Kent Babb is an award-winning sports enterprise reporter for ESPN, having joined in March of 2026. Having spent years exploring the emotional architecture of sports, Babb’s work is known for blending investigative reporting with narrative storytelling, earning him wide recognition as a top sports writer.
Babb is the author of two critically acclaimed books: Not a Game, the definitive biography of Allen Iverson, and Across the River, a narrative examination of poverty, violence and high school football in post-Katrina New Orleans. Across the River was named one of the best books of 2021 by the New York Post and was optioned for film by George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures.
His work has been included five times in The Best American Sports Writing and The Year’s Best Sports Writing, and the Associated Press Sports Editors has named him America’s top features writer four times.
He is an alumnus of the University of South Carolina, The State, The Kansas City Star and The Washington Post.
He lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and two daughters.
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