Wright Thompson

Last updated
Wright Thompson
Born (1976-09-09) September 9, 1976 (age 48)
Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States
Occupationjournalist
Alma mater University of Missouri
Subjectsports, society

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.

Contents

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. Thompson is a 1996 graduate of Lee Academy, where his peers voted him Most Likely to Succeed and Student Body President.

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." [1]

His 2010 article Ghosts of Mississippi inspired the 2012 ESPN 30 for 30 series documentary film The Ghosts of Ole Miss (which Thompson narrated), [2] about the 1962 football team's perfect season and concurrent violence and rioting over integration of the segregated university by James Meredith. [3] He also narrated the ESPN 30 for 30 film Roll Tide/War Eagle.

In 2024, Penguin Press published The Barn, Thompson's account of the 1955 abduction, torture, and lynching of the fourteen-year-old Black boy Emmett Till by white men near Drew, Mississippi. [4]

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. [5] [6] [7] Jennifer O'Connell wrote:

In the piece, McGregor’s childhood upbringing in the “projects” of Crumlin and Drimnagh suggests he was brought up in the Gaza Strip or 1920s Chicago, not a neighbourhood in which this writer lived for six happy and peaceful years, oblivious to the grenades whizzing by, or the fact that I should have been taking an armed escort whenever I had to cross the Liffey.

Jennifer O'Connell, Conor McGregor, Crumlin and the Kinahans: an unrecognisable Dublin, The Irish Times [7]

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." [7]

Fintan O'Toole called Thompson's description of Dublin "ludicrous". [8]

Rick O'Shea tweeted:

I grew up in both the ‘projects’ *ahem* of Crumlin and Drimnagh. This is lazy stereotyping bullshit of the highest order ...

Rick O'Shea, inTom Lutz, ESPN's portrait of a gang-infested Dublin attracts bemusement in Ireland, The Guardian [6]

Bibliography (selected)

Auto racing

Baseball

Basketball

Boxing

Bourbon

Pappyland (2020 - Book: A Story Of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last)

Bullfighting

Cricket

Fathers Day

Football

Golf

Horse Racing

Soccer

Sports History / Issues

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarksdale, Mississippi</span> City in Mississippi, United States

Clarksdale is a city in and the county seat of Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States. It is located along the Sunflower River. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, a settler who founded the city in the mid-19th century when he established a timber mill and business. Clarksdale is in the Mississippi Delta region and is an agricultural and trading center. Many African-American musicians developed the blues here, and took this original American music with them to Chicago and other northern cities during the Great Migration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dublin South-Central (Dáil constituency)</span> Dáil constituency (1948–present)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crumlin, Dublin</span> Suburb of Dublin, Ireland

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walkinstown</span> Suburb of Dublin, Ireland

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Martin "The Viper" Foley is an Irish criminal. He rose from petty crime to become an associate of Martin Cahill. Foley has 40 convictions, and is considered a key figure in the McCormack-Foley crime family from Crumlin, Dublin. He has had several attempts on his life including being shot on five occasions, most recently on 26 January 2008. Foley was shot a number of times outside the Carlisle gym on Kimmage Road West, South Dublin. The men behind the attack were involved in a separate gun feud, which has since run its course because the main players are all either dead or in prison. Foley has kept a lower profile since then.

The Crumlin-Drimnagh feud is a feud between rival criminal gangs in south inner city Dublin, Ireland. The feud began in 2000 when a drugs seizure led to a split in a gang of young criminals in their late teens and early twenties, most of whom had grown up together and went to the same school. The resulting violence has led to 16 murders and scores of beatings, stabbings, shootings and pipe bomb attacks.

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Gerard "Hatchet" Kavanagh was an Irish criminal who was a former boxer and senior member of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group run by Christy Kinahan. He would demand payment of drug debts with menaces. He was originally from Drimnagh. He was also father of Jamie Kavanagh.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinahan Organised Crime Group</span> Irish criminal organisation

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References

  1. Chet Hilburn, The Mystique of Tiger Stadium: 25 Greatest Games: The Ascension of LSU Football (Bloomington, Indiana: WestBow Press, 2012), p. 7
  2. Thompson, Wright (February 2010). "Ghosts of Mississippi". Outside the Lines. ESPN. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
  3. Thompson, Wright (October 30, 2012). "'Ghosts' a story of family, home". ESPN Films. ESPN.com. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
  4. Thompson, Wright (2024). The barn: the secret history of a murder. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN   9780593299821.
  5. "ESPN article on Conor McGregor's Dublin: 'So dangerous men can't walk their dates home'". Irish Independent . 7 August 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  6. 1 2 Lutz, Tom (8 August 2017). "ESPN's portrait of a gang-infested Dublin attracts bemusement in Ireland". The Guardian . Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 O'Connell, Jennifer (8 August 2017). "Conor McGregor, Crumlin and the Kinahans: an unrecognisable Dublin". The Irish Times .
  8. Cooney, Gavin (15 September 2020). "Three years on, Wright Thompson reflects on infamous Dublin/McGregor piece". The42.ie . Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  9. "ESPN.com - E-Ticket: Haunted By The Horns". Espn.com. Retrieved 9 December 2021.