A Conversation with Christine Brennan: The Life, The Legacy and The Love of the Game

Christine Brennan, award winning national sports columnist for USA Today, best-selling author and overall amazing human being is the textbook example of how working hard and dreaming big can turn into the career of a lifetime.

I had the privilege of meeting Brennan when she guest lectured in my Sports Commentary class via skype on Monday night. Although “guest lecture” means to teach the class in place of the professor in layman’s terms, “lectured” isn’t even the right word to describe our encounter with Christine Brennan-- it felt like a personal conversation, an inspirational speech and a meeting with an old friend all rolled into one. Even with her celebrity status amongst sports personalities and her status as one of the top commentators in the nation, if not the world, her demeanor during the interview translated her kind, down-to-earth personality; and her wisdom left me feeling star struck as I held on to every word of advice she gave to the class.

With the prowess of a Sports Almanac, Brennan recalled specific moments of sports history that served as stepping stones in her amazing career. As the first woman sports writer for the Miami Herald in 1981, she broke barriers and paved the way for other women to become involved in sports reporting. When Brennan talked about her time with the Miami Herald, she also treated the class with a vignette about covering the Miami Dolphins, and specifically about “legendary coach Don Shula.” Smiling fondly at the memory, she recounted how Shula was “understanding of women reporters during a time when other coaches were against [them].” She went on to describe Miami players putting on robes in the locker room out of respect for her, and how the unwavering support of Don Shula would always be one of her favorite moments in her career.

Brennan didn’t just break barriers (and stories) at the Miami Herald. She moved on to become the first woman to cover Washington’s NFL team for the Washington Post in 1985, winning the 1993 Capital Press Women’s “Woman of Achievement” Award for her reporting work with the Post. After her coverage of the Tonya Harding Figure Skating Scandal of 1994 and breaking the pairs figure skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, she became a leading voice in the sports world’s most controversial issues, and diverged onto the path of becoming a national best-selling author. Her works include Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating; Champions on Ice: Twenty-Five Years of the World’s Finest Figure Skaters; Best Seat in the House: A Father, a Daughter, a Journey Through Sports; and Edge of Glory: The Inside Story of the Quest for Figure Skating's Olympic Gold Medals.

Brennan’s career, her accolades, her awards and achievements are admirable and inspiring. What impressed me the most, however, was her incredible wisdom, the unwavering pride she has for her work and her passion for talking about social issues. With each mention of an achievement came and in-depth story on the people that helped her get there, what lessons we could take out of it, or what social issue needed to come to light. Brennan is well-versed when it comes to social issues in the sporting world, including gender bias, racial strife and domestic abuse. But she also has a lot to say when it comes to other societal issues, including the current water disaster in Flint, Michigan and the impending gentrification of Inglewood, California with the upcoming LA Rams stadium.

Our conversation with Christine Brennan brought us much more value than a typical guest lecture ever could. If you were not already awed by her long list of achievements, you were holding on to her every word when she shared behind-the-scene stories about covering the Olympics; office life at the Washington post; the personalities of players and coaches off camera; and her opinion on prevalent social justice issues. I hope one day I can meet her in person; not to ask her a couple more questions about her career, but to thank her for paving the way so that women like me can have a lustrous career in sports commentary.

For more information about Christine Brennan, visit her personal website here.

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