If you’re the kind of person who enjoys dropping a Super Bowl factoid while chatting over snacks and dip, these mags can help. You’re all set unless the other guests have read the same stuff.
Did you know San Fran’s Colin Kaepernick would be the youngest quarterback to win the Super Bowl since Ben Roethlisberger did it with the 2006 Steelers? Oh, you didn’t? Well, readers of ESPN
Magazine do, and those are the ones who will win the Super Bowl pool for smartest fan. The magazine preview for the big game isn’t perfect — too short among other things — and some of the fun facts might go over your head. Plus, bar charts are as fun to read as census data. Bluntly, most of the spread is useless. For a better read, and to learn something you didn’t know but is actually interesting, check out the “Book of Coach” article about the cult of NFL coaches who swear by Bill Walsh’s “Finding the Winning Edge” from a coach who obsessed about football. It’s a perfect Super Bowl read.
Super Bowls Greatest Moments, Interesting Facts & Best Trivia lives up to its name. How about the story of Max McGee, a supposedly washed-up receiver for the Green Bay Packers in 1966? With only four catches in the season, McGee nevertheless led his team to victory in Super Bowl I with seven catches for 138 yards and two touchdowns — despite a nasty hangover. On the flip side, there’s Eugene Robinson, a safety for the Atlanta Falcons who was arrested in a prostitution sting op the night before Super Bowl XXXIII. The Broncos’ John Elway exploited him all game long while the crowds taunted him, producing a 34-19 loss for the Falcons.
If you pitted the ’72 Miami Dolphins against the ’78 Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dolphins would win. Or so says TD, which lists the two teams Nos. 3 and 4, respectively, in its ranking of the best Super Bowl teams ever. Bart Starr’s ’66 Green Bay Packers, at No. 7, would handily beat Roger Staubach’s ’71 Cowboys, at No. 17. And Phil Simms’ ’86 Giants, at No. 8, would annihilate Eli Manning’s ’11 Giants, who at No. 45, are seen as the second-worst Super Bowl team of all time. These sorts of rankings are of course designed to rankle, but the by-the-numbers approach here, arguing with stats, instead puts us to sleep.
Sports Illustrated is a big tease that fails to deliver any touchdowns. The cover suggests that readers are going to learn more about the interplay between the day’s famous brothers: Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh. The magazine devotes a mere page to what might have been a compelling narrative while elsewhere offering breathless prose on star point guard Aaron Craft, who at Ohio State University can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 55 seconds, earn good grades and play basketball. Big whoop. A snoozy Q&A with UFC president Dana White and a tired attempt to parallel Lance Armstrong’s admissions of doping and Manti Te’o’s catfishing episode caps off the weekly’s woeful offerings.
New York magazine delivers an interesting profile on mayoral candidate Christine Quinn. The 46-year-old New York City Council Speaker is set to “break gender and sexual orientation barriers” if she succeeds Michael Bloomberg as New York City’s 109th mayor. New York tells us that Quinn already has scored winning endorsements from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has described her as a better politician than her husband. Elsewhere, outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tells New York in an otherwise dull interview that it’s “extremely unlikely” he’ll seek a job on Wall Street. He may pen a book. How original.
A plan to use local municipalities’ eminent domain powers to nullify bad home mortgages serves as a lengthy but eminently readable piece by the New Yorker. The article centers on Mortgage Resolution Partners run by Steven Gluckstern, who is raising the hackles of government officials, mortgage-backed securities bondholders and some real estate developers, one of whom posed this question to Gluckstern: “Did your Jewish background lead you to want to do good?” The weekly suggests that one of America’s “most trusted doctors” and Oprah Winfrey’s own Dr. Mehmet Oz may be the closest thing in the modern era to a snake oil salesman, who touts questionable “miracle drinks and miracle meals.” The only glaring flaw in the piece, titled the “The Operator” and penned by Michael Specter, is that it comes close to taking the good doctor to task for his mystic medicine but prefers instead to dance around any outright accusations.
Time explores the career of Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow in the wake of all the controversy mounting around her torture-ridden flick “Zero Dark Thirty,” which has been equally lauded and lambasted by the press. Unfortunately, Time’s coverage doesn’t add anything, instead offering readers a breathless profile of Bigelow that’s perhaps two years too late given her 2010 award as the first female to win a Best Director Oscar for “Hurt Locker.” The magazine is mercifully lacking the typical post-inauguration navel-gazing pieces but does manage to deliver an uninspired item on America’s obsession with the near-obsolete penny. Another piece about minimalist composer Philip Glass venturing into doing work for Walt Disney, however, is worth a read.