Open the Vault

When was the first time Ohio State appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated? October 24, 1955, of course. And, now you can browse all of the SI covers graced the Buckeyes. SI has opened up their copious vault of covers, photos, and articles with an extension of SI.com called, aptly enough, SI Vault.

The digital Vault collects more than 150,000 stories, 2,600 covers and a half-million photos spanning the magazine’s 54-year archive. You can search the database that links articles, video, and statistics. Perhaps the coolest feature is the user-generated Wiki-style content enabled by the Vault. When I searched a few days, the Ohio State wikipage had been filling up with opinions from around the country, so feel free to hop over to it and help craft Ohio State’s story online.

So, what does this mean for Ohio State fans? For starters, it is a new, untapped resource for wasting time at work. Seriously, it allows fans of all ages to stitch together the history of their favorite team(s) in a way that was not previously possible or, at least, feasibly for a non-Sports Illustrated writer. For a blogger (read me), it is a great tool and potential source of information. After all, we all know history, especially college football history, repeats itself.