Four Elected to National Sports Media Association Hall Of Fame

CBS Sports’ Ian Eagle has been elected as the 2022 national sportscaster of the year. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic/Pete Thamel of ESPN.com is the 2022 national sportswriter of the year.

Among the 116 who won 2021 state sportscaster or sportswriter of the year honors, 70 are first-time winners in their respective states.

The NSMA will honor its award winners and Hall of Fame inductees during the organization’s 63rd awards weekend and national convention, scheduled for June 24-26, 2023, in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Corso joined ESPN in 1987 after a 15-year college head coaching career at Louisville, Indiana, and Northern Illinois. He was also the head coach of the USFL’s Orlando Renegades and general manager of the World League’s Orlando Thunder. In his 35 years at ESPN, he has become best known as a fixture on the network’s College GameDay show, providing analysis of games, choosing the winning team of the weekend’s marquee game, and donning that school’s headgear at the end of the show. College GameDay has won eight Emmy Awards during Corso’s time with the show. Corso is a Cicero, Illinois native who played college football at Florida State.

Plaschke is a Louisville native and Southern Illinois University graduate, who worked at newspapers in Fort Lauderdale and Seattle before joining the Los Angeles Times in 1987. He wrote for the paper’s San Diego County edition before moving into his sports columnist role in 1996. Plaschke’s work has been recognized by several organizations and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is a three-time winner of the NSMA’s California Sportswriter of the Year Award. In addition to this work for the Times, he is a regular panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn and he has written five books. He has also been named Man of the Year by the Los Angeles Big Brothers/Big Sisters and has received a Pursuit of Justice Award from the California Women’s Law Center.

Born in Canada, Kelly spent 21 years as the play-by-play voice of the St. Louis Blues. He became known to a wider audience as the lead hockey play-by-play voice on CBS Sports’ National Hockey League coverage. He later broadcast games for the NHL Network and USA Network, as well as some Canadian television networks. He was only 52 years old when he died from lung cancer in 1989.                                                                                                        

Angell was born in Manhattan and attended Harvard before World War Two called him into action. His first published work in The New Yorker was in 1944, and he became the magazine’s fiction editor in the 1950s, writing until 2020. He was best known for his baseball essays, many of which were compiled into books. He died in May of 2022 at the age of 101.

Eagle is coming up on his 25th anniversary at CBS Sports in March. He is one of the network’s top play-by-play voices for its coverage of the National Football League and NCAA men’s basketball. He also calls Brooklyn Nets’ games for YES Network and Thursday night NFL games for Westwood One Radio Sports. The Syracuse University graduate is a five-time winner of NSMA’s New York Sportscaster of the Year Award.

Rosenthal, senior baseball writer for The Athletic, is a University of Pennsylvania graduate who also serves as a field reporter for FOX Sports’ Major League Baseball coverage. He spent 12 years as a “baseball insider” for MLB Network, and while working for the Baltimore Sun from 1987-200, he was voted NSMA’s Maryland Sportswriter of the Year five times.

Thamel is a Syracuse University graduate, who joined ESPN last January after stints with Yahoo Sports, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times. In addition to his writing for ESPN.com and ESPN+, he also appears on several ESPN studio programs.

The Illinois Sportscaster of the Year was a tie between Jeff Joniak, Bears Radio Network, Chicago and Leila Rahimi, WMAQ-TV, Chicago (1).

The Illinois Sportswriter of the Year was also a tie between Steve Greenberg, Chicago Sun-Times (1) and Mark Lazerus, The Athletic, Chicago