Bicycles Today / BMX Today — The NBL's Member Magazine (1977 to 2009)

A Legend Bike Co. history chapter · researched from primary sources

For most of thirty-plus years, if you raced NBL, a magazine showed up in your mailbox with your name on the label. Race results. Track schedules. Point standings. The kid from your district who finally cracked a national main. It started in 1977 as a newspaper called Bicycles Today, and most of us came to know it as BMX Today. It wasn't glossy, and it wasn't trying to be. It was the sanction talking to its members. That's the whole story, and it's a good one.

Where it started

The National Bicycle League was George Esser's sanction. He started it out of Florida in 1974, broke it off as its own thing in 1976, and ran the first NBL nationals in 1977. A sanction needs a way to talk to its people — point standings nobody can argue with, a schedule everybody works off of, a place to run race coverage. So in August 1977 the NBL started a publication. First name on it was Bicycles Today.

It wasn't a magazine at the start. It was a newspaper. Tabloid format, the kind of thing you'd fold in half and stuff in a gear bag. The NBL's own records call it an in-house newspaper that began in August 1977, and that's the honest way to describe it. Race results on newsprint. Nothing fancy. It did the job.

One note worth being straight about. You'll see the early name two ways — Bicycles Today with the s, and Bicycle Today without it. The NBL's vital statistics and the people who edited it use Bicycles Today. Some rider records and write-ups use the singular. We're going with what the sanction itself used, and flagging the rest. No guessing.

The name everybody remembers — BMX Today

Somewhere along the way the newspaper grew up. It changed format, went to a magazine, and the name changed with it — to BMX Today. That's the title most racers picture when they think back. By the time the NBL was describing its own publication, the line read simple: a monthly magazine promoting the National Bicycle League and its races, going back to 1977.

And it covered everything a member needed. The NBL spelled it out themselves — national and regional events, schedules of NBL tracks, the national series schedule, member point standings, new product, and more. At its peak the league said BMX Today went out to around 40,000 members, bike shops, schools, libraries, and companies. That's a real reach for a sanction magazine. That's how a kid in one state knew what was happening at a track three states over.

The people who ran it

A magazine is only as good as the folks putting it out, and BMX Today went through a few. Harold "McGoo" McGruther took the editor's chair in March 1982, working under George Esser — back when he still called it the NBL newspaper Bicycles Today, which tells you the format change hadn't fully landed yet. In March 1994, Steve Buddendeck came on as the NBL's marketing director, and one of his first jobs was to spark the magazine back up. February 2003, the NBL hired Frank Lark as marketing director and managing editor of BMX Today. Late in its print run, Jess Moore was editor and art director.

Different hands, same job. Cover the racing. Get the standings right. Put the members' kids on the cover. The covers tell their own story — Eric "Big Daddy" Rupe in SE colors, Toby Henderson debuting a new cruiser, riders from every district who earned the shot.

What it actually did for the sport

Here's the part people forget. Before everybody had a phone in their pocket, the sanction magazine was how the sport held together. You found out who won the Grands from BMX Today. You found out a new track opened from BMX Today. You checked your own points against the printed standings and either smiled or got back to work. Track directors used the print issues as a recruiting tool — hand a kid a magazine with real racers in it and watch the lightbulb come on.

It was never trying to be the slick newsstand BMX magazines of the day. It was a member benefit. The reach came from the membership, not the magazine rack. And for the riders who lived inside the NBL, that was the point.

The end of print — December 2009

On December 9, 2009, the NBL announced it was done printing. The December 2009 issue would be the last one on paper. Everything would move to an online version inside the new NBL website. The league's reasoning was the same one every print publication was wrestling with that year — the internet had taken over, and that's where people went for their information.

They were honest about the cost. Track directors leaned on the print copies as a recruiting tool, and the NBL said straight out that it knew that, and that it'd try to give tracks other materials to make up for it. The first BMX Today had landed in August 1977. The last printed one went out in December 2009. Thirty-two years of paper. That's a long run for any magazine, let alone one tied to a single sport.

What came after

The magazine didn't really outlive the sanction. The NBL hit serious trouble in 2009 through 2011 — a stack of management and strategy calls that didn't pan out — and in 2011 the ABA acquired its assets. The combined sanction became USA BMX. The NBL's print magazine had already ended in December 2009, so BMX Today didn't carry forward as a standalone title under the new banner. It belongs to the NBL era. Start to finish.

We're staying neutral on the sanction politics here. That's its own story, and we tell it on the NBL, ABA, and USA BMX pages. This page is about the magazine. And the magazine did exactly what a sanction magazine is supposed to do, for thirty-two years, and then it stopped. Clean enough.

What we don't know

Sources

23mag.com — "BMX Today Magazine" archive (publisher, first-issue date, editors McGruther / Buddendeck / Lark / Moore, dated covers, and the December 9, 2009 NBL print-discontinuation announcement). Wikipedia — "National Bicycle League" (in-house newspaper Bicycles Today beginning August 1977, later format and name change to BMX Today, December 2009 end of print, and the 2011 ABA acquisition forming USA BMX). Wikipedia rider pages — Gary Ellis and Brian Foster (official NBL publication listed under the two names Bicycle/Bicycles Today and BMX Today). fatbmx.com — August 2008 BMX Today issue note (official NBL race publication, distribution to members and shops). Magazine archives at oldschoolmags.com.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• The History of BMX
• NBL · NBA · ABA · USA BMX