SI is giving a cover to each member of the U.S. women's soccer team, which recently won the 2015 World Cup, along with coach Jill Ellis.
The 25 covers, which will also include a group shot of the team, are the largest number of different covers produced for a single production in
Sports Illustrated's history, wrote Newsweek. The issues will start appearing on newsstands Wednesday.
"On Tuesday, July 7, we alighted on the idea of one cover for each of the 23, plus a 24th for the coach,"
Chris Stone, Sports Illustrated's managing editor, wrote on the magazine's website. "The [U.S. Women's National Team] has plenty of recognizable, even famous, names but we couldn't think of a group so thoroughly identified with a team as this one. We could go two ways: A team shot, which seemed a little conventional here, or something different and fresh — honoring not just one or two players, but all 23 of them with their own cover."
But it was one thing to make the decision and another to actually execute the sizable task, even for a magazine with the resources of Sports Illustrated.
"By the time we settled on the idea, the team was in [Los Angeles] for an event that would end mid-afternoon," Stone wrote on SI's website. "The photographer we wanted to shoot it, and who had shot the [World Cup final], Simon Bruty, was headed home to D.C. It wasn't going to happen on Tuesday."
"Then, New York City delivered, big-time, by planning Friday's parade, which would bring the entire team to a single spot," he continued. "The USWNT, incredibly cool and helpful from the start, agreed to be shot both before and after the parade. It all added up to a little piece of history, the first shoot of its kind in SI history."
Eric Fisher, of the SportsBusiness Journal, posted on Twitter that Sports Illustrated's move to honor to World Cup champions in such fashion was more proof of how influential the squad has become.
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