ESPN MediaZone

Senior NFL Analyst

Chris Mortensen

Chris Mortensen, an award-winning journalist and one of the most respected and accomplished reporters covering the National Football League, joined ESPN in 1991 and appears on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown, Monday Night Countdown, SportsCenter, NFL Live and annual NFL Draft coverage.  He has also contributed to Outside the Lines.

Additionally, he co-hosts a two-hour national NFL show on ESPN Radio every Friday beginning in the Fall 2009, joined by Mike Tirico and Keyshawn Johnson.

Mortensen also contributes regularly to ESPN.com with news stories and weekly SportsNation chat sessions during the season; he recently expanded his covering to include linking updates on Twitter.com/mortreport.

In the summer of 2009 Mortensen embarked on a 24-day journey by bus titled, “Mort Goes to Camp” visiting 21 NFL training camps in 24 days reporting live on SportsCenter, NFL Live, Mike & Mike in the Morning (ESPN Radio/ESPN2), ESPN.com, twitter and other multiplatforms. He has covered the Super Bowl each year since 1979.

Previously, Mortensen served as the NFL columnist for The Sporting News and was a contributing writer for Sport magazine.  He covered the NFL for The National (1989-90), where he was one of the first writers hired by editor Frank Deford.  He also worked as a consultant with CBS Sports’ NFL Today in 1990.

From 1983-89 Mortensen filed investigative reports and covered the Braves (1983-85), Falcons (1985-86) and the NFL (1985-89) for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In 1987 he was honored with the coveted George Polk Award for his reporting, and he remained the sole sportswriter to receive the award since Red Smith in 1951 until 2005 when Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle were awarded a Polk for their coverage of the Balco case.  Since starting his career with the South Bay (Calif.) Daily Breeze in 1969, Mortensen has received 18 awards in journalism and been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes.  In 1978 he won the National Headliner Award for Investigative Reporting in all categories.

The author of Playing for Keeps: How One Man Stopped the Mob from Sinking its Hooks into Pro Football, Mortensen attended El Camino College, and then served two years in the Army during the Vietnam Era before he was honorably discharged.

Mortensen has been married to his wife Micki for more than 25 years. The couple has one son, Alex, a former Arkansas quarterback, an undrafted free agent in the NFL, who was signed temporarily with the Tennessee Titans in April 2009 for a few months. Mortensen also has a daughter, Shannan DiSanto, son-in-law Joe DiSanto, and three grandchildren: Chelsea, Ava and Vincent.

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