Pete Thamel

Pete Thamel is a college football senior writer and insider for ESPN. One of the industry’s most widely respected reporters, Thamel covers college football year-round for ESPN, as well as some college basketball.

A top news-breaker and storyteller, Thamel joined ESPN in January 2022. His multi-platform role includes writing for ESPN and ESPN+ and appearing on studio programs – College GameDay, SportsCenter, College Football Live, Get Up, and more. His day-to-day news reporting appears on ESPN.com, while a majority of his features and non-news reporting is part of ESPN+.

An award-winning reporter, Thamel joined ESPN from Yahoo Sports where he covered college sports and the NFL since 2017. Thamel also worked for five years as a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, covering college football and basketball, and he previously spent nine years as the national college sports reporter for The New York Times.

In 2022, Thamel won the National Sports Media Association’s National Sportswriter of the Year Award. A member of the Football Writers Association of America, Thamel has earned numerous FWAA writing awards the past decade and a half. He’s also won several Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) awards, including first place for beat reporting in 2017 and breaking news in 2011. In 2006, The New York Times nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Thamel attended Syracuse University and graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.