he big reveal of Sports Illustrated‘s new swimsuit issue was supposed to come on David Letterman‘s Late Show last night. But as it turned out, the world’s first glimpse of the bikini-clad Irina Shayk on the cover came from midtown Manhattan office worker Rana Wardlaw, who happened to look out her window and spot a massive billboard of the cover being quickly uncovered as a test for the upcoming Letterman segment.

She snapped a pic, tweeted it out (“New SI swimsuit coverrrr!!!!”), and boom went the proverbial dynamite.

MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann will not be part of this season of NBC’s Sunday night football studio show Football night In America, according to Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated.

He had been with the program since 2007, and the crowded show will not be replacing him with another anchor.

Sports Illustrated has released their definitive Ben Roethlisberger piece today, and the result is not pretty. It provides firsthand accounts of encounters between the quarterback and a slew of waiters, friends, and teammates.

According to Erin Andrews, there is no official romance between her and “Dancing With the Stars” partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy. This comes courtesy of SI.com’s Jimmy Traina, who interviewed Andrews today, and decided to run it early after this People magazine cover was released.

April 4 is Major League Baseball’s opening day, with the World Champion New York Yankees playing the always dangerous Boston Red Sox at 8p in Fenway Park. The New York Mets open the following day, with a home game against the Florida Marlins. We’ve dug deep into our archives to present some great baseball magazine covers to celebrate the start of the season. See more after the jump, and view the full list here.

The understatement for the first quarter of 2010 is that CBS Sports has had an ok start to 2010. First, its broadcast of Super Bowl XLV became the most watched television program in history, to be followed by its annual domination of March and the NCAA Men’s hoops tournament. But there’s another spring event in the CBS Sports catalog that is going to be a bigger spectacle: this April’s Masters, and this year’s event has the tease of Tiger Woods return as its big draw.

On Sunday the NCAA announced the 65 teams that will play for college basketball’s championship, affording some teams the opportunity of a lifetime while bitterly disappointing others. In recent years, to celebrate the occasion of one of America’s most beloved sporting events, Sports Illustrated has produced annual March-Madness-themed covers that cram in pictures of at least one person from every team in the tournament. See more after the jump. (At left: March 2008, featuring Kansas’ Brandon Rush).

In anticipation of SportsGrid, Mediaite’s upcoming sports baby (babies having babies!), and the crazy Power Grid-related arguing which will follow that launch we’ve decided to count down our list of the top 25 most influential sports bloggers, writers, and tweeters currently shaping the online sports narrative.

Make no mistake, this Sports Illustrated photo spread of Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn is definitely supposed to make you think of sex. Earlier this week there was some controversy over whether Vonn’s SI cover – she was fully clothed, in a downhill skiing position — was overly sexual. No need to guess this time!

Ladies and gentlemen — eh, who are we kidding, gentlemen — your Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2010 Cover Model: Brooklyn Decker! As has become something of a tradition, the announcement was made on the Late Show with David Letterman, which broadcast the unveiling of a giant nearly-naked billboard in Times Square. Decker has additional SI heft by marriage: her husband is tennis star Andy Roddick. Wow, too bad their babies will be so ugly.

I mean more so than you normally would upon seeing an attractive, fully clothed, woman on the cover of a popular magazine. That’s what sports blogger Nicole M. LaVoi apparently feels is the message here. Anyone else?

I saw the Sport Illustrated demo video long before the iPad was released. It was everything the iPad should have been on Day One. A mind-blowing demonstration of what the future of the magazine could be. The problem is, the iPad cannot do what the demo shows and it should have. Flash is the only current technology that would make that possible.

For the average unemployed American (one of every ten of us, at this point), finding a job is a rigid process. But former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is not your average jobless American, and he’s on the prowl with a kitchen-sink approach to impressing potential bosses that has led him to dabble in everything from authoring books to impersonating Elvis to trying out for a bevy of celebrity reality TV shows.

2009 has been a horrible year for magazine publishers. Much has been made of the perfect storm of an ad recession (brought about by a dismal economic climate), and the growth of up-to-the-second digital media. But in the midst of this sea of bad news, there has been one beacon of hope for the magazine biz: Stephen Colbert. Vanity Fair tells us that putting Colbert on the cover leads to sales!

Stephen Colbert made headlines when he announced last month that his viewership (or, as he affectionately calls them, “Colbert Nation”) would take over as primary sponsor of the United States’ speed skating team in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. And the fans have delivered, raising approximately $250,000 for the team in the time since.

Time, Inc.’s proposed tablet PC magazines. With some good reason – the demonstration video below, showcasing Sports Illustrated (and narrated with gusto by SI editor Terry McConnell) is pretty snazzy. Think of a Kindle that is in color. And can play video. And runs on a real computer. And that you probably shouldn’t take in the bathtub.

It’s been widely reported that Time Inc. has been planning a rather significant round of lay-offs before the end of the year. The conventional wisdom around New York publishing circles was that the lay-offs would be coming after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case, as a Time Inc. spokesperson confirmed exclusively to Mediaite: “Yes, sadly there are layoffs today across a number of titles at Time Inc.

Andre Agassi‘s shocking (or book-selling!) confession that he abused crystal meth in the late ’90s has been the primary promotional push for his upcoming autobiography. Like so many juicy gossip bits today, the info was first reported via Twitter, causing a commotion for media outlets like CBS News and Time Inc., who needed time with their stories. The internet strikes again!

In this very challenging climate for the magazine industry, editors will go to almost any length to increase newsstand sales (and/or media attention) for its title. Case in point: ESPN the Magazine‘s will announce today plans for their premiere “Body Issue” featuring more than 30 male and female athletes posing nude or semi-nude, raising eyebrows about the “naked” play for sales.

The Magazine Editors category on the Power Grid has engendered some good debate here at Mediaite’s global headquarters. Summing up: should a Magazine Editor be rewarded more for the public profile of the title they oversee, or more for how they promote their own name.