After 25 years as an anchor for SportsCenter, John Anderson retired from ESPN’s signature news and information program at the end of June, 2024. But he wasn’t ending his ESPN career.

Anderson, who ran track in college at the University of Missouri, is ESPN’s voice on coverage of collegiate indoor and outdoor track and field (play-by-play and reporting) as well as play-by-play for collegiate cross country event coverage. In addition, he hosts ESPN’s annual coverage of the Boston and New York City Marathons.

Anderson joined ESPN in June 1999 as an ESPNEWS anchor and came to ESPN from KPHO-TV in Phoenix, Ariz., where he was a weekend sports anchor from 1996 to 1999.  Prior to KPHO, Anderson was a sports reporter and weekend sports anchor at KOTV in Tulsa, Okla. (1990 to 1996), and a sports photographer and reporter at Tulsa’s KTUL-TV from 1988 to 1990. Anderson began his broadcasting career at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo.

Previously, Anderson was co-host of Wipeout on ABC, an extreme obstacle-course series on the network. In 2015, Anderson supplied the voice of a futuristic alien sportscaster in an episode of the Disney XD animated series Penn Zero: Part Time Hero.

Anderson was graduated from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism with a bachelor’s degree in 1987.  He was a four-year member of the men’s track team, competing in high jump, and captained the squad his senior season. In 2007 he was honored with the Mizzou Faculty-Alumni Award for his contributions to the University, including an ESPN/Missouri internship for one journalism student that he began in 2003.

Anderson, a native of Green Bay, Wis., won the Outstanding Sports Feature Reporting Award, presented by the Oklahoma Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, in 1994 and 1995; in 1997, he received the Associated Press Television Award in Arizona for outstanding performance in broadcast journalism.  In 2003, he co-wrote a book with golfer Chi Chi Rodriquez, Chi Chi’s Golf Games You Gotta Play, which teaches players how to play better golf and have fun while playing.  In the fall of 2009, Anderson and his wife started the Anderson Family Charitable Foundation to help supply underprivileged youth with backpacks, schools supplies and food. In November 2010, Anderson competed in the NYC Marathon as Captain of Team Tillman in honor of raising money for the Pat Tillman Foundation.

Anderson joined the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s faculty as the Leonard H. Goldenson Endowed Chair in Radio and Television Journalism, effective in January of 2025.

-30-