ESPN MediaZone

National Correspondent

Sal Paolantonio

Sal Paolantonio has been a national correspondent for ESPN since August 1995, primarily covering the National Football League for SportsCenter, Sunday NFL Countdown, Monday Night Countdown and ESPN.com.  Paolantonio has also contributed to ABC’s World News Tonight and Good Morning America, and he has hosted NFL Matchup – ESPN’s 30-minute Sunday morning X’s and O’s weekly preview show – since 2004, where he appears alongside analysts Ron Jaworski and Merril Hoge.

Paolantonio received Sports Emmy Awards in 1996, 1997 and 2005 for his contributions to SportsCenter and in 2001 and 2004 for his work on Sunday NFL Countdown.

In addition to reporting for ESPN, Paolantonio has served as a professor in the English department at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia since 2002, teaching courses in political and sports journalism and communications.

Prior to joining ESPN, Paolantonio was a political reporter (1985-93), as well as a beat reporter for the Philadelphia Eagles (1993-95), for the Philadelphia Inquirer.  In 1994, he won the Associated Press Sports Editors Award for Reporting.  He also served as a reporter for Philadelphia’s WPHL-TV nightly newscast, Inquirer News Tonight (1994-95), and hosted Saturday Morning Sports Page, a weekly call-in show on WIP-AM all-sports radio (1993-95). 

Paolantonio was also a reporter for the Albany Times Union, where he received the Associated Press Managing Editor’s Award for Enterprise Reporting (1985).

Paolantonio is the author of three books. His latest, How Football Explains America, was published in 2008 and was the No. 1 selling football book in America for six straight months, according to Amazon.com. In 1993, he wrote a biography of the late Philadelphia mayor, Frank L. Rizzo, called The Last Big Man in Big City America, which came out in a 10th anniversary edition in 2003.  In 2007, he co-wrote the Paolantonio Report, the Most Overrated & Underrated Players, Teams, Coaches & Moments in NFL History in 2007 with Reuben Frank.

A native of Queens, N.Y., Paolantonio was graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1977 with a bachelor of arts degree in history.  He also received a master’s degree in journalism from New York University in 1980.  Paolantonio served in the United States Navy (1979-83), where he was awarded the United Nations Meritorious Service Medal in 1981 for supervising the rescue of Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea.  He retired as a full lieutenant in 1983.

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