Michael Ray Wilbon (ˈwɪlbɒn; November 19, 1958) is a former sportswriter and columnist for the Washington Post and current
ESPNEntertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
commentator. He serves as an analyst for ESPN and co-hosts
Pardon the InterruptionPardon the Interruption is a sports television show that airs weekdays on various ESPN TV channels, TSN, ESPN America, XM, and Sirius satellite radio services, and as a downloadable podcast. It is hosted by Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, who discuss, and frequently argue over, the top stories...
on
ESPNEntertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
with former Post writer
Tony KornheiserAnthony Irwin "Tony" Kornheiser is an American sportswriter and former columnist for The Washington Post, as well as a radio and television talk show host...
, and has been doing so since 2001.
Career
Wilbon began working for
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
in 1980 after summer internships at the newspaper in 1979 and 1980. He covered college sports,
Major League BaseballMajor League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
, the
National Football LeagueThe National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
and the
National Basketball AssociationThe National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
before being promoted to full-time columnist in February 1990. His column in the
Post, which dealt as much with the culture of sports as the action on the court or field, appeared up to four times a week until he left to work full-time for ESPN on December 7, 2010.
In his career, Wilbon has covered ten Summer and Winter
Olympic GamesThe Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
for
The Washington Post, every
Super BowlThe Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...
since 1987, nearly every
Final FourFinal Four isa sports term that is commonly applied to the last four teams remaining in a playoff tournament, most notably NCAA Division I college basketball tournaments. The term usually refers to the four teams who compete in the two games of a single-elimination tournament's semi-final round...
since 1982 and each year's
NBA FinalsThe NBA Finals is the championship series of the National Basketball Association . The series was named the NBA World Championship Series until 1986....
since .
After contributing to ESPN's
The Sports ReportersThe Sports Reporters is a sports talk show that airs on ESPN at 9:30 a.m. ET every Sunday morning . It is broadcast from Bristol, Connecticut at the main ESPN studios. However, before 1999, it was broadcast from a studio in Manhattan. and from 1999-2010 it was recorded at the ESPN Zone at Times...
and other shows on the cable network, he began co-hosting ESPN's daily
Pardon the Interruption (
PTI) with Tony Kornheiser on October 22, 2001. He is also a member of
ABCESPN on ABC is the brand used for sports programming on the ABC television network. Officially the broadcast network retains its own sports division; however, for all practical purposes, ABC's sports division has been merged with ESPN, a sports cable network majority-owned by ABC's parent, The...
's
NBA Countdown (with host
Stuart ScottStuart Scott is a sportscaster and anchor on ESPN's SportsCenter.-Early life and career:Scott attended Richard J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and went to college at the University of North Carolina. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity...
and analyst
Jon BarryJon Alan Barry is an American former basketball player and current television analyst for ABC and ESPN.-Biography:Barry is the son of Hall of Famer Rick Barry, and has three brothers: Scooter, Drew, and Brent, all of whom are also basketball players. Jon played his high school basketball at De La...
) which is the pre-game show for the network's NBA telecasts.
In addition to his work at
The Washington Post,
PTI and ESPN, Wilbon appeared weekly on
WRC-TVWRC-TV, channel 4, is an owned and operated television station of the NBC television network, located in the American capital city of Washington, D.C...
in Washington, D.C. with WRC Sports Director
George MichaelGeorge Michael was an American sportscaster best known nationally for The George Michael Sports Machine, his long-running sports highlights television program. Originally named George Michael's Sports Final when it began as a local show in Washington, D.C...
, and Pro Football Hall of Famers
John RigginsRobert John Riggins, nicknamed "The Diesel", is a former American football running back in the National Football League for the New York Jets and Washington Redskins. Riggins was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992....
and
Sonny JurgensenChristian Adolph "Sonny" Jurgensen III is a former American football quarterback in the National Football League for the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983....
on
Redskins Report during the football season. He also appeared with Michael,
USA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
basketball writer David DuPree and
Tony KornheiserAnthony Irwin "Tony" Kornheiser is an American sportswriter and former columnist for The Washington Post, as well as a radio and television talk show host...
on
Full Court Press during the basketball season. Both of these shows were canceled in December 2008 due to budget cuts. In 2001 Wilbon was named the top sports columnist by the
Society of Professional JournalistsThe Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
.
