Mina Kimes details unique path to working at ESPN: ‘Never thought I would talk about sports for a living’

ESPN’s Mina Kimes has acted as a key figure in the network’s coverage of the NFL as a regular on NFL Live dating back to 2020. But once upon a time, Kimes had zero interest in being on television at all, much less on a daily show like NFL Live which serves as perhaps the most important program on the family of networks during football season.

On Thursday, Kimes appeared on the Field Talk Podcast with longtime ESPN colleague Field Yates, where she discussed her unique path to working for the Worldwide Leader, which includes a career change from working as a business journalist for Bloomberg News.

“I never thought I would write about, and certainly not talk about sports for a living,” said Kimes. “It didn’t really seem like a possibility to me. There was nobody who looked like me or talked like me at any level really in terms of being an analyst or opinionator. I didn’t have any dreams of being on television.

“I did want to be a writer when I was young. But I didn’t know exactly what that would look like going into college. Before I was a sports writer, I was a business journalist. That was not something I dreamed of doing either when I was a kid. But I just knew I liked writing and reading and communicating. That is sort of what I went into college with the intention to do that.

Kimes later discussed how in particular she got to ESPN, saying that it was actually a post on Tumblr that ESPN brasses ended up finding about how her fandom of the Seattle Seahawks helped her get closer with her father that helped springboard her career change from business journalism to sports journalism.

“They found it because someone at Slate republished it,” said Kimes. “At the time, I was a part of the investigative team at Bloomberg News, which is crazy. It’s basically just getting yelled at by lawyers is how I would describe that job. But while I was doing that, I was an obsessive football fan. Spent all my time not just watching football but consuming football content. I mention this a lot, but I owe a lot of my career to our mutual friend Bill Barnwell who befriended me as a listener and fan when I was a business journalist.

“I had that job and around Super Bowl XLVIII I sat down and wrote a personal essay on my Tumblr about how the Seahawks’ success at that time had allowed me and my dad to develop a stronger connection. Someone at Slate saw it and asked to republish it. And then someone at ESPN saw it and they got in touch with me. They said ‘Well, you are this really serious business journalist but you seem to think a lot about football. Would you ever consider making the change?’ I had never thought of it before that moment.”

Ultimately, Kimes said she was “intrigued” by the potential move and of course ended up taking it to become a writer at ESPN, calling it a “risk worth taking” due to her love of football.

“I think it’s kinda like Tristan Wirfs switching from left tackle to right tackle. It’s intriguing, but I have all this expertise doing this one thing. Do I really want to take this kind of jump? To the outside, it doesn’t seem like a big jump because you’re still a journalist. But it’s actually pretty significant in terms of the institutional knowledge that you have. People always ask me about switching from sports to business.

“It’s funny, there were a lot of things that are similar in terms of process, structuring, writing, all of that. But I had to learn so many things. How do you get an interview with an athlete? Who do you talk to? How do you secure that kind of time? It was just so different. Ultimately, I ended up deciding to do it because how often in life do you get a chance to work in a field that you actually love? It felt like a risk worth taking.”

Ultimately, Kimes would then rise up the ranks at ESPN to become one of the most prominent faces of the network. So after nearly ten years at ESPN, it is now fully safe to say that the risk fully paid off for her.

[Field Talk Podcast on YouTube]