Q&A: Mina Kimes on her run from acclaimed sportswriter to Emmy-nominated NFL Analyst

Her ubiquity on ESPN makes it feel like Mina Kimes has been on TV for 15 years. Yet she initially garnered attention as a print journalist — first at Fortune and Bloomberg News, then profiling NFL stars for ESPN The Magazine. Those days are hard to recall when she’s onscreen.

Kimes’ stint as an analyst on “NFL Live” began in 2020. Her career has bloomed. It’s easy to understand why given her keen analysis mixed with sharp wit. Think Dorothy Parker if she was obsessed with game tape. Last fall, Kimes signed a reportedly multimillion contract to remain at ESPN as well as a deal with Meadowlark Media to appear weekly with her old ESPN cohort Dan Le Batard. Earlier this month, she was nominated for a Sports Emmy.

With the NFL Draft starting Thursday, Poynter talked with Kimes, 38, about how she transitioned to being on-air and why her love for football won’t dwindle. This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Pete Croatto: When sportswriters go to TV, they usually go one of two ways: They’re either a scoops person or they become a sideline reporter. You became an analyst. How did you make that jump?

Mina Kimes: Yeah, there are some other examples of that at ESPN. Zach Lowe comes to mind. But you’re right. It’s definitely less common, especially in football.

People always ask me about being unusual as a football analyst because of my identity, but equally unusual is the fact that I wasn’t a former player. Most of the people who talk about football or analyze it on our network, or any network, are former players. So it is a bit unusual. And, for me, there were a lot of steps in between.

Back when I was still a writer, I was a panelist on “Around the Horn,” which is sort of like a halfway point — because you’re really doing analysis and that’s, of course, mostly reporters giving opinions. I was doing ESPN Radio. That was sort of my first big foray into analysis and opinionating as opposed to reporting. Then I did more podcasting. Started my own podcast, which is a football show, which was analysis. Started doing more opinionating on various TV shows outside of “Around the Horn.” And then ultimately given the opportunity from ESPN to just focus primarily on football and kind of do what I’ve been doing but do it for “NFL Live.” It was just really kind of a dream given that I was doing so many different things before.

Croatto: Why do you think ESPN gave you that opportunity?

Kimes: At the time, we were rebooting “NFL Live,” so it was an opportunity to recast the show. It wasn’t like I was jumping from being just a reporter to being an analyst. I would say 50 to 75% of my job was doing analysis just on other shows. So it wasn’t a massive leap for me in terms of the actual substance of my work, because I was already mostly doing analysis as opposed to writing. I really wasn’t writing anymore by then. But there was certainly a leap of faith on the part of ESPN, just because it was, in retrospect, a pretty bold decision for them.

Croatto: Did you feel any pressure to excel because of that?

Kimes: I think I have always felt that pressure in my role, just because of who I am, being different, not wanting to disappoint other people who are different and hope to get similar opportunities or see in me an example that they can also do a similar job. So I definitely have felt that pressure. And then I think a lot of women in sports media can speak to this. There is both real and imagined extra scrutiny when you make mistakes or to get things right, because certain people don’t give you the benefit of the doubt.

Croatto: I follow you on Twitter. It seems like you are regularly flambéing some jabroni for being out of line. How do you deal with that kind of scrutiny? 

Kimes: It’s really evolved over the years. When I first started doing television, “Around the Horn” and “Highly Questionable,” in 2016, 2017, I saw everything. I read everything. I was affected by everything good and bad. I would get my confidence boosted; I would get my confidence taken down. I would live and die by the feedback that I got on the internet, I would be worried about it. I’d be apprehensive of stirring things up.

But as my reach grew, as my audience grew, I became more aware of the way in which being online and being really online affected both my mental health but also my work. If you’re so worried about offending or making mistakes, it affects the way you do things.

I actually don’t see probably like 99% of the things people say to me. I have it set up that way. Every now and then I’ll look either because I’m bored or just feeling like a glutton for punishment in the moment. Sometimes I’ll reply to things, but I miss a lot of it now. And that’s just kind of being proactive about how to handle things and how to use my time.

Croatto: Do you think there’s going to be a day when there can be a woman analyst in any sport who doesn’t get shit from sports fans, particularly male sports fans?

Kimes: No. Believe me, we all get shit because it’s naturally a super-divisive job. I guess the question is whether or not that criticism will ever stop being gendered. I’ll say a lot of the shit I get is for my opinions and not my identity, which I guess is what equality looks like, right? (Kimes is Korean American.) But the other thing too about the identity-based stuff is it’s real and it sucks, but what you see on the internet is not representative of the general population, and I think it’s easy to lose sight of that as well.

Croatto: The other thing, and not to blow smoke, but you’re a celebrity now.

Kimes: In sports bars, maybe.

Croatto: And airports.

Kimes: Crushing it. Gyms. Huge in gyms.

Croatto: But does that play a role, that if you’re not a celebrity, you’re at least highly visible?

Kimes: In what aspect?

Croatto: Well, I guess in being the target of the ire of dopes and morons.

