John Feinstein

John Feinstein ( FYNE-steen; July 28, 1955 – March 13, 2025) was an American sportswriter, author, and sports commentator. A long-time sports reporter at the Washington Post, he also wrote numerous books and was particularly known for A Season on the Brink, published in 1986, which chronicled a season with Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball team.

Early life and education

Feinstein was born to a Jewish family in New York City on July 28, 1955. His father was the General Manager of the Washington National Opera from 1980 to 1995 as well as the first executive director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and Duke University, where he was a sports reporter for the Duke Chronicle and graduated in 1977.

Career

Feinstein joined the Washington Post in 1977 and was a full-time reporter there until 1991. He was also a columnist for Sporting News and Golf Digest. His last column, about Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo, was published in the Washington Post on the day of his death, March 13, 2025; he had completed it the day before. He received the Curt Gowdy Award for print media of the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, and was a voter in the AP Top 25 poll for men's college basketball for more than 20 years.

In broadcasting, he was a commentator on ESPN, where he appeared regularly on The Sports Reporters, on the Golf Channel, at United States Naval Academy football games, and on radio shows and podcasts including The Sports Junkies, The Tony Kornheiser Show, and The Jim Rome Show. On March 8, 2012, he joined SiriusXM's Mad Dog Sports Radio channel, teaming up with Bruce Murray for the sports talk show Beyond the Brink. He left by fall 2012 to host his own show on the new CBS Sports Radio, which began 24/7 all sports talk on January 2, 2013. In November 2014, he told an interviewer that CBS had fired him from the show.

Feinstein returned to Duke University in the early 1990s as a visiting professor of sports journalism, and at the time of his death was a writer in residence at Longwood University.

Feinstein wrote more than 40 books, of which the best known is A Season on the Brink (1986), chronicles the 1985–86 season of the Indiana University basketball team under coach Bobby Knight; Feinstein took a leave of absence from the Washington Post to embed himself with the team. An ESPN film adaptation, starring Brian Dennehy as Knight, first aired on March 10, 2002, with a version censored for profanity being simulcast on ESPN2. It was released to DVD later in 2002. After publishing Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story (2004), about the life and final days of Tom Watson's caddy, Bruce Edwards, who was diagnosed with ALS, Feinstein and long-time friend Terry Hanson engaged the William Morris Agency and commissioned a screenplay in conjunction with Matt Damon's and Ben Affleck's production company, LivePlanet. The documentary Caddy for Life was produced in 2010 for the Golf Channel. He also wrote sports novels for young adults.

Personal life and death

Feinstein was first married to Mary Clare Gibbons; following their divorce, he married Christine Bauch in 2010. He had two children from his first marriage and one from his second.

Feinstein died from an apparent heart attack at his brother's home in McLean, Virginia, on March 13, 2025, at the age of 69.

Works

Nonfiction

The First Coming: Tiger Woods, Master or Martyr (1998) ISBN 0-345-42286-4

A Season on the Brink (1986) ISBN 0-671-68877-4

A Season Inside (1988) ISBN 0-394-56891-5 A followup to A Season on the Brink, on the 1987–88 college basketball season. One of the teams Feinstein most closely followed was eventual national champion Kansas.

Forever's Team (1990) ISBN 0-394-56892-3 The Duke team that lost in the NCAA final game in 1978. Because many of its stars were freshmen and sophomores, they were widely expected to win a national title, but never did so.

Hard Courts (1992) ISBN 0-679-74106-2 One year (1990) on the men's and women's professional tennis tours.

Play Ball (1993) ISBN 0-679-41618-8 The 1992 Major League Baseball season.

A Good Walk Spoiled: Days And Nights on the PGA Tour (1995) ISBN 0-316-27737-1 Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1995.

A Civil War: Army vs. Navy (1996) ISBN 0-316-27824-6 The 1995 football season at two US military academies, culminating in the Army–Navy Game.

A March to Madness (1998) ISBN 0-316-27712-6 The 1996–97 basketball season in nine schools of the Atlantic Coast Conference. This was the last season for North Carolina coach Dean Smith.

The Last Amateurs (2000) ISBN 0-316-27842-4 The 1999–2000 basketball season in the Patriot League, a low-ranked NCAA Division I basketball conference that at the time did not permit athletic scholarships.

The Majors: In Pursuit of Golf's Holy Grail (2000) ISBN 0-316-27795-9

The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight that Changed Basketball Forever (2002) ISBN 0-316-73563-9 The punch thrown by Kermit Washington that nearly killed Rudy Tomjanovich during an NBA game in 1977, and its impact on both men and the league.

Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black (2003) ISBN 0-316-77852-4 The 2002 U.S. Open golf tournament, held at the Black Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island.

Let Me Tell You a Story (with Red Auerbach, 2004) ISBN 0-316-73823-9 Feinstein's interviews with the coach of the Boston Celtics.

Caddy For Life: The Bruce Edwards Story (2004) ISBN 0-316-77788-9

Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL (2005) ISBN 0-316-00964-4 The 2004–05 Baltimore Ravens

Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four (2006) ISBN 0-316-16030-X Players, coaches, and referees in the NCAA men's basketball tournament Final Four.

Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major (2007) ISBN 0-316-01430-3 The players who competed at the 2005 PGA Tour Q School, ranging from obscure golfers who never reached the PGA Tour to Brett Wetterich, who went on to win the Byron Nelson Championship and play in the 2006 Ryder Cup.