Wright Thompson
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, from football, basketball, and baseball, to car racing, sports history, Father's Day, and bullfighting. Thompson also covered the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup in the subcontinent of India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. 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 the 1984 John Glenn presidential campaign. He later supported Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton in their campaigns against George Herbert Walker Bush. 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." His 2010 article "Ghosts of Mississippi" inspired the 2012 ESPN "30 for 30" series documentary film  The Ghosts of Ole Miss (which Thompson narrated), about the 1962 football team's perfect season and concurrent violence and rioting over integration of the segregated university by James Meredith. He also narrated the ESPN "30 for 30" film "Roll Tide/War Eagle". Article on Dublin. His 2017 article on Conor McGregor and Dublin for ESPN was criticised by residents for bearing no resemblance to the actual city. Jennifer O'Connell wrote: She also suggested that the author might have been duped by interviewees: "To be fair to Wright Thompson, you can’t help feeling that some of his interviewees might  have seen him – and a Hollywood agent – coming." Fintan O'Toole called Thompson's description of Dublin "ludicrous". Rick O'Shea tweeted: