Sports Illustrated for Kids

When Beth Bugler from Sports Illustrated for Kids called to see if I was available to do a cover for their football issue I just happened to be showing my son how to draw the Patriots logo. The last time I had done a cover for SI Kids was about 7 years ago. Time heals all wounds I guess, and Beth was willing to give it another go. My enthusiasm wasn't diminished one bit when she said that they wanted ALL 32 TEAMS in the NFL represented as players on the cover.

32 people on one page.

As a rule, I like doing challenging things I've never done before. But 32 big football players crammed into the space below the magazine's logo, beside the headline and over the mailing label? Beth is a pleasure to work with and made it completely painless.


Then I remembered that most of my kid's friend's are SI Kids subscibers and that because of me my kids would be hailed as heroes once the issue came out and everyone knew who's art was on the cover. Or so I thought.

Wrong again.


We happen to live in the same small New England town that the New England Patriots play in. The stadium is way over on the other side of town, but this time of year, when all the leaves have fallen, you can see the fireworks go off when something big happens at the stadium. Every Sunday is Halloween around here, with very large grown men wearing costumes of red and blue, in various states of sobriety, doing their best Braveheart imitation.