Jeffrey Scott Passan (born September 21, 1980) is an American baseball columnist with ESPN and author of ''New York Times'' Best Seller ''The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports''. He is also co-author of ''Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series.'' Passan graduated from

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, commonly known as Newhouse School, is the communications and journalism school of Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. It has programs in print and broadcast journalism; music business; graphic ...

in 2002 with a degree in journalism.

Career

After graduating from

Solon High School Solon High School, founded in 1898, is a public high school located in Solon, Ohio, a southeastern suburb of Cleveland in the Northeast Ohio Region, the 15th largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States. It comprises grades 9 through 12, ...

near

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, Passan wrote for

The Daily Orange ''The Daily Orange'', commonly referred to as ''The D.O.'', is an independent student newspaper published in Syracuse, New York. It is free and published daily during the Syracuse University academic year. It was one of the first college papers ...

at Syracuse University before covering Fresno State basketball. He began covering baseball in 2004 at ''

The Kansas City Star ''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and as ...

'', before moving to

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

two years later. After 13 years at Yahoo! (2006–18), he announced that he was joining ESPN's Baseball team in January 2019. In early 2022, Passan signed a four-year, four million dollar contract with

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

. While working at

, he makes guest appearances on ''

SportsCenter ''SportsCenter'' (SC) is a daily sports news television show, television program that serves as the flagship program and brand of United States, American cable television, cable and satellite television television network, network ESPN. The show ...

Get Up (TV program) ''Get Up'' is an American sports talk morning television program hosted by Mike Greenberg that airs weekdays on ESPN. Michelle Beadle was one of the original hosts with Greenberg and Jalen Rose, but decided to leave the program in September 2018 ...

, The Rich Eisen Show'', and other ESPN studio shows. In 2018, while working for

, Passan refused to cast his ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He has spoken out about the Baseball Hall of Fame's hypocrisy against players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in addition to his reporting on current

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

teams and players.

Awards and Recognitions

Jeff Passan has been a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America since 2004, while he was at

. The National Sports Media Association named Passan as the 2021 National Sportswriter of the Year. Jeff Passan received the 2022 Dan Jenkins medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his

article, "San Francisco Giants Outfielder Drew Robinson's Remarkable Second Act."

References

External links

1980 births Living people American sports journalists ESPN people Online journalists Yahoo! employees S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications alumni Place of birth missing (living people) The Kansas City Star people Sportswriters from New York (state) 21st-century American journalists {{US-journalist-1980s-stub