Michael Wilbon recalls competitive nature of beat reporting: ‘You were covering the same things’

Michael Wilbon is one of the most established personalities in all of sports media. But once upon a time, he was just another beat reporter looking to separate himself from the litany of beat reporters covering the same topics.

Wilbon joined Pablo Torre and Dan Le Batard on the most recent episode of Torre’s podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, where Wilbon discussed a litany of topics ranging from covering Michael Jordan to his time on Pardon the Interruption. But perhaps the most interesting part of his appearance on the show was about him discussing the early days of his career in media as a young beat reporter at The Washington Post.

Specifically, Wilbon was asked by Torre how it felt to compare his newspaper columns to other beat writers. And Wilbon spoke to the kind of competitiveness this brought out in him.

“You started as a beat writer,” said Wilbon. “You were competing against most of the same people all the way up. So, from 22 years old, when a lot of us got out of our internships and into full-time gigs. You were covering the same things. I mean that you were all at a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, if you go back when I was young. And then a Mike Tyson (fight). And, so, you can all read the way 26 people wrote about Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear and spitting it out.

“You could read every one of those the next day and have a sense of who did a better job. Who was more eloquent? Who was more forceful? Who was more influential? Who was more passionate? Who had details that somebody else didn’t have because they waited and they talked to Mike at 2 in the morning and rewrote. For decades, on everything. You had it on Carl Lewis and whether he hated Ben Johnson even though he ultimately won the race. You had it on everything. You had it on Michael Jordan and the Bad Boy Pistons. You covered everything.

“I’m sitting there with 25 other dudes writing about Holyfield’s ear rolling across the mat at me. And I wanted to compare those. And in that moment, it wasn’t about, ‘Can you get another story?’. It was about getting this f*cking story. Could you do this one better? Could you tell it in a way that would keep 80-year-old men by the fireplace, in the barber shop, or at the gas station? Could you do that? But, at the same time, I wanted to read Le Batard the next day on Game 1 of Dallas-Miami and whether or not Dirk got in their a**. I wanted to read his take on that and compare what I said. And that was competitive too. For me, that goes back 45 years.”

.@realMikeWilbon explains just how competitive sports beat reporters used to be with each other. 👀 pic.twitter.com/ieu4WHBtMl

— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) July 21, 2025

Given the platform Wilbon has had for years at ESPN, he has done an excellent job of standing out among his peers. And nowadays, Wilbon is so established that he has very little actual competition in terms of an audience, as he will always be someone that fans look to for an opinion in the sports realm.

However, it sure sounds like that competition element is precisely what made him such a great beat writer. While Dan Le Batard said that he excelled at “zigging” when other people in sports media “zagged”, Wilbon explained how his philosophy was always to compare everyone’s “zig” to his and make sure that his “zig” was better than everyone else’s.

“I wasn’t interested in zigging when other people zagged,” said Wilbon. “I wanted to compare everybody’s zig. I wanted to sit in the same press box on the same Sunday afternoon. Because I sat there with Eddie Pope. And when you replaced Eddie, I wanted to compare the zig. I didn’t give a s*it about zagging. I wanted to read everybody’s zig.”