Attention, sports fans of the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic: Your graphically enhanced, lingo-swinging, extra-large alternative to Sports Illustrated has arrived. The launch of ESPN The Magazine has been so successful that the mag is almost impossible to find in some areas, and why not? For months, its parent cable channel has been relentlessly promoting it as a sort of ESPN for the bathroom. And, as promised on TV, the magazine (its first issue, anyway) is indeed fat, weighing in at 184 Spin-sized pages. Of course, most of those are advertisements, which is to be expected. And the rest of ESPN The Magazine is incredibly graphics-saturated, which is fine, because it's about sports. But there's still something frustratingly insubstantial about this debut issue. Perhaps there's a flaw in the magazine's mission statement, which presumes that 1) you've watched SportsCenter for all the things that happened, and 2) you'll read ESPN The Magazine for all the things that will happen. Because the editors do a good job of sticking to this ideal, the reader doesn't get any breakdowns of two-week-old games, but he—and ESPN is obviously damn sure the reader is a he—won't get many photos of athletes in action, either. Or, for that matter, stories of athletes in action. If you like to read articles, you'll have to put up with a lot of profiles of players, coaches, teams, and even facilities—none of which are all that interesting when they aren't playing, coaching, or hosting sports. The cover article for the first issue, a profile of four athletes (Kobe Bryant, Kordell Stewart, Alex Rodriguez, and Eric Lindros) who will supposedly be the first big things of the next century, is almost embarrassingly fawning; not only does it read like a collaborative effort among the players' agents, the players themselves, and Nike copywriters, but it sets the tone for the whole publication. Unless you care about goofy Top 10 lists, ex-BoSox pitcher Jerry Casdale's ratings of other athletes' spaghetti-sauce brands, and really, really big photo spreads that melt seamlessly into the surrounding ads, the best stuff in ESPN The Magazine is plain old sports analysis. Which, it should be noted, probably comes into your home every month with lots and lots of other TV channels, with no annoying "reading" involved. And fewer commercials.