Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN who specializes in longform features and profiles that bring to life the people and personalities behind the games. He began his ESPN career in 1998 with the advent of ESPN The Magazine and wrote a record 46 cover stories over The Mag’s 21-year life span.
The subjects of Keown’s profiles over his long career at ESPN comprise a who’s who of prominent athletes of the past three decades, including Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Randy Moss, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Westbrook, Josh Allen and Steph Curry. He has traveled to Japan to profile Shohei Ohtani, to Serbia to profile Nikola Jokic, and to the Philippines to profile Manny Pacquiao. His work has received numerous national awards, including a New York Press award for business writing for a profile of boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Keown is also the author or co-author of eight nonfiction books, three of them New York Times bestsellers. His books include Skyline: One Season, One Team, One City, Hunting the Jackal (with Green Beret and Special Forces legend Billy Waugh) and the No. 1 NYT bestseller Bad As I Wanna Be (with Dennis Rodman).
Before joining ESPN, Keown spent eight years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he covered the San Francisco Giants for four seasons before becoming a feature writer and columnist. Prior to that, he worked at the Sacramento Bee, the Sacramento Union and the Yuba-Sutter Appeal-Democrat. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pa., Keown grew up in Napa, Calif., and played baseball briefly and inconsequentially at UC Berkeley before graduating from Washington State University with a degree in Communications. He lives in Northern California with his wife and near his four sons and six grandchildren.
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