ESPN MediaZone

Pardon the Interruption, Co-Host; NBA Studio Analyst; Columnist, ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com

Michael Wilbon

Michael Wilbon is one of the nation’s most respected sports journalists and an industry pioneer as one of the first sportswriters to broaden his career beyond newspapers to include television, radio and new media. A co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and a NBA studio analyst for ABC and ESPN, Wilbon left The Washington Post in December 2010 after 31 years to assume an expanded role as a columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. 

Wilbon and his former Washington Post colleague Tony Kornheiser have co-hosted PTI since the show’s debut in September of 2001. Highlighted by the type of discussion and verbal sparring the two engaged in for years at The Post, the popular weekday sports news and commentary show features wide-ranging discussion of the day’s news and events. PTI earned the 2009 Sports Emmy Award in the “Daily Studio” category and the show continues to increase its ratings and viewership each year. 

Wilbon was named an NBA studio analyst for ABC in 2006, and he contributes to both the NBA Sunday Countdown on ABC and ESPN’s NBA Shootaround. He appears weekly on ESPN Radio 1000 in Chicago, with Scott Van Pelt on ESPN Radio and with Kornheiser on ESPN980 in Washington. 

He joined The Washington Post in 1980 as a sports reporter, after two summer internships at The Post, and was a columnist from 1990-2010, dealing as much with the issues of the day as they related to sports as what transpired on the fields or courts. During his years at The Post Wilbon edited two books with NBA legend and Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, “I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It” and “Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man,” both of which made the New York Times best-seller list. For more than a decade Wilbon appeared as a panelist on WRC-TV-4’s “Redskins Report” and “Full Court Press” with host George Michael. 

In 2009 Wilbon was honored by the National Association of Journalists with the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Two years earlier he and Kornheiser received The Post’s prestigious Eugene Meyer Award which recognizes employees who exemplify the principals embodied by the newspaper’s former owner/publisher. In 2001 he was recognized by Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, as the top sports columnist in America. In March of 2011 he was inducted into the D.C. Sports Hall of Fame for his coverage and commentary on sports in and around the Nation’s Capital. 

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Wilbon graduated in 1980 from Northwestern University, where he is now a member of the Board of Trustees, and where he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement in 1997. In June 2010 Wilbon delivered the commencement address at his alma mater. He is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, and resides in Bethesda, Md., and Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Sheryl, and son, Matthew.  

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