Three Bad Signs for the New Sporting News

We hope the Sporting News‘ new bi-weekly magazine succeeds, if only because we’re sick of reading Sports Illustrated (and SN sent us a sweet mini basketball hoop that carried us through the winter months). That said, we recently received an invite for the mag’s launch party and noticed three troubling things.

First, given the influence of cover subjects on newsstand sales, wouldn’t you want someone more high profile than a middling NFL receiver to grace your first issue? Nothing against the Chargers Vincent Jackson, but he’s not going make issues fly off the shelves. (Even if the picture is from a prototype — we couldn’t confirm if it’s actually the premiere issue — the same logic applies.)

After the jump, two more potential harbingers of a difficult future.

Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman penned the lead article on the Chargers. Let’s leave the profiles to real journalists, okay? ESPN The Magazine does enough of silly athlete-on-athlete stories for the entire industry. (Along the same lines, Tony Stewart one-on-one with Dale Earnhardt Jr.?)

Will Leitch, the “most popular sports blogger,” at the launch party? Cool, except Leitch isn’t a sports blogger anymore.

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