ESPN's "Body Issue" gets cover-age

Back in June, we reported that ESPN the Magazine would release a "Body Issue," featuring athletes posing sans uniform. The issue's contents has been kept quiet by ESPN until last week, when the featured athletes were revealed. Serena Williams, Dwight Howard, Adrian Peterson and Gina Carano are among the athletes posing nude or semi-nude in the magazine hitting newsstands Oct. 9. Here is the full list.

•Tennis: Williams, James Blake

•NFL: Peterson, Casey Hampton, Torry Holt

•NBA/WNBA: Howard, Cappie Pondexter

•MLB: Nelson Cruz, Joba Chamberlain and Ivan Rodriguez

•NHL: Zdeno Chara, Chris Higgins, Sheldon Souray, Bill Guerin, Mike Komisarek

•NASCAR: Carl Edwards, Mark Martin

•Olympics: Jessica Mendoza, Susan Francia, Shawn Johnson, Allison Baver, Johnny Weir, Cheryl Haworth

•Boxing: Manny Pacquiao

•LPGA: Christina Kim, Sandra Gal, Anna Grzebien

•Mixed martial arts: Carano, Randy Couture

•Surfing: Claire Bevilacqua; Laird Hamilton

•Soccer: Natasha Kai, Chris Pontius, Bryan Namoff, Clyde Simms

•Skiing: Kristi Leskinen, Julia Mancuso

•Track and field: Lolo Jones, Michelle Carter

•Horse racing: Alexis Solis

The magazine has chosen six athletes (3 male and 3 female) from the above list to appear on six different magazine covers. Magazine spokesperson Crystal Howard featured the Williams and Howard covers on Twitter this morning.

She also revealed that Peterson's cover will exclusively be revealed on ESPN's "Monday Night Football" telecast this evening. Like tonight's game needs even more hype. Forget this whole Favre vs. Green Bay storyline, now viewers are going to tune in this evening just to see AP's bod on the ESPN cover. Expect tonight's telecast to set major MNF records.