Christine E. Brennan

Christine Brennan is an award-winning national sports columnist for USA Today, a Professor of Practice at Northwestern's Medill School, a commentator for CNN, ABC News, PBS NewsHour and National Public Radio, and a best-selling author. Named one of the country's top 10 sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors multiple times, she has covered the last 21 Olympic Games, summer and winter. In 2020, Brennan was awarded the Red Smith Award, presented annually to a person who has made “major contributions to sports journalism.”

Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald in 1981 and the first woman to cover the Washington Football Team 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 has supported 200 female students over the past two decades. Brennan is the author of eight books. Her 2006 sports memoir, Best Seat in the House, is the only father-daughter memoir written by a sports journalist. Her 1996 national best-seller, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated. Her most recent book, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports, debuted at No. 2 on the NYT nonfiction bestseller list in July 2025.

Brennan earned undergraduate and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University. She is a member of the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame, Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement, Northwestern’s Athletic Hall of Fame and the Washington, D.C., Sports Hall of Fame.