My wife won't slap me for this one!

When I first heard that ESPN was going to start a magazine, I thought, "Well, they had to retaliate against Sports Illustrated since they started doing sports on CNN." I also figured we would have another version of the same old thing. What happened since they last published their magazine. I sort of put it out of my mind for the time being.

I was surfing the internet at work one day, during lunch of course, and was cruising around the ESPN website. They had an ad on the site to try three issues of the Magazine for free. Well, never one to pass up an offer to good to be true, I went for it. About two days after I got the first issue, I was hooked. They hadn't tried to do what Sports Illustrated (and a large cast of also-rans) was already doing. They were taking you behind the scenes, telling us what it's like to be a professional athlete, instead of telling us what they did at work. In some ways, finding out what pro athletes personal lives are like is fascinating. In other ways, it makes me realize how pathetic my salary really is. I've got a college degree, and they don't. They can jump over a rolled up newspaper, and I can't. That makes them worth 100 times more than me. Okay. It also tells you things about people you'll never know otherwise.

They do like to do the preview issues. Who they think will win the NCAA tournament and why. Who will finish where this year in baseball. Pro football, hockey, even NASCAR. If they totally blow it on the previews, they don't make a big deal defending who they picked and why they didn't pan out.

One of the major reasons I have subscribed to the Magazine is that there is no swimsuit issue. Now, before you go check my personal profile, I'll tell you. I am a guy. I'm a married guy. Which means I have a wife. Which is a female, for those of you who aren't sure. Only they most moronic of our gender would drag a swimsuit issue in from the mailbox to their wife. I don't have any need of a swimsuit issue, as I'm already married to a woman who is more beautiful than any model in the SI swimsuit issue. All I have to do is turn around and look at her. I also don't wish to provoke the long and protracted fight that would be inevitable with an SI swimsuit issue. I would lose, and end up sleeping on the couch. I haven't had to sleep on the couch yet after 3 and a half years of marriage, and I don't plan on starting anytime soon.

So, to sum up the highlights: great, revealing stories, cool pictures, great previews, no spouse-fight provoking swimsuit issue. And to sum up the downsides: No, there aren't any. It's a win-win situation.