Sept. 6, 2007
Bronx, N.Y. -
Fordham University graduate Malcolm Moran will receive the 2007 Curt Gowdy Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame during Enshrinement festivities this weekend in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Named in honor of the late legendary sports broadcaster and former Basketball Hall of Fame President Curt Gowdy, the prestigious awards are given annually to one member of the print and one member of the electronic media whose efforts have made a significant contribution to the game of basketball.
Moran, the 2007 print winner, currently the inaugural Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society at Penn State University, has covered major basketball events including the NCAA Men's Final Four 26 times, the 1984 and 1996 Olympic tournaments and the 2002 World Championships.
A native of Beechhurst, N.Y., Moran is a 1975 graduate of Fordham University, where he worked for the student newspaper The Fordham Ram and served as sports director and voice of the Rams for WFUV. Moran launched his daily newspaper career as a sports reporter at Newsday in 1977, where he covered high school, college and professional sports. Moran went on to work at The New York Times from 1979 to 1998 as a reporter and columnist before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1998.
In 2000, Moran took his talents to USA Today, where in addition to covering college basketball and football, he contributed a number of insightful feature articles on a wide range of professional, international and collegiate sports topics.
In 2005, Moran was inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame; and in 1999, he received the Jim Murray Outstanding Sportswriter Award.
Moran's contributions to the game of basketball go beyond the hundreds of pieces he has written about the game and its relationship to academics, business and other aspects of life off the court. As president of the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) in 1989, the organization followed his suggestion to create awards for the male and female basketball players with the highest level of athletic and academic achievement. As a reporter at The New York Times, he was instrumental in that newspaper's decision to include graduation rates when compiling preseason rankings in football and men's basketball. Moran has presented his respected opinions and findings to such groups as the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Sports Management Institute and several major universities.
In addition to his current duties as the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism (funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation), Moran also serves as the Director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism in the College of Communications, teaching courses in sports writing and news media ethics.
