Wright Thompson

Wright Thompson
Born	(1976-09-09) September 9, 1976 (age 49) Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.
Occupation	journalist
Alma mater	University of Missouri
Subject	sports, society

Wright Thompson (born September 9, 1976) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. He formerly worked at The Kansas City Star and Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Thompson's topics have covered a wide range of sports issues.

Early life and education

Thompson is a native of Clarksdale in northern Mississippi, the son of Mary Thompson. His late father, Walter Wright Thompson, an attorney, played a pivotal role in Clarksdale's emergence as a tourist destination based on blues music. The senior Thompson was an ardent Democrat who was the Mississippi finance chairman for John Glenn's 1984 presidential campaign. He later supported Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton in their campaigns against George H. W. Bush. Thompson is a 1996 graduate of Lee Academy, where his peers voted him Most Likely to Succeed and Student Body President.

Career

Thompson started his sportswriting career while a student at the University of Missouri in Columbia, having covered Missouri sports and writing as a columnist for the School of Journalism's Columbia Missourian.

Between his junior and senior years, he interned at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and later was the LSU beat writer there. He later moved to the Kansas City Star, where he covered a wide variety of sports events including Super Bowls, Final Fours, The Masters, and The Kentucky Derby.

In 2006, he assumed full-time writing duties at ESPN.com.

In 2008, after watching the University of Alabama narrowly defeat Louisiana State University in a home game in Baton Rouge, Thompson described Tiger Stadium as "the best place in the world to watch a sporting event."^[1]

His 2010 article Ghosts of Mississippi inspired the 2012 ESPN 30 for 30 series documentary film The Ghosts of Ole Miss (which Thompson narrated),^[2] about the 1962 football team's perfect season and concurrent violence and rioting over integration of the segregated university by James Meredith.^[3] He also narrated the ESPN 30 for 30 film Roll Tide/War Eagle.

In 2024, Penguin Press published The Barn, Thompson's account of the 1955 abduction, torture, and lynching of the fourteen-year-old Black boy Emmett Till by white men near Drew, Mississippi.^[4]

Reception and influence

Thompson's long-form sportswriting has received critical praise. In 2019, ESPN ranked his 2013 ESPN The Magazine profile of Michael Jordan, "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building", among the 49 greatest stories published by the magazine; senior writer Kevin Van Valkenburg called it Thompson's "masterpiece".^[5] The article also drew a large readership on publication; ESPN said in 2013 that it generated nearly 2.5 million page views across ESPN's web and mobile platforms.^[6]

Later commentators have cited Thompson's Jordan profile as an important work in the literature about Jordan's post-playing life. In 2020, The New Yorker described it as the "definitive profile" of Jordan in retirement,^[7] while Newsweek called it perhaps the closest in-depth post-career portrait of Jordan.^[8]

Thompson's books have also received positive reviews. Kirkus Reviews called The Cost of These Dreams "richly researched and textured",^[9] and Publishers Weekly said in a starred review that Pappyland "uncorks a fast-paced and colorful history of 20th-century Southern culture".^[10] In 2024, Time included The Barn on its list of "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2024",^[11] and The Washington Post described it as an "extraordinary new book" and "a deep meditation on Mississippi and America".^[12]

Thompson's 2017 ESPN article on Conor McGregor and Dublin drew criticism in Ireland, where commentators and residents said its depiction of the city was inaccurate and overly sensationalized.^[13][14][15] Writing in The Irish Times, Jennifer O'Connell described the article's portrayal of Crumlin and Drimnagh as "unrecognisable", while Fintan O'Toole later called Thompson's description of Dublin "ludicrous".^[15][16]

Bibliography (selected)

Auto racing

• "The son also rises"

Baseball

• "Fading Away"
• "Bonds story to be continued"
• "The long road from Las Martinas"
• "When winter never ends"

Basketball

• "King's dream comes alive for Blazers"
• "Hoops of Nazareth"
• "Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building
• "Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process"

Boxing

• "Shadow Boxing"

Bourbon

Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last (2020). New York: Penguin Press.

Bullfighting

• "Glory vs. Death: At the bullfights in Tijuana"
• "Haunted by the Horns"^[17]

Cricket

• "Test of Time: In defense of a game that lasts five days"
• "Why you should care about cricket"; alternative title: "In Tendulkar country"
• "Bangladesh madly in love with cricket"

Fathers Day

• "Holy Ground"

Football

• "Pulled pork and pigskin: a love letter to Southern football"
• "An obsession realized: Manning and the Super Bowl"
• "Patterson rumbles to glory as Eagles romp"
• "OTL: The Burden of Being Myron Rolle"

Golf

• "The Secret History of Tiger Woods"

Horse Racing

• How to listen to and download the ESPN Investigates podcast 'Bloodlines,' reported and hosted by Wright Thompson

Race

• The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi (2024). New York: Penguin Press.

Soccer

• "The last days of Juventus?"
• Portrait Of A Serial Winner

Sports History / Issues

• "O'Neil was the real 'voice' of America"
• "Thompson: Contempt for the system"
• "Outrageous Injustice"
• "Believeland: A proud city forgets 'The Player Who Left' and remembers what it used to be"

References

1. Chet Hilburn, The Mystique of Tiger Stadium: 25 Greatest Games: The Ascension of LSU Football (Bloomington, Indiana: WestBow Press, 2012), p. 7
2. Thompson, Wright (February 2010). "Ghosts of Mississippi". Outside the Lines. ESPN. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
3. Thompson, Wright (October 30, 2012). "'Ghosts' a story of family, home". ESPN Films. ESPN.com. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
4. Thompson, Wright (2024). The barn: the secret history of a murder. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 9780593299821.
5. Van Valkenburg, Kevin (September 6, 2019). "From Tiger to Jordan: The 49 greatest ESPN The Magazine stories". ESPN. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
6. Ota, Kevin (March 5, 2013). "ESPN's storytelling resonates with nearly 2.5 million page views for Wright Thompson's feature on Michael Jordan". ESPN Front Row. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
7. Rosenwald, Michael S. (April 20, 2020). ""The Last Dance" Shows a Michael Jordan You May Know and a Scottie Pippen You Probably Don't". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
8. "Ten Surprising Things We Learned From the Michael Jordan ESPN Documentary". Newsweek. April 15, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
9. "The Cost of These Dreams". Kirkus Reviews. January 20, 2019. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
10. "This Week's Bestsellers: November 23, 2020". Publishers Weekly. November 20, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
11. Berenson, Tessa (November 13, 2024). "The Barn". Time. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
12. "An extraordinary new history of Emmett Till, Mississippi and America". The Washington Post. September 18, 2024. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
13. "ESPN article on Conor McGregor's Dublin: 'So dangerous men can't walk their dates home'". Irish Independent. 7 August 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
14. Lutz, Tom (8 August 2017). "ESPN's portrait of a gang-infested Dublin attracts bemusement in Ireland". The Guardian. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
15. O'Connell, Jennifer (8 August 2017). "Conor McGregor, Crumlin and the Kinahans: an unrecognisable Dublin". The Irish Times. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
16. Cooney, Gavin (15 September 2020). "Three years on, Wright Thompson reflects on infamous Dublin/McGregor piece". The42.ie. Retrieved April 5, 2026.
17. "ESPN.com - E-Ticket: Haunted By The Horns". Espn.com. Retrieved 9 December 2021.

External links

• ESPN's list of Wright Thompson articles