CBB magazines - A dying breed
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As someone who faithfully used to buy the old Street & Smith College Basketball magazines dating back to the Seventies, it’s sad to see the dwindling number of these annuals.
When S&S stopped publishing their print edition a few years ago, I starting buying the Sporting News or Athlon pre-season mags. Now neither is doing one for 2022-23. As far as I can tell, that brings my options down to two publications…Lindy’s Sports (the one I just picked up) and the Blue Ribbon yearbook.
I realize that nowadays so much of the magazine world has gone digital, but I still miss the ability to leaf through the print version…not to mention the occasional dip into my stash of back copies. Progress of sorts I guess, but still a shame.
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@nwhawkfan Wow those were the days. I’m right there with you. I used to buy Street and Smith faithfully - -back then in the 70’s they always had a list of players – it was kind of hard to find any KU recruits back then - oh you might find a couple - Sometimes I would just stay right in the store and leaf through the Mag - -I know shame. They used to break down each conference too remember ? -I have gotten pretty much every Mag you mentioned - -I miss those times lol
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@nwhawkfan Wow, this touches a chord with me too. I still have in a box somewhere S&S’s from the 1990’s and 2000’s in baseball and college hoops. It’s fun to pore through their lists of top high school kids. They had an extensive list, but the top 20 boys and girls players was where I went first. Now to look back at those issues and see their hits and misses. Amazing that most years their 20 names faded into obscurity before even making a name for themselves in college much less the NBA. Then you scan the lists of honorable mention kids, 100’s of names and you’ll see a well known life long NBA player.
This time of year it’s still an instinct of mine to go to the magazine rack at, heck, there’s hardly bookstores anymore, and look for the issue. When I’d come up with it I’d always regret not living near Kansas and seeing the latest greatest Jayhawk on the cover because I’d see the latest greatest in the region I lived.
Then I’d read the description of KU’s team. Then I’d look at Duke and NC’s and they ALWAYS wrote more about them! Of course they wrote more about our team than anyone else too so it’s a shallow complaint!
In the days before internet the SS was important for the KU Schedule. I made sure to always keep an eye on that because it was really easy to miss a game when not living in the media range of KU.
I think we could start our own college basketball issue. It might lean a bit heavy towards KU but really who cares!
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The thing I always enjoyed about having those mags was the ability to go back years later and see much the game has changed.
A couple of years ago I sent a post about a Street & Smith’s issue that I dug out from the 1979-80 season. Interesting to all see the now-defunct conferences from long ago (Metro, Southwest, etc.), the relatively few transfers compared to today’s free-for-all, the “can’t miss” high school stars who were never heard from again (save a couple of exceptions named Doc Rivers & Matt Doherty).
The low expectations that year for the Jayhawks were pretty much accurate, as we ended up with only a 15-14 record, tied for fourth place in the Big Eight.
And the magazine’s feature article was a spread about the 1980 USA Olympic Team (including KU’s Darnell Valentine), the one that never played due to our boycott of the Moscow games over their fighting a war in Afghanistan. Kind of ironic as it turned out. How times have changed.
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@wissox said in CBB magazines - A dying breed:
@nwhawkfan Wow, this touches a chord with me too. I still have in a box somewhere S&S’s from the 1990’s and 2000’s in baseball and college hoops. It’s fun to pore through their lists of top high school kids. They had an extensive list, but the top 20 boys and girls players was where I went first. Now to look back at those issues and see their hits and misses. Amazing that most years their 20 names faded into obscurity before even making a name for themselves in college much less the NBA. Then you scan the lists of honorable mention kids, 100’s of names and you’ll see a well known life long NBA player.
This time of year it’s still an instinct of mine to go to the magazine rack at, heck, there’s hardly bookstores anymore, and look for the issue. When I’d come up with it I’d always regret not living near Kansas and seeing the latest greatest Jayhawk on the cover because I’d see the latest greatest in the region I lived.
Then I’d read the description of KU’s team. Then I’d look at Duke and NC’s and they ALWAYS wrote more about them! Of course they wrote more about our team than anyone else too so it’s a shallow complaint!
In the days before internet the SS was important for the KU Schedule. I made sure to always keep an eye on that because it was really easy to miss a game when not living in the media range of KU.
I think we could start our own college basketball issue. It might lean a bit heavy towards KU but really who cares!
I think one of the Street & Smith that stuck out to me at the time was when the Cover had a picture of Nino Samuel - he was suppose to be a bigh thing. - You remember him? - think he was out of Salina
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@jayballer67 Never heard of him but maybe putting a HS kid on the cover of a national publication puts an enormous amount of pressure on him and he wilts under the weight of it.
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@wissox said in CBB magazines - A dying breed:
@jayballer67 Never heard of him but maybe putting a HS kid on the cover of a national publication puts an enormous amount of pressure on him and he wilts under the weight of it.
Ya he was suppose to be pretty good. - He played but didn’t amount to much. - a lot of players have that same scenario lol
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Nino passed away a couple of years ago. Played for the Jayhawks in the 1970s after taking Salina Central to a state title. Once he got to KU he couldn’t adapt to Ted Owens’ system. That (and poor shooting) put him on the bench behind guys who eventually went to a Final Four. Samuel transferred to Marymount College, a former girls school in Salina that had just gone coed. As I recall, it was a power on the NAIA level for a few years.
Marymount closed in the late 1980s. Part of the campus is now used by the Kansas Highway Patrol.
https://www.salina.com/story/sports/college/2020/06/18/former-basketball-star-samuel-dies/114877268/
