Now that the Olympics are over, it’s time to move on to other matters…but until college football season actually begins, I thought I’d bring up my usual annual Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year thread.
For most of the year, I figured that it was a lock - if Simone Biles wins the all-around, she would get it. However, the circumstances under which she won only a bronze medal makes me think whether or not she gets it anyway as some sort of “mental health awareness” thing SI wants to do. The problem is, there are a number of people who still believe that she “quit on the team,” and I wonder how many of them would follow through on a threat to cancel their subscriptions - and I strongly believe that “how many issues will we sell” plays an important part in deciding these things.
Here is my current list of contenders:
Simone Biles
Simone Biles and all-around winner Suni Lee (mainly as an excuse to include Biles)
Biles and Allyson “11 track & field medals overall” Felix
All of the women on the USA Olympic team (probably have Biles, Felix, Katie Ledecky, and, to get some extra coverage, equestrienne and silver medalist Jessica (daughter of Bruce) Springsteen on the cover); note that the women won 66 medals to the men’s 41
Tom Brady (“it doesn’t matter who I play for; I can still win Super Bowls”)
Tom Brady & Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa Bay Lightning goalie), in some sort of “Tampa Bay, City of Champions” tribute
Longshots:
Felix & Caleb Dressel (this is a longshot because Dressel won “only” 5 gold medals in Tokyo, and Mark Spitz didn’t get it when he won 7 in 1972)
Brady & Rob Gronkowski
Novak Djokovic, if he completes the Grand Slam (although when Steffi Graf did it plus an Olympic gold in 1988, she was barely even mentioned)
They have to wait until after baseball season, just in case somebody throws back-to-back perfect games in the World Series or something.
Another possibility, although this is also a longshot: the two 400m hurdles world record breakers, Sydney McLaughlin and Karsten Warholm. There is precedent for this (and from the same countries, no less); the 1994 winners were speed skaters Bonnie Blair and Johann Olav Koss, although it did help Olav Koss that those Olympics were in Norway.
You know that the moderators are already discussing your toxicity with regards to female athletes, and you still think this is the right time to drop in that threadshit? That will be a Warning.
Maybe if the Angels win the World Series and Ohtani plays a significant part, they will consider him, but he won’t get it just for the Olympics.
As for Rapinoe, even if USA had won, “USA winning (the World Cup, in this case)” is pretty much the reason she was named in 2019. Yes, Brady has won before as well, but that was in 2005, and he has the “bringing the Super Bowl to Tampa Bay” thing going for him.
My personal leader in the clubhouse right now is “US Olympic Women” as a whole, with a composite of gold medalists on the cover. That lets you get stories on Sue Bird/Basketball, the volleyball team, Ledecky, Lee, water polo, plus some smaller sports - and that’s just gold medalists.
Then you can do something about veteran softball and soccer teams falling short. Biles and her teammates taking up the slack, etc.
I know the Olympics just happened, but Ohtani has 37 home runs right now in 106 games. While also being 6-1 with a 2.93 ERA. He could easily finish the year with 50+ HRs and 10+ wins with a sub 3 ERA. This sort of thing hasn’t been seen in over a century. And he’ll be all over the sports news in the last month of the baseball season.
Ohtani has the same problem Mike Trout has had for a decade. He’s a phenomenal player on a bad team. They’re not 4th in the league - they’re currently 4th in their own division.
Might happen anyway but it’ll be a tough slog. Winning the division or even just capturing a wild card berth would go a long way to making it happen.
Yeah, but MVP is different from SI Sportsperson of the Year.
All the baseball players chosen by SI this century have been World Series winners (individually or in '04 - the Red Sox as a team). The last time an MVPs that got the SI nod without winning the Series was basically in the 60s (I’m not going to count Sosa since that was the year he and McGwire jointly got it for the home run race).
It’s hard for me to argue with Ohtani getting it. I think like Ruth, he’s going to give up pitching and just be a DH full time. Or let him DH and be a closer too. But there’s no brighter star in the MLB at the moment and other than Brady, no real competition from other sports.
