University:
University of Florida
Joined ESPN: 1996
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Tom Farrey, with ESPN since 1996, is an enterprise reporter whose work has been recognized among the nation’s best on television, in print and online. A pioneer in modern cross-platform, long-form journalism, Farrey’s pieces have appeared on ESPN’s award-winning Outside the Lines and SportsCenter, ESPN.com, and in ESPN the Magazine, where he is a senior writer. Farrey is also a correspondent for E:60, ESPN’s first multi-themed prime-time newsmagazine program.
Farrey’s ESPN career has primarily focused on telling stories that connect the world of sports to the most relevant themes in the broader society such as race, gender, politics, economics, technology, science, immigration, ethics and education. His stories have been a catalyst for change.
In 2001, Farrey’s exclusive report on the torture of Iraqi soccer players and other athletes by Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, the nation’s top Olympic official, led to the disbanding of the Iraqi Olympic governing body by the International Olympic Committee. That Same year, Farrey reported on Christopher Robin Academy, an obscure, New York high school that basketball recruits used to receive bogus grades that qualified them to play college basketball, for Outside the Lines. His investigative reporting on the bogus academy exposed a loophole in the eligibility process for revenue-producing athletes, prompting the NCAA to later create a list of dubious schools. Both stories won Emmy awards for Outside the Lines.
Farrey has reported stories from Europe, Australia and several countries in Latin America. His hour-long ESPN documentary, “Witness to a Defection,” on Cuban baseball defectors included a hometown interview with future major league star Jose Contreras before he fled the Country. In 1999, he was among the first to report on the flow of steroids from Mexico, with a hidden-camera investigation in which he bought steroids and showed the level of illegal activity in Tijuana’s pharmacies.
In 2004, he presented a three-part Outside the Lines series on the corrupt business of recruiting and signing Dominican baseball prospects. The series discovered that the names and ages of teenagers were easily changed by unscrupulous street agents, and revealed how one major league team (the Arizona Diamondbacks) made a $100,000 side payment to a street agent to steer a future major league pitcher their way.
For a provocative look into the world of genetic testing and talent identifications, Farrey went to Australia with a cheek swab to get his one-year-old son screened for athletic traits. The story, published by ESPN The Magazine, served as the inspiration for an ESPN book that Farrey is now writing on modern youth sports. The book will be published in 2008.
Farrey’s work has won two Emmy awards for Outstanding Sports Journalism as well as top national honors from, among other organizations, the Sigma Delta Chi/Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Associated Press Sports Editors, U.S. Basketball Writers Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Farrey joined ESPN after serving as a reporter for The Seattle Times from 1988 to1996. At the Seattle Times, Farrey covered the NBA and NFL as a beat reporter before moving to general assignment work. In 1992, he broke the news of improper loans given to the quarterback of the University of Washington football team, which led to NCAA sanctions that included a bowl ban for the defending national champions.
A native of Hollywood, Fla., and graduate of the University of Florida, Farrey started his career with a part-time job at The Miami Herald as a high school student.
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