Vegas for a sportswriter is Sports Illustrated, correct?

It’s a hedonistic fraternity party where, sure you have a job to do, but let’s get real it’s SI, baby! If you can wedge your foot in the door, the rest of your life could just as well resemble that of an athlete’s.

I can only fathom the number of ticket requests SI writers get hit up for before title fights, Super Bowls, Final Fours, in addition to being asked by their buddies for the phone numbers of the swimsuit models.

Therefore, it only felt right as a hopeful, future employee of the magazine to volunteer my head for the chopping block this week when a news assignment was pitched about the Miss-Lou connection with the 40th anniversary swimsuit edition, which hit newsstands Wednesday.

&uot;We’ve had a little stardom down here in the past with hunting magazines and TV shows, but that’s only in the world of hunting,&uot; said Jimmy Riley over at Giles Island, one of a handful of places the SI crew shot that fall weekend. &uot;When we thought we had a chance of making the magazine (Sports Illustrated), we shunned it off.&uot;

Being the committed and responsible reporter I am, I went the extra mile on Wednesday night to watch the television special that aired on Spike TV.

Please understand this was all in the name of journalism integrity.

So I’m sitting there in a pool of my own drool, actually frozen for the first half-hour of the show, and I began thinking: maybe there is, in fact, an even better job than being a sportswriter for SI.

So now my life’s goal is to quit journalism, grovel to my parents for money and head back to college so I can get a degree in body painting.

Heck, if it’ll move me up the food chain fast enough, I’ll get a master’s degree.

There was one thing I was disappointed with that was not in the special. After talking with Terry Rogers, who runs Alligator Park in Natchitoches, La., I hoped to see the live footage with last year’s cover girl, Petra Nemcova, posing with a 2-year-old gator.

&uot;We told everybody in our town about the shoot, but we were not sure if they were going to run&uot; the photos said Rogers, whose theme park has loaned their inhabitants out for hip-hop videos, Saints’ ads and car commercials, such as Lincoln and Jaguar.

As a longtime subscriber to SI, I have noticed a growing trend with the swimsuit issue every year: the actual bathing suits, the supposed reason for the edition, are becoming obsolete.

We’re talking skin that would put Ms. Jackson’s peek-a-boo to shame.

I guess when you’ve put together enough of these issues over the years, you run of ideas for a theme.

Either way, I’ll exercise my red-blooded, America right to continue to subscribe to the magazine &045; for the articles, of course.

Maybe former television producer Peggy Pierrepont, who has retired to Natchez and helped SI find locations for shoots, put it best:

&uot;I don’t think it’ll hurt that 7 million men are gonna know Natchez, Mississippi.&uot;

Why go to Vegas, when it can come to you?

Chuck Corder

is a sports writer for The Natchez Democrat. You can reach him at (601) 445-3633 or by e-mail at

chuck.corder@natchezdemocrat.com.