Thompson, Blount win in 2025

Wright Thompson and Roy Blount Jr. were recognized as the winners of the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting at the 2025 awards dinner at The Penn Club in New York City. Thompson won the Best Sportswriting award for his monumental profile, Caitlin Clark and Iowa Find Peace in the Process, published by ESPN. Blount's Lifetime Achievement recognition has roots with his time at Sports Illustrated as a staff writer, associate editor (1968-75) and later a Senior Special Contributor. His 1974 book about the Pittsburgh Steelers, "About Three Bricks Shy of a Load," is cited as a masterpiece of New Journalism. Sports incon Billie Jean King received the Jenkins Medal Sports Legend award. 

This is the ninth iteration of the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. The awards are named annually by a jury of working sports journalists in honor of the legendary Texas sportswriter and best-selling author, who defined the sportswriter’s craft for a generation. 

Wright Thompson

Thompson's award-winning article, published on March 20, 2024, is a 16,000 word opus, chronicling the senior season and developmental backstory of Caitlin Clark at the University of Iowa. Those closest to Clark witnessed her unparalleled development into a generational talent who has captivated American sporting culture and elevated the popularity of women's basketball to unprecedented levels. Thompson has all the receipts.

Thompson won the innaugural Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his profile The Secret History of Tiger Woods.

Roy Blount Jr. 

Blount is the author of 24 books. He is a panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait.. Don’t Tell Me, ex-president of the Authors Guild, a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, a Boston Public Library Literary Light, a member of PEN, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, the Vanderbilt University Student Media Hall of Fame, and the Rock Bottom Remainders. He won a Rockefeller Foundation residency at Bellagio, Italy, and the Thomas Wolfe Award for lifetime achievement from the University of North Carolina.

More information is available at royblountjr.com, including a link to his Substack newsletter.

From Jenkins Medal jury Co-Chair Michael MacCambridge:

“This year’s honorees are two of the most gifted writers who ever sat in a press box. Wright Thompson is a paragon of what the best sportswriting has always been—insightful, unsentimental, observant, empathic, and astutely attuned to the human condition. His piece on Caitlin Clark was the most discussed story about the most discussed athlete of 2024. Roy Blount, Jr., our lifetime achievement honoree, is a renaissance man of letters, whose work has spanned genres and generations. His 'About Three Bricks Shy of A Load’ remains, in my opinion, the best book ever written about pro football. The distinctive Blount voice—which combines a scholar’s mastery of language with his wry, self-effacing Georgia humor—is inimitable, though many have tried."

From CSCM Director Dr. Michael Butterworth:

"In 2017, Wright Thompson received the inaugural Jenkins Medal and Roy Blount, Jr. delighted the crowd as the emcee of the first awards ceremony. 2025 brings us full circle, then, as Thompson becomes the first two-time Best Sportswriting recipient and Blount joins the distinguished group of Lifetime Achievement medalists. They are a fitting pair, children of the South with a cosmopolitan curiosity; both drawn to sport but neither confined to it; both possessing a gift for language and impeccable storytelling. We are honored to recognize them as this year's Jenkins medal winners and we look forward to celebrating their achievements in New York on September 26!"

The Jenkins Medal Best Sportswriting jury included sportswriters and editors Kevin Blackistone, Kirk Bohls, Christine Brennan, Bryan Curtis, Melanie Hauser, Peter King, Will Leitch, Jackie MacMullan, Kevin Robbins, and Alexander Wolff. The Lifetime Achievement jury included sportwriters and editors Chuck Culpepper, Vahe Gregorian, Michael Hurd, Elizabeth Merrill, Joe Posnanski, Steve Rushin, Wright Thompson, John A. Walsh and Seth Wickersham.