Were it not for Sports Illustrated, I would not be writing this story. I never would have written Friday Night Lights. I never would have learned the difference between sportswriting, a mindless layering of cliché upon cliché, and writing about sports.
The magazine, which began in 1954 under the formerly omnipotent Time Inc. and which I started to read as a pre-pubescent in the 1960s, changed my life. Without it, I never would have put together words for a living; instead, I probably would have gone into the family municipal-bond business on Wall Street with my father, mother, grandmother, and uncle, where the screaming during board meetings could be heard in Jersey City.
