The Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism
Sponsored by The McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society
Dr. Gerald Early Speaks on Campus
Dr. Gerald Early delivered the 2024 Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism on March 27, 2024. Dr. Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African and African American Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1982. He was most recently the interim director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (2022-2023). He was previously the chair of the African and African American Studies Department (2014-2021). He is also the executive editor of The Common Reader, Washington University’s interdisciplinary journal published under the auspices of the Provost’s office.
Dr. Early is a noted essayist and American culture critic. His collections of essays include Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture (1989); The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; This is Where I Came In: Essays on Black America in the 1960s (2003), and, most recently, A Level-Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports (2011). He also authorizes Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood (1994). His anthologies include The Cambridge Companion to Boxing (2019); Approaches to Teaching Baraka’s Dutchman (2018, with Matthew Calihman); The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader (2001); Miles Davis and American Culture (2001); The Muhammad Ali Reader (1998); Ain’t But a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings About St. Louis (1998): and Body Language: Writers on Sport (1998). Early is an elected American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow and has been honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
For the 2024 Deford Lecture, Dr. Early’s remarks reflected on the history of Black baseball in the United States and its representation in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. As a consultant to the Hall of Fame, his expertise helped shaped the new exhibit, “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball.”
The Deford Lecture
The McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society has hosted the Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism annually since 2010. Created to honor the iconic sportswriter and carry his unique vantage point on sports, the Deford Lecture has hosted journalists, scholars and leading thinkers to discuss pressing cultural issues with the UT-Austin community.
Frank Deford (1938-2017) was amongst the most versatile of American writers. On radio, he was heard as a commentator every Wednesday on Morning Edition on National Public Radio. On television, he worked as a Senior Correspondent for the HBO show, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. In print, he was Senior Contributing Writer at Sports Illustrated–– an association that dates back to 1962. As a journalist, Deford was elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters and named U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times, as voted by his peers. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation’s finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Posthumously, Deford received the inaugural Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his lifetime achievement.
Since the Center for Sports Communication & Media has been managing the Deford Lecture, speakers have included Bob Costas (2018), Andrea Joyce (2019), Mina Kimes (2020), Howard Bryant (2022) and Christine Brennan (2023). The Lecture was postponed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Frank Deford, Sportswriting Icon
The author of eighteen books, Frank Deford (1938-2017) was a towering sportswriter, working in virtually every medium during his illustrious. He was senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated, where his byline first appeared in 1962. A weekly commentator for NPR’s “Morning Edition,” he was also a regular correspondent on the HBO show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” He was editor-in-chief for the groundbreaking - and short lived - sports daily newspaper, The National.
As a journalist, Deford won the National Magazine Award for profiles, and was elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters. Voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times, he was also cited by The American Journalism Review as the nation’s finest sportswriter and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review.
The Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism began at the University of Texas in 2010, with his campus address that year. Over the years, it has featured some of the most compelling voices, interested in the intersection of sports and American culture. Deford was presented with a Christopher Award and awards for distinguished service to journalism from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University. Deford and Red Smith are the only authors with more than one piece in The Best American Sportswriting of the Century, edited by David Halberstam. For his radio and TV work, Deford has won both an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award.
Frank Deford Content Archives
Frank Deford maintained a sizable and influential presence in print, radio and video over his storied career. Here are some of the archival resources for his work.