Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting

Dan Jenkins

The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting

Telander, Merrill 2020 Medal Winners

Rick Telander and Elizabeth Merrill have been named 2020 award winners by the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting jury.

Telander receives the Lifetime Achievement award while Merrill is recognized for the best sportswriting of the year (2019). The winners will be celebrated in a video compilation under production. They will participate in the 2021 Jenkins Medal dinner and award ceremony when in-person events resume post-coronavirus.

This is the fourth year these national awards have been presented. They are named in honor of Jenkins, the legendary Texas sportswriter, to celebrate the craft and culture of sportswriting he personified through his storied career.

Telander is a senior sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has written since 1995. He started his career as a Special Contributor at Sports Illustrated in 1973, later becoming Senior Writer in 1981, working as college football beat reporter. There he reported on football program scandals at the University of Miami, University of Oklahoma and Southern Methodist University, among others. His 1988 profile on South Carolina’s Tommy Chaikin, chronicling the dangers of steroid use, “The Nightmare of Steroids,” is a defining piece of his work from that era. Telander’s 1990 book The Hundred-Yard Lie addressed the problems in college football and is among nine books he has published. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he was an all-Big Ten cornerback for the football team.

"No matter what the publication or form, Rick Telander has always written from a place of total authenticity, and with the spirit of inquiry that is the heart of all great journalism," said Jenkins Medal Co-chair Sally Jenkins, who is a longtime sportswriter herself and the daughter of Dan.

Merrill receives the 2020 Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting award, a citation for Whatever Happened to Villanova Basketball Star Shelly Pennefather? ‘So I Made This Deal with God’, published by ESPN. Merrill profiled Pennyfather, the dominant 1987 woman’s basketball player at Villanova University, who would go on to accept a calling to live as a cloistered nun. The article documents the reunion of her family and friends, seeing her for the first time since entering the Monastery of the Poor Clares, at her 25-year jubilee celebration.

Merrill is a Senior Writer at ESPN, working in their features/enterprise unit. She wrote previously at the Omaha Herald-World and Kansas City Star. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

From CSCM Director Dr. Michael Butterworth:

“The Center for Sports Communication & Media proudly presents this year’s Jenkins Medal awards to recipients who embody the characteristics that made Dan Jenkins a sportswriting legend. Lifetime achievement winner Rick Telander has combined his own experiences as an athlete with his love of literature to bring sports stories to life with clarity and nuance. His writing on college athletics is essential, and his reporting on steroids and corruption continue to be relevant. He has made a national impact while remaining a Chicago fixture, playing an instrumental role in the transformation of sports journalism and television.

Annual award winner Elizabeth Merrill has crafted a uniquely memorable profile in her story about Shelly Pennefather. The feature is beautifully structured around the themes of spirituality, family, and purpose, and the language brings readers into the lives of Pennefather and those who love her. Perhaps most remarkable is Merrill’s ability to find insight in the life of a central character with whom she could not speak. It is a spectacular piece of reporting and writing.”

Previous winners of the Jenkins Medals were Frank Deford, Dave Kindred and Gary Smith in the Lifetime Achievement category. Wright Thompson, Chris Ballard, Sarah Spain and Dave Sheinin are previous Jenkins Medal winners in Best Sportswriting.

The Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting is awarded by a jury of renowned sportswriters and editors from across the country, including co-chairs Sally Jenkins and Michael MacCambridge. Jury members for lifetime achievement in sportswriting include Chuck Culpepper, Vahe Gregorian, Will Leitch, Joe Posnanski, Steve Rushin, Wright Thompson and Seth Wickersham. For best sportswriting, jury members include Kevin Blackistone, Kirk Bohls, Bryan Curtis, Melanie Hauser, Kathleen McElroy, Kevin Robbins, Wright Thompson, John A. Walsh, Gene Wojciechowski, and Alexander Wolff.

By Dan Jenkins

A documentary commissioned to celebrate the creation of the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting

By Dan Jenkins was commissioned by the Center for Sports Communication and Meda and debuted at the 2017 Jenkins Medal awards dinner in Dallas. The film was shot, edited and directed by Kelly Lipscomb and Matt Tisdale and co-produced by Michael MacCambridge.

