ESPN Execs At Overby Center Friday

On the eve of the Ole Miss-Alabama game, a top executive of ESPN and a senior writer for the sports network will lead a roundtable discussion about college football controversies at the Overby Center Auditorium on campus Friday (Oct. 14) at 10 a.m.
The program, which is free and open to the public, features John A. Walsh, ESPN’s executive vice president and executive editor, and Wright Thompson, a senior writer for ESPN.com.

Walsh is a legendary figure in sports news. For more than four decades, he has guided newspapers, magazines and television coverage of sporting events. Since joining ESPN in 1988, Walsh’s fingerprints are on many of the network’s most ambitious initiatives, such as the launch of ESPN The Magazine and ESPN Radio. He also played a major role in shaping ESPN’s flagship program, SportsCenter.

Before going to ESPN, Walsh was the founding editor of the original Inside Sports Magazine, a managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and later, U.S. News and World Report. He was also an editor at Newsday and the Washington Post.

Thompson has become one of the rising stars in American sports journalism. A Clarksdale native, a graduate of the University of Missouri, and a resident of Oxford, Thompson’s stories for ESPN.com have been selected repeatedly for inclusion in annual anthologies of the “Best American Sports Writing.” Thompson was the author of a lengthy piece on the undefeated 1962 Ole Miss football team that played during a year of crisis at the school, but he is best known for stories he has filed from exotic spots around the world. He has reported on cricket in Bangladesh, golf in Scotland, and this fall Thompson filed a lengthy piece, “A Tree Dies in Auburn,” on an attempt to poison two trees revered by Auburn fans.

The pair is expected to discuss the shifting scene in college sports conferences as well as the perilous careers of coaches and athletic directors today.  
(Dawn M. Jeter)



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