Jeff Passan

Jeffrey Scott Passan (born September 21, 1980) is an American baseball columnist with ESPN and author of New York Times Best Seller The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports. He is also co-author of Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series.

Career
After graduating from Solon High School near Cleveland, Ohio, Passan attended Syracuse University, where he wrote for The Daily Orange. Passan covered Fresno State basketball. He began covering baseball in 2004 at The Kansas City Star, before moving to Yahoo! two years later. After 13 years at Yahoo! (2006–18), he announced that he was joining ESPN's Baseball team in January 2019. In early 2022, Passan signed a four-year, $4 million contract with ESPN. While working at ESPN, he makes guest appearances on SportsCenter, Get Up, The Rich Eisen Show, The Pat McAfee Show and other ESPN studio shows.

In 2018, while working for Yahoo!, Passan refused to cast his ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame due to a letter that Joe Morgan wrote to the voters asking that steroid users be excluded. He has voiced negative opinions of the Baseball Hall of Fame due to its exclusion of players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens that were involved in performance-enhancing drug scandals.

Awards and recognition
Passan has been a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America since 2004, while he was at The Kansas City Star. The National Sports Media Association named Passan as the 2021 National Sportswriter of the Year. He won the award again in 2023.

Passan received the 2022 Dan Jenkins medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his ESPN article, "San Francisco Giants Outfielder Drew Robinson's Remarkable Second Act."

Personal life
Passan's family is Jewish. Passan graduated from Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2002 with a degree in journalism.

After a lull in posting in 2023, Passan announced via Twitter that he had been struck by a falling tree limb after a storm, fracturing his back. He retained the use of his limbs and extremities.