake things up” to get people to forget the whole “we’re only publishing every two weeks now” thing?
Other possibilities:
Somebody from the Raptors? Not likely - SI does not like giving it to the same sport twice in a row
Somebody from the Blues? Maybe, but if Sidney Crosby never won, I don’t see any hockey players getting it; it’s not as if St. Louis has been shut out of major sports titles the way Cleveland has.
Tom Brady? Maybe, but he has the “already has one” problem - was what he did last season big enough to earn a second one?
My current thought: if he can win the British Open to go with his Masters win, they’ll forget that he already has two of them and give it to Tiger Woods again.
Here’s a wild card: the only male tennis player to be selected is Arthur Ashe, and it was long after he had retired from playing. If Roger Federer announces his retirement after the U.S. Open, he’ll get it, possibly alongside Rafael Nadal.
The Raptors are out; SI almost always awards the team to an American or an American team. Kawhi Leonard is American, but won the title with a Canadian team, and as great a year as he had it wasn’t an unusually historic one. the last non-American athlete to win it without sharing it with an American was 37 years ago, and that was Wayne Gretzky, who practically broke hockey.
It would be weird for the USWNT to win it again. It’s been twenty years but it would be for the same thing they won it for last time, and they’ve won the World Cup since then too.
The Blues would be really interesting - again, SI doesn’t like hockey for this award, but they’re a hell of a story.
My first thought is Kawhi because, while he didn’t maybe have an historic season, he did deliver a title to a team who had never been able to close the deal. And he did it as a massive underdog against the Warriors.
I didn’t follow the World Cup one bit this year, but I could see Rapinoe winning as the outspoken leader of a championship team.
If they want to avoid controversy while honoring the women’s soccer team, they could pick Alex Morgan, the team’s co-captain. She performed very well in the World Cup, and isn’t as outspoken as Megan Rapinoe. Of course, picking Morgan over Rapinoe could itself become controversial.
Tiger Woods has a good shot if he wins another important tournament. If he wins another major he’s a shoo-in.
Nah, unless the Angels somehow manage to win the World Series. (If they ever do over the next 10 years I think Trout is the guy that year.) Cody Bellinger seems much more likely from MLB, though if it is a baseball player they need to win the World Series first.
Kawhi is possible but only if the Clippers are clearly the best team in the league through the first part of the next season - in which case, you can cast his story as an essay about the era of superstars picking their own teams that started with the Decision almost a decade ago.
Yeah, I could have seen them picking Vegas last year had they won the Cup as a first year expansion team, but it’s quite true that SI pretty much avoids hockey. And, it is much more of a niche sport than the rest of the major sports. Plus it doesn’t help that the over the air broadcasts on NBC feature only a few teams regardless of their records.
Indeed - it would be something of a travesty to give it to any individual, rather than to the full USWNT.
And I think it’s at least possible to raise questions about their sportsmanship. If you are as talented as that team clearly is, you can probably afford to be a trifle more gracious.
Yes, it’s time for that annual tradition…my Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year thread.
I can think of two possibilities, and one of them depends on who wins World Series Game 7.
If you ask me, the frontrunner is Megan Rapinoe.
Why she deserves it: she’s “the face” of USA Women’s Soccer, which has now won back-to-back World Cups, and she also the figurehead for #PayThemMore.
Why she might not get it: there might be a backlash over her stance concerning the national anthem. I am convinced that “how many people are going to buy the issue (or, for that matter, cancel their subscriptions)” plays a part in the decision.
The other choice: if the Nationals win the World Series, it will go to players from the Nationals and the WNBA Mystics, representing DC teams that won their first franchise titles (and the city’s first baseball title since 1924); also, it will score SI some points with its female readers, as it has a habit of ignoring women’s basketball - just look at its coverage of women’s college basketball. (In 2007, the coverage of the national championship game consisted of the words, “Which, by the way, Tennessee won” - in the middle of a large article about Don Imus calling the Rutgers players “hos” (and his sidekick adding “nappy-headed”).)
Or at least, they really don’t give a shit.