A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Swimsuit Issues

You can tell a lot about the current health and hipness of a sports magazine by its annual swimsuit issue:

They’re a peek into the editors’ sunlit soul, flush with vivid color and bedroom eyes.

What, pray tell, can you possibly glean after zooming through Sport’s garish 31-page “Wet & Wild” spread and the rest of the mumbo jumbo in the magazine?

Other than: From its first-name only description of the models (other than cover-bikini-wearer Cindy Margolis) to the random prose style to the screaming graphics, Sport is joining the short-attention span nation. Which means it shouldn’t really be a magazine, it should be a cheesy discount-bin calendar or a sloppy Internet site.

Ms. Margolis also pops up in the 37-page Inside Sports spread, which devotes far more time to “Baywatch” new prima Donna D’Errico, and to an unintentionally fascinating “save the beaches” article, with this Hasselhoffian teaser: “Cleaning up our bays and beaches isn’t just a plot for a TV show--it’s a vital issue that affects our lives.”

Which brings us to the magazine that still does affect our lives: Sports Illustrated, and its multihundred-page “Nothing But Bikinis” issue.

Beyond proving that Stacey Williams is the most beautiful woman in the world (which it does), this issue is a startling, elegant showcase that is overwhelming to the senses, over-flowing with talent, and, in a super-corporate-synergy sense, wildly over-indulgent, like a five-course meal at a ballgame or yet another all-sports network.

SI, considered a prize in the mega-corporate world of Time Warner, is wandering hard toward the Vanity Fair subscription base, but does the sports world’s most pressing issue really need to be: Steffi Graf, beautiful or brawny or both?