It’s amazing to watch Mina Kimes grow to fame.
According to her ESPN colleague and former NFL player Domonique Foxworth, “she has profoundly transformed the way sports journalism works.”
Foxworth provided commentary for an article in which WaPo appropriately refers to Kimes, 37, as a “football nerd” who “is moulding the future of NFL coverage.”
Thanks to her distinctive broadcasting approach, the NFL analyst has grown to become one of ESPN’s biggest stars.
She is able to deliver an in-depth analysis of a mishandled screen pass in an easily siftable manner on First Take because to a combination of eloquence, enthusiasm, empathy, and football analytics nerdiness.
But it also equips her to speak intelligently and sensitively on her podcast about the frequently delicate subjects that lie at the nexus of sport, culture, and society.
Kimes, who excelled at throwing the ball, played soccer in high school, according to Sun Min, her mother, who grew up in Seoul and met Peter while he was stationed there.
However, Mina, who graduated from Yale with a major in English, ended up writing about business for Fortune and Bloomberg.
Major news outlets showed interest in her investigative work.
However, at the same time, her sporadic love for football returned; she wrote about it in a Tumblr post that would lead to an opportunity with ESPN.
She contacted a buddy of a friend one day in 2014, who extended an invitation for her to watch a Seahawks game at a Brooklyn pub.
Kimes began learning more about football, tweeting frequently, and calling her father each week to talk about games.
Her relationship with her father was revived during those chats, she claimed in the Tumblr post.
Soon after, Kimes began penning ESPN football features.
She also became captivated by the newly developed measures, which now make it simple for her to analyse plays on NFL Live and First Take.
She was intellectually curious about those cutting-edge football analytics.
“You know that moment when you’re on an airplane and you feel them throttle the engine and there’s a huge roar and the plane takes off and you feel the massive power of these engines?” her former Fortune editor Nick Varchaver asked The Washington Post.
“It’s a little bit like that when Mina turns her intelligence to something.”
“I like learning, and if I’m going to be a fan of something, I want to understand it,” she told The Washington Post.
“I don’t think I’m unique. A lot of fans are like that. Football fans all want to be smarter, just like me.
“Listeners and viewers have more in common with me than anyone else on set.”