Michael Wilbon, one of the nation’s most respected sports journalists, is co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and an NBA contributor on ABC and ESPN. Wilbon has an industry-wide presence as a decorated sportswriter, and he broadened his career to include television, radio and new media. In December 2010, he expanded his role with ESPN when he left The Washington Post after 31 years.
Wilbon and his former Washington Post colleague, Tony Kornheiser, have co-hosted PTI for 25 years – since the show’s debut on October 22, 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 Sports Emmy awards in 2009, 2016 and 2017, and it is ESPN’s most-watched daily studio show.
Wilbon began his career at The Washington Post in 1980 as a sports reporter after working as a summer intern at The Post and was a columnist from 1990-2010. During his years at The Post, Wilbon edited two books with 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’s “Redskins Report” and “Full Court Press” with legendary Washington, D.C. broadcaster George Michael. During the 1990s and 2000s, he also frequently appeared as a panelist on ESPN’s Sunday morning roundtable program The Sports Reporters. In 2023, he worked with NBA legend Chris Paul to edit his New York Times best-selling book, Sixty-One: Life Lessons from Papa, On and Off the Court.
Wilbon and Kornheiser will be honored by Arizona State University with the 43rd Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in early 2027. In 2020, Wilbon was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as the Curt Gowdy Media Award recipient for print journalism and was elected to the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame (NSMA) in the same year. In 2017, Wilbon received, along with Kornheiser, the National Press Club’s most prestigious prize, The Fourth Estate Award, which recognizes journalists who have made significant contributions to the field. In 2009, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) honored Wilbon 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, Wilbon was recognized by Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, as the top sports columnist in America. In March of 2011, Wilbon was inducted into the D.C. Sports Hall of Fame for his coverage and commentary on sports in and around the Nation’s Capital, and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. Wilbon received the fourth annual Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith Award presented in 2018 by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at The University of Maryland for his significant contributions to racial and gender equality in sports journalism.
Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Wilbon attended Saint Ignatius College Prep and graduated from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 1980. He is a current member of the Board of Trustees and serves on the Medill Board of Advisors. Wilbon was inducted into the inaugural class of the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement in 1997 and the Northwestern University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017. In June 2010, Wilbon delivered the commencement address at his alma mater.
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