Tom Kludt

1 week ago | vanityfair.com | Tom Kludt

About an hour into our flight, Joe Anoa’i tells me a secret: Roman Reigns isn’t going to win the Royal Rumble. As far as spoilers go, this is akin to finding out who was getting whacked on The Sopranos the night before an episode aired—and if James Gandolfini was tipping you off. Anoa’i, after all, knows Reigns the same way Gandolfini knew Tony Soprano. Or like Terry Bollea knows Hulk Hogan.

3 weeks ago | vanityfair.com | Tom Kludt

Peter Gammons is synonymous with baseball on ESPN. Never mind that he hasn’t worked there in more than 15 years. Gammons––like Dick Vitale and college basketball, or Chris Berman and the NFL––will forever be linked to the network’s coverage of the sport. When he was hired in 1988, Gammons was already regarded as one of the preeminent baseball reporters, with tenures at the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated. ESPN, meanwhile, wasn’t even airing big league games.

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Tom Kludt

Tim MacMahon’s book was finished. After three years of extensive reporting and travel, he had managed to write the definitive story of Luka Dončić’s time with the Dallas Mavericks––his ascendance to superstardom, the fluctuations to the roster, and, ultimately, the team’s emergence as a bona fide NBA contender.

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Tom Kludt

When Brandel Chamblee stepped on the course for a round of golf with Donald Trump, his reputation preceded him. “[Trump] said straight away, ‘I know you and I differ on LIV, and we differ on the Saudi involvement of the game,’” Chamblee told VF. “Differ” was probably putting it mildly. As a commentator for the Golf Channel, Chamblee has established himself as perhaps the most outspoken critic of LIV Golf, the breakaway tour bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.

Jan 10, 2025 | vanityfair.com | Tom Kludt

In August, while looking ahead to his new job, Tom Brady saw parallels to his old one. “In some ways, now I’m just quarterbacking something a little bit different,” he told the commentator Stephen A. Smith during an appearance at Fanatics Fest in New York City. “But in the end, you’re sitting in that hot seat, you’re the one calling the shots, and that’s where I like to be. That’s where I’m most comfortable.”The seat in the broadcast booth has, in fact, been plenty hot.