College Sports Information Directors of America

Christine Brennan, who is a USA Today sports columnist, author of bestselling books and a television sports analyst, has been selected to receive the Jake Wade Award by the College Sports Information Directors of America at the group's annual workshop July 2 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Jake Wade Award is named in honor of Julius Jennings Wade, a longtime sportswriter and sports information director at North Carolina. Given annually since 1958, the award is presented to an individual or an organization that has made an outstanding contribution in the media to the field of intercollegiate athletics. A staff writer at The Washington Post from 1984-96, Brennan is the author of the bestselling figure skating books Inside Edge and Edge of Glory. She was an on-air commentator for ABC News and ESPN during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, and broke the news of the pairs figure skating scandal at the Games. She also worked for ABC News during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, Ga., the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano and the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Brennan has appeared on a variety of television shows over the past decade, including ESPN's SportsCenter, Nightline, Good Morning America, World News Tonight and NBC's Today show. Brennan also appears regularly on ESPN Radio and WMAL Radio in Washington, D.C, and is a commentator on NPR's Morning Edition. Brennan's USA Today column in April 2002 on Augusta National Golf Club triggered the current 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, who joined USA Today as a columnist in 1997, became the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins in 1985 as a staff writer at The Washington Post. At the Post, she covered the Olympics and international sports, reporting from many nations, including Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Brennan has covered every Olympics since the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Prior to joining the Post, Brennan was the first woman sports writer at The Miami Herald, where she worked from 1981-84, and was the beat writer covering the 1983 University of Miami national championship football team. The author of five books, Brennan has won the Women's Sports Foundation's journalism award four times, and her work has been featured in various sports anthologies. 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 1993, she was named the Capital Press Women's "Woman of Achievement." She was named one of the top 10 sports columnists in the category of the nation's largest newspapers by the Associated Press Sports Editors for 2001. Brennan also was honored with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's 2002 Reed Sarratt Award and the U.S. Sports Academy's 2002 Media Award. 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. Brennan received undergraduate and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University in 1980 and 1981, respectively, and currently lives in Washington, D.C. Contact: Joe Hernandez, Ball State, CoSIDA Third Vice President, 765.285.8242, jhernand@bsu.edu