Christine Brennan

Christine Brennan is an award-winning sports columnist for USA Today, a commentator for ABC News, CNN, ESPN and National Public Radio, a best-selling author and a nationally-known speaker. Twice named one of the country’s top 10 sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors, she has covered 14 consecutive Olympic Games, summer and winter, and is preparing to cover this summer’s London Olympics.  

Brennan, the nation’s most widely read female sports columnist, was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins as a staff writer at The Washington Post in 1985.  She was the first president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) and started an internship-scholarship program that now honors six female students annually.

She is the author of seven books. Her 2006 sports memoir, Best Seat in the House, is the first father-daughter memoir written by a sports writer.  Her 1996 national best-seller, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated. 

Among Brennan’s honors, she was named the 1993 Capital Press Women’s "Woman of Achievement;" named the University of North Carolina’s 2002 Reed Sarratt Distinguished Lecturer; won the U.S. Sports Academy’s 2002 Ronald Reagan Award; won the 2003 Jake Wade Award from the College Sports Information Directors of America; won AWSM’s Pioneer Award in 2004; was named Woman of the Year by WISE (Women in Sports and Events) in 2005; received the inaugural Women’s Sports Foundation Billie Award for journalism in 2006; won Chi Omega’s 2006 Woman of Achievement Award and won Northwestern University’s Alumni Service Award in 2007.