Biography of Christine Brennan

Award-winning journalist Christine Brennan - USA Today sports columnist, author of the best-selling figure skating book Inside Edge and television sports analyst - is a leading voice on the Olympics, international sports, women's sports and other sports issues.

Brennan's column in USA Today makes her the most widely read female sports columnist in the nation. Her new sports memoir, Best Seat in the House: A Father, A Daughter, A Journey Through Sports, (Lisa Drew Books/ Scribner) is the first father-daughter memoir written by a sports writer.

Brennan is an on-air commentator for ABC News and ESPN, reporting for the networks from the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens, and the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Salt Lake City and Torino, as well as other sports venues. Brennan has appeared on a variety of network and cable shows over the past decade including ESPN's SportsCenter, Nightline, Good Morning America, World News Tonight and NBC's Today Show.

Brennan also is a commentator on NPR's Morning Edition and appears on Fox Sports Radio. Her sports commentaries appear online at usatoday.com

Brennan broke the news of the pairs figure skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Her USA Today column in April 2002 on Augusta National Golf Club triggered the debate on the club's lack of female members. In December 2002, Sports Illustrated's Golf Plus section named her one of golf's 12 heroes of the year.

Brennan became the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins in 1985 as a staff writer at The Washington Post. She wrote for the Post from 1984-1996, covering the Olympics and international sports from many nations, including Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Brennan has covered 12 consecutive Olympic Games, starting with the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Prior to joing the Post, Brennan was the first full-time woman sports writer at The Miami Herald, where she worked from 1981-1984.

The author of six books, Brennan has won the Women's Sports Foundation's journalism award four times. Her 1996 book Inside Edge was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated in December 2002.

Her 1998 book Edge of Glory won an Ohioana Library Association book award.

In 2001 and again in 2003, she was named one of the nation's top 10 sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors in the category of the nation's largest newspapers.

In 1993, Brennan was named the Capital Press Women's "Woman of Achievement." She was honored as the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's 2002 Reed Sarralt Distinguished Lecturer and received the U.S. Sports Academy's 2002 Media Award. She won the 2003 Jake Wade Award from the College Sports Information Directors of America for outstanding media contribution to intercollegiate athletics. In 2005, she won the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators' Honor Award. She also is a member of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation Journalists' Hall of Fame.

A native of Toledo, Ohio Brennan was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1995.

In 1988, Brennan was elected the first president of the Association for Women in Sports Media. As president of the nationwide organization, she initiated a scholarship-internship program for college-age women that now honors eight students annually. She was named AWSM's 2004 Pioneer Award winner.

Brennan received undergraduate and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University in 1980 and 1981, respectively. She was inducted into Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement in April 2004. She is a member of Northwestern's Council of One Hundred, a mentoring program for women.

Brennan also is a nationally known speaker who gives more than a dozen talks annually to colleges and institutions. She lives in Washington D.C.