Former Hawk and Writer for The Athletic Heads to Paris for the Summer Olympics

When Brendan Quinn, BS ’06, was 9 years old, his dad — former St. Joe’s track coach of nearly 50 years, Kevin Quinn, BA ’62 — took him to the Philadelphia Spectrum to watch the NCAA East regional final. With 2.1 seconds left in overtime and Duke down by one, Christian Laettner caught a court-length pass and scored, just as time ran out, clinching the win for Kentucky, 104-103.

“It was amazing,” Quinn recalls of what Sports Illustrated deemed the greatest college basketball game of all time. The energy, the adrenaline, the theatrics — he was hooked.

In the 32 years since that game, Quinn’s passion for sports and uncovering the stories behind them has flourished into a career as a sports journalist, most recently as a senior enterprise writer for The Athletic. This month, on the heels of covering the Open Championship in Scotland, he’ll head to France to report on the Olympic Summer Games, writing about everything from golf to equestrian matches and skateboarding culture.

“It’s both daunting and incredibly exciting,” says the writer whose career mainstays have been golf and basketball. “I’ve been a sports writer my whole adult life and I’ve never done anything like this.”

SJU News caught up with Quinn to learn about his path to the Olympics, what he’s most looking forward to in Paris, and his advice for aspiring writers.
 

SJU News: Let’s start from the beginning — what inspired you to become a sports writer?

Quinn: Growing up in Philly and being into newspapers, I would devour the sports section every morning. It was that, in combination with growing up as a coach’s son, that made me realize I wanted to be around competition and athletes and coaches and the excitement that comes with all of that.

At the same time, I started leaning toward writing and realizing that I enjoy the process of putting together stories, from sentence structure to story style, and they just kind of naturally came together.


SJU News: What’s been the most memorable sporting event or game you’ve covered?

Quinn: You know, some great games weren’t hugely important and some hugely important events weren’t great games! But I’d probably say my first Masters Tournament in 2021, and Duke versus North Carolina (Coach K’s last game) in 2022. It’s the theater. There are certain games and certain events that just intrinsically feel different. When you're in those high impact, high attention, high drama moments — that's the good stuff.
 

SJU News: Speaking of high drama, what events will you be covering at the Olympics? 

Quinn: I’ll only be doing two or three days of golf and then I have the enviable (or unenviable) assignment of doing a bit of everything. It’ll be, as stories come, jump on it — find the stories that people aren’t looking for and tell that story. I’ll be at equestrian on the front lawn on the Palace of Versailles one day, at a volleyball match in front of the Eiffel Tower the next and field hockey after that. So, I’ll basically be crisscrossing Paris and going full steam until I crash.

SJU News: It sounds like there are some interesting new events to check out this year, too, like breakdancing and skateboarding.

Quinn: Yeah, I’ve been told that some of the Olympic skaters are going to go to a neighborhood skate park to practice. How cool is that? — these Olympians out in the open. It would be like Kevin Durant and some of the basketball players going to a pickup game. That’s a story I hope to tell.
 

SJU News: What are you most looking forward to about the Olympics?

Quinn: Doing something completely and totally new. I’m 41 years old, I’ve been a sports writer my whole life and I've never done anything like this — never written about most of these sports, never interviewed athletes from these different types of backgrounds. I have no expectations for anything, and it is both daunting and incredibly exciting.
 

SJU News: Looking back at your time at St. Joe’s, were there any experiences or professors that influenced your career trajectory?

Quinn: I was really fortunate to take a few journalism and feature writing courses with people like Sal Paolantonio, Glen Macnow, Tom Coyne and Jenny Spinner. I was a terrible student and I needed professors who would identify me as someone who struggled academically but took this one specific thing really seriously and really wanted to do it. I was lucky that those professors encouraged me to write my own way, find my own voice.

And then to be at a place like St. Joe’s, where the basketball program got a ton of attention, I was able to write stories I was passionate about. 
 

SJU News: What’s your advice for aspiring journalists who maybe want to see themselves at the Olympics one day?

Quinn, First, read as much as possible and be an engaged reader when doing so. And if you find something that you like, reach out to the writer. Contacts are hugely important in a business that is very small and still shrinking, and writers want other writers to be successful.

And for any young writer, you're not going to get better without reading, and you're not going to become a better writer without writing. So it's developing your voice and understanding all the work that goes into large pieces of journalism by talking to the people that do it.

The Olympic Games kick off on Friday, July 26. Follow Quinn’s journey at @BFQuinn on X, and read his stories at The Athletic.