Sports Illustrated Announced This Year's Cover Models

Sports Illustrated - As SI Swimsuit celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, we are honored to announce that Chrissy Teigen, Hunter McGrady, Kate Upton and Gayle King are your 2024 issue cover models. Each woman serves as an inspiration in her own unique way, championing beliefs that SI Swimsuit has long upheld: the importance of representation and the polysemous nature of beauty.

“A 60th anniversary is a big deal. It might not be recognized as lavishly as the number that 50 is, but we felt we should wholeheartedly celebrate 60, too, for a simple reason: because the journey we’ve been on for the past 10 years is something we humbly consider to be revolutionary,” says SI Swimsuit editor in chief MJ Day. “We have shattered stereotypes. We have embraced diversity. We have championed inclusivity. With each passing year, we have challenged ourselves to push boundaries and redefine what it means to be Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.”

I was going to write about how nobody asked for this but I was told not to say mean things by my editors. So I don't even know what to say to this news. 

Here are this year's cover models.

Kate Upton

Kind of a no-brainer here. I think I speak for everybody when I say Kate Upton is the all-American girl every red-blooded teenager fantasizes about. A smoking hot blonde, with one of the nicest sets on the planet, who can also get it going on the dancefloor.

(More on my love for Kate below in the p.s.)

Next up, Cover Model #2, Chrissy Teigan. 

Cover Model #3 is Gayle King. 

And last but certainly not least, Cover Model #4 Hunter McGrady.

Not the direction I would have gone in, but to each their own.

At the beginning of the year, news broke that Sports Illustrated was shutting down operations and closing its doors, so it's curious how the Swimsuit Issue is still alive.

I think I speak for a lot of men who grew up before we had more access to nude images of basically any woman we wanted to see at our fingertips. We have a special bond with the Swimsuit Issue. It holds a special place in our hearts. 

For me personally, long before I even knew what a boner was I would scour my dentists office waiting room to see if the receptionist had mistakenly thrown the Swimsuit Issue in the stack of magazines and let it out for my little horn-dog ass to find. When it would arrive at our house in the mail, I would do my best to take photographs of the pages with my mind (It never worked) before my dad got home and buried it away in his office. I thought I was real slick and that after a few weeks he'd forgotten about it so I'd go searching until I found it, and carefully tear out a few of my favorite pages and squirrel them away under my dressed in my bedroom. (Another story/confession for another blog, but I also did this with Victoria's Secret catalogs. I had quite the stash going until it was discovered in a very unfortunate series of events.)

Anyways, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue wasn't just a magazine that showed girls in bikinis that arrived on magazine racks and our front doorsteps once a year. It was a gift from God. It was a beautiful oasis in the bone-dry Puritan landscaped desert. Yah the Sears catalog had chicks in bras and stuff, but nowhere near the kind of talent the SI Swimsuit Issue had. 

We're talking the most beautiful women on the planet. 

A Murderers row of Supermodels - Kathy Ireland, 

Elle McPhereson, 

Kristie Brinkley, 

Rachel Hunter, 

Stephanie Seymour, 

Bar Refaeli, 

Brooklyn Decker, 

Paulina Porizkova

Tyra Banks, 

Heidi Klum, 

and on and on the list goes. 

This is actually the 60th Anniversary of the issue. And they got together a lot of the greats for the occassion.

It was a brilliant recipe that they decided to change for some reason even though nobody was complaining. 

Though they're not gracing the cover, at least we still have Livvy Dunne, 

Rob's girl Camille,

Lori Harvey, 

Jena Sims,

Penny Lane,

And of course, my queen. The Princess that was promised, Paige Spiranc.

p.s. - At least they got one thing right and nailed this one- who I lobbied hard for last year. Denver Broncos cheerleader/stunner Berkleigh Wright.

p.p.s. - back in the early Barstool days when KFC used to blog all the time, he wrote some pretty scathing stuff about Kate Upton and Justin Verlander. The two of them had just started dating, Verlander was in town with the Tigers playing the White Sox and Upton was with him. They came to this club I DJ'd at, Underground, and the GM (Felton) was a big stoolie. Not big enough to realize that KFC had been slamming the couple pretty hard recently though. When he brought Upton into the DJ booth, he introduced me to her as "he also works for Barstool". Her face dropped and she asked me if that was true. I said yes and tried to keep a smile off my face, but before I could throw Kevin directly under the bus and back over him, she was turning to leave. Right behind her was Verlander and I didn't even have to hear what she said to him because his face said it all. He slid into the booth, giving me a death stare the whole time, introduced himself to me like I didn't know who he was, and almost crushed my hand like a vice, shaking it. I apologized on Kevin's behalf (fuck him) but it didn't do any good. They left soon after that. And that was the time KFC almost got me beat up by Justin Verlander for making fun of his future wife online.