Wilbon also forged a close friendship with former Marshall and current NFL quarterback
Byron LeftwichByron Antron Leftwich is an American football quarterback in the National Football League who currently plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars seventh overall in the 2003 NFL Draft. He played college football at Marshall University.Leftwich has also played...
while the young passer was a standout player for HD Woodson in Washington, D.C.
In recent years, he has become more known as an ESPN personality, and in late 2006, agreed to a multi-year contract extension with ESPN that will give the network priority in conflicts with his newspaper assignments. The first major example of this happened on February 4, 2007, when Wilbon covered a
Detroit PistonsThe Detroit Pistons are a franchise of the National Basketball Association based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The team's home arena is The Palace of Auburn Hills. It was originally founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the Fort Wayne Pistons as a member of the National Basketball League in 1941, where...
-
Cleveland CavaliersThe Cleveland Cavaliers are a professional basketball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They began playing in the National Basketball Association in 1970 as an expansion team...
game instead of
Super Bowl XLISuper Bowl XLI was an American football game that featured the American Football Conference champion Indianapolis Colts and the National Football Conference champion Chicago Bears to decide the National Football League champion for the 2006 season...
.
On December 7, 2010, he wrote his last column for the
Washington Post and officially dedicated full time to work for ESPN and ABC.
Personal
Born in the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Wilbon graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory School in 1976 and received his journalism degree in 1980 from
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
's
Medill School of JournalismThe Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
. Wilbon currently lives in
Bethesda, MarylandBethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...
, but he also has a home in
Scottsdale, ArizonaScottsdale is a city in the eastern part of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, adjacent to Phoenix. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2010 the population of the city was 217,385...
.
Wilbon was a pitcher in high school and once threw a one hitter.
Wilbon is good friends with former NBA star
Charles BarkleyCharles Wade Barkley is a former American professional basketball player. Nicknamed "Sir Charles" and "The Round Mound of Rebound", Barkley established himself as one of the National Basketball Association's most dominating power forwards...
and has edited and written the introduction for his most recent books,
I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It and
Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, both of which were
New York Times best sellersThe New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
.
Wilbon has a
cousinIn kinship terminology, a cousin is a relative with whom one shares one or more common ancestors. The term is rarely used when referring to a relative in one's immediate family where there is a more specific term . The term "blood relative" can be used synonymously and establishes the existence of...
,
Travon Bellamy, who played for the
University of Illinois football teamThe Fighting Illini are the intercollegiate athletic teams of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The University offers 10 men's and 11 women's varsity sports....
.
Wilbon suffered a mild
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
on January 27, 2008. After complaining of chest pains, he was taken to a Scottsdale hospital where doctors performed an
angioplastyAngioplasty is the technique of mechanically widening a narrowed or obstructed blood vessel, the latter typically being a result of atherosclerosis. An empty and collapsed balloon on a guide wire, known as a balloon catheter, is passed into the narrowed locations and then inflated to a fixed size...
.
Wilbon is a known type 2 diabetic.
Wilbon and his wife Sheryl Wilbon had their first child, Matthew Raymond Wilbon, via surrogate on March 26, 2008. Matthew is often referred to as "Lilbon" by the aforementioned
Tony KornheiserAnthony Irwin "Tony" Kornheiser is an American sportswriter and former columnist for The Washington Post, as well as a radio and television talk show host...
on his radio show.
On August 10, 2008, during a Cubs-Cardinals game at
Wrigley FieldWrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois, United States that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales...
, Wilbon threw out the ceremonial first pitch and then sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as part of the seventh-inning stretch. Footage of Wilbon wearing a tucked-in Cubs jersey and bouncing the pitch is frequently shown on
Pardon The InterruptionPardon the Interruption is a sports television show that airs weekdays on various ESPN TV channels, TSN, ESPN America, XM, and Sirius satellite radio services, and as a downloadable podcast. It is hosted by Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, who discuss, and frequently argue over, the top stories...
as a friendly teasing by Kornheiser.
In May 2009, Wilbon competed in a made-for-TV "King of Bowling" show against pro bowling star
Wes MalottWesley Clint "Big Nasty" Malott is an American professional ten-pin bowler who resides in Pflugerville, Texas. He has six titles in eight full seasons on the PBA tour, having won at least one title in four straight seasons . He also won the 2006–07 Showplace Lanes Megabucks Shootout, which is not...
. Wilbon beat Malott by a score of 256–248, but Wilbon received a 57-pin handicap and Malott had to use a plastic ball.
External links