Interviews
Over the years, I have interviewed a number of sports professionals. My articles contain one-on-one interviews with a number of high-profile figures, including Andrew Brandt, Andrea Kremer, Joe Lunardi, and Avery Johnson. I have also attended speaker events by Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Andre Agassi, and Malcolm Gladwell.
Andrea Kremer is one of the most accomplished and widely respected journalists in the industry today. She recently joined the NFL Network to serve as the Chief Correspondent for Player Health and Safety. In addition to the NFL Network, Kremer is also a correspondent for HBO's "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel." Among her many accolades, including two Emmy Awards, Kremer has been called "the best TV interviewer in the business of covering the NFL" by the Los Angeles Times. She has also covered the Olympics for NBC for a number of years.
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Andrew Brandt is an accomplished sports executive with more than 20 years of experience in professional football. In the past, he has served as a player representative, including for superstars such as Michael Jordan, and as Vice President of the Green Bay Packers. Brandt is the NFL Business Analyst for ESPN, providing analysis on business issues in football on television and on the radio. He can be seen across all platforms on ESPN. He is also president of the National Football Post and a professor at both the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University.
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Joe Lunardi is an ESPN college basketball analyst. As the creator of "Bracketology," he is well known as the resident bracketologist for ESPN, predicting the teams that will be selected in the annual NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. He is a fixture on ESPN's Bracketology program and on SportsCenter. In addition, Lunardi is the Assistant Vice President of Marketing Communications at Saint Joseph's University. He also serves as a color commentator for men's basketball for the St. Joe's Hawks and teaches a college Bracketology course.
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Andre Agassi is a retired professional tennis player and former World No. 1. Recognized as one of the greatest players of all time, Agassi has been called the best service returner in the history of the game. He won eight Grand Slam titles and was the Singles Gold medalist in 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. He is the only player in the history of the game to win a career "super slam" by winning all four grand slams, an Olympic Gold medal, and the ATP World Tour Championships. He is also the founder of the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy and author of the book Open.
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Earvin "Magic" Johnson is a retired Hall of Fame NBA point guard who played 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. Johnson helped lead Michigan State University to a National Championship and was later the top overall pick in the 1979 NBA Draft. With the Lakers, he won five NBA titles and was a three-time Most Valuable Player. He was selected to the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time team in 1997 and inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. Following his retirement, he established himself as a successful businessman. He is currently a studio analyst for ESPN/ABC.
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Avery Johnson is a retired professional basketball player and former head coach of the Dallas Mavericks and New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets. Known as the "Little General," he was the starting point guard for the San Antonio Spurs in 1999 when the team won the first of four rings with Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan. As coach of the Mavericks, he led Dallas to its first NBA Finals appearance in 2006 and to four consecutive 50+ win seasons while also winning the 2006 NBA Coach of the Year Award. He also worked as a studio analyst for ESPN/ABC for two years in between his two coaching stints.
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Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. He has been named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. He has served as a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and was previously a reporter for The Washington Post. He occasionally does dual columns with Bill Simmons on ESPN and Grantland.
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Hope Akpan is a British-Nigerian professional footballer who plays for Reading F.C. of the English Premier League as a midfielder. Before representing Reading on the field, the Premier League star started his career in Everton’s Youth Academy before being loaned away to Hull City. He then signed with Crawley Town in League One and then ultimately signed with Reading in January 2013 to return to Premier League. Akpan is the cousin of Penn Sport Report writer Imikomobong Ibia.
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Jerome Allen is a former NBA basketball player and current assistant coach for the Boston Celtics. He remains one of the all-time great players in University of Pennsylvania basketball history. A four-year starter, he led the Quakers to Ivy League titles in each of his last three seasons (1993-95). Selected by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 1995 NBA Draft, he also played with the Indiana Pacers and the Denver Nuggets, and spent time in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Turkey. He is also a former head coach for the Penn men's basketball team.
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Mike Boryla is a former NFL quarterback who made the Pro Bowl as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1970s. He played college football at Stanford University, where as a senior he was the team's MVP. He also played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after three years with the Eagles. Since his retirement, Boryla has graduated from a Florida law school, earned an advanced degree in tax law, practiced law for 18 years in Denver, been the longtime operator of a Colorado shelter for unwed mothers, carved out careers in mortgage banking and real estate investing, and written six plays.
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David Geier, M.D. is an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist. He currently leads his own practice after serving as Director of Sports Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has served as a team physician for the Charleston Battery professional soccer team and for the USA Rugby and the U.S. women's national soccer team. He is also author of the book, The Year of the Healthy Athlete. He also contributes as a writer to the The Post and Courier newspaper, Bleacher Report, and numerous orthopaedic medical journals.
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Tommy Lawlor is a devoted fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and a weekly columnist for PhiladelphiaEagles.com, the official website of the NFL team. He started following the Eagles in the 1980s and began writing about the team in 2003. He founded the website ScoutsNotebook.com in 2005 after trained by a former NFL scout in the art of player evaluation and scouting. He also writes for IgglesBlitz.com and EaglesBlog.net in addition to contributing as an author for SB Nation Philly. In the past, he has also contributed to the Eagles Almanac.
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