Dan Jenkins bio

Dan Jenkins was an award-winning sportswriter and best-selling novelist whose career spanned more than six decades. The Fort Worth native was born on December 2, 1938 and died on March 7, 2019.
Jenkins was the author of 24 books—12 novels and 12 works of non-fiction. After 15 years of writing for newspapers in Fort Worth and Dallas, Jenkins became nationally known for his stories in Sports Illustrated for more than a quarter of a century, and afterward for his five-year stint of writing a sports column for Playboy, and since then for his columns, features, and tweets in Golf Digest. Three of his best-selling novels—Semi-Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, and Baja Oklahoma—have been made into movies. He is one of only three sportswriters to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. He has also been inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the  Texas Golf Hall of Fame, and the TCU Lettermens Hall of Fame. For a lifetime of excellence in his profession, Jenkins has received the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors Association, the Ring Lardner Award from the Union League of Chicago, the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing, the lifetime achievement award in sports journalism from the PGA of America, the William D. Richardson Award for outstanding contributions to the game from the Golf Writers Association of America, the Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, the Lincoln A. Werden Memorial Award from the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association for a lifetime of contributions to golf journalism, and the Amateur Football Award from the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame. But Jenkins said he was proudest of the fact that he managed to stay employed by one publication or another throughout his long career.
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Oct. 25, 2019

2019 Jenkins Medal Winners: Smith, Spain, Sheinin

Gary Smith, Sarah Spain and Dave Sheinin have been named 2019 award winners by the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting jury.
Smith received the Lifetime Achievement award, while Spain and Sheinin were recognized for the best sportswriting of the previous year. The winners were celebrated and received their medals at a banquet at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth on Oct. 25, hosted by The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Sports Communication & Media. This year’s ceremony honored the memory of Dan Jenkins, who passed away in 2019 at age 90, and featured a conversation with legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus, who was recognized as the inaugural Dan Jenkins Medal Sports Legend.
This is the third year these national awards have been presented. They are named in honor of Jenkins, the legendary Texas sportswriter, to celebrate the craft and culture of sportswriting he personified through his storied career.

Dan Jenkins, Wright Thompson and John Walsh

Deford, Thompson honored at innaugural dinner

Frank Deford and Wright Thompson were named winners of the first-annual Dan Jenkins Medals for Excellence in Sportswriting during a ceremony in Dallas on Oct. 13, hosted by The University of Texas at Austin Center for Sports Communication & Media. The national awards, named after the legendary Texas sportswriter Dan Jenkins, were presented before a sellout crowd of 150 at the Pecan Room in Dallas.

Deford, a sportswriting icon, was recognized posthumously with the Jenkins Medal for Career Achievement in sportswriting, for an unsurpassed career that defined cultural engagement with and observation of American and international sports. Thompson, a writer for ESPN The Magazine, was presented with the Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting of 2016 for his profile, “The Secret History of Tiger Woods.”

Chris Ballard and Dave Kindred

Kindred, Ballard recognized with 2019 Medals

Dave Kindred and Chris Ballard were among dozens of distinguished sports journalists, faculty members and university officials who attended the second annual awards banquet hosted by the Center for Sports Communication & Media at UT-Austin's DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. NBC Sports broadcaster Mary Carillo emceed the event, attended by Jenkins and his family, including his daughter, Sally Jenkins, a columnist at The Washington Post.
Kindred, a beloved figure in the sportswriting community, was recognized with the Jenkins Medal for Career Achievement in sportswriting, for an body of work, featuring stints at Atlanta Journal Constitution, The National Sports Daily, Sporting News, The Washington Post and Golf Digest. Ballard, a writer for Sports Illustrated, was presented with the Jenkins Medal for Best Sportswriting of 2017 for his profile, “You Can't Give In,” a moving profile of NBA coach Monty Williams, enduring tremendous personal loss.

Dan Jenkins at UT Libraries

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Phone: 512-471-5775
Contacts

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