Kimes: Here’s the thing. Nine times out of 10, if somebody is saying something racist or sexist to me on the internet, if I look at their timeline, they’re saying it to a million women. And when you do that, it’s a good reminder that it really isn’t about you. It’s a good way to know not to take it personally, honestly. Sometimes it’s actually worth looking. So I don’t say that to just say that I’m incapable of making mistakes. I get real legitimate criticism like all my peers about bad takes, old takes, mistakes, bad analysis, bad predictions. But if it’s something that is not about the substance of what I’m saying, but just about who I am, most of the time it’s garbage in, garbage out. And it’s from someone who is really spewing it in a lot of different directions.

Croatto: You mentioned how you deal with that by limiting social media. How else do you avoid being caught in that churn?

Kimes: I mean, that’s pretty much it, because nobody says shit in real life. So just being a normal person in the world.

Croatto: Let me go back to the television world for a second. When I see writers who go into TV, I definitely think, “Oh, they were better in print than they are on TV.” And with you, the transition has been, I think, very seamless —

Kimes: I don’t know, man. I was pretty bad at first. Watch some clips from “Highly Questionable,” “Around the Horn,” from 2016.

Croatto: How did you get better?

Kimes: You just do it a lot. I know it’s boring and an obvious answer, but it truly is. I used to overprepare. It’s great to be prepared and a lot of people are underprepared. But when you overprepare, you’re not your best self on television. So that was a big thing I was worried about. I was self-conscious about the way I laughed, the way I looked. And like so many things, when you just do it so much and especially when it becomes your full-time job, you kind of just lose the self-consciousness. That’s when TV starts to become easy, honestly — when it just feels like a clock-in, clock-out kind of job and not like every appearance is make or break. I always say doing radio and podcasting really helped me get better at TV because it’s very similar in terms of structuring your thoughts, communicating, being entertaining, but without the additional pressure of the visual presentation.

Croatto: When did you reach the point of, “OK, this is just a job that I do”?

Kimes: It was different for the different jobs I’ve had at ESPN. “Around the Horn,” probably about a year into doing it every week, it started just clicking and becoming easy and natural. Being an NFL analyst probably took about a year. It just takes time. You just have to do it a lot and push yourself to get better. And getting better at it is not about the doing of it, it’s about the research and preparation behind the scenes. Rather than overpreparing for what I was going to say — OK, this person might say this, and should I say this — spending that time watching film, learning concepts, that’s how you get better at it: when whatever you say comes from a well of knowledge.

Croatto: When I write, it can be kind of a nervous, fraught-filled process. Did you have the same kind of stew of emotions writing as you did on TV?

Kimes: Yeah, actually, there’s a lot of similarities between how I approach writing, especially long-form writing, and how I approach doing television. Like you were saying, it’s pretty front-loaded for me. It was always that way as a writer. I think it was my friend Seth Wickersham who once told me he just kind of sits down and writes. That blew my mind, because I was the kind of magazine writer where my outlines were longer than my stories. How I just described getting better at television, I found that made the writing a lot freer, because I felt like I already did all the work beforehand. And that’s really how I approach doing television as well. If you spend a lot of time studying, thinking, preparing, then when you’re asked to talk about it, it comes a lot easier.

Croatto: I know that you have a lot of other interests. With being an NFL analyst, how do you keep that fresh?

Kimes: I’m constantly learning about football. I have so much to learn. I think we all do because it’s a sport that’s evolving constantly. Also, with new players in, you have to study different players, study different coaches. It just changes all the time. So, for me, it is kind of like being in grad school. It’s just an ongoing education. And one thing that I also consider a blessing is being able to work with people who teach me all the time. Part of the joy of doing “NFL Live” is my colleagues, Marcus Spears, Ryan Clark, Dan Orlovsky. They teach me both behind the scenes and on air, which is amazing.

I think it’s part of the reason why our show really works: Everybody just listens to each other. Some of the moments that I’ve listened and learned from them on television and said nothing have been some of my favorite moments of doing television.

Croatto: Were you close to leaving ESPN?

Kimes: I had an outside opportunity that I was seriously considering based where I live in Los Angeles. It was a really cool opportunity, but for me, the people that I just mentioned, it was just impossible to imagine myself at the end of the day not working with them. I truly look forward to it, and that’s really, really hard to leave.

Croatto: It also seems to me that you have a lot of leeway at ESPN in terms of what you can do. Is that part of it, too, that you’re able to do more at the network?

Kimes: I think one of the coolest things with ESPN that is maybe underappreciated is the things you can do at our company are constantly changing. There’s just a lot of different places to make stuff. This is so bizarre, but there’s a writer at Andscape who I love named David Dennis Jr. And he’s just such an unbelievably smart cultural critic who writes about history and race, and he also loves trashy television. We love the show “Love is Blind.” So, I was like, “David, let’s make a ‘Love Is Blind’ YouTube show.” And it’s been unbelievably fun to do. So I have latitude to do kind of crazy projects like that.

And then the other thing I think about ESPN is just what we talk about on our shows often sets the discourse in a way that I think is kind of cool, and another thing that’s kind of hard to leave behind. I think there’s an impact at the network that’s pretty hard to match.

Croatto: Is there a chance where you think you’ll want to stick to doing one thing?

Kimes: Given the way everything in our industry is changing so quickly all the time — and by which I mean the platforms that are dominant, the places people are going to hear, read, watch stuff — I don’t think anyone who works in sports can predict with any strong degree of confidence what their job is going to be in five years. So, for me, I’m just kind of chasing my interests, but most importantly, trying to find ways to work with the people that I like to work with. I think that’s also a really underrated aspect of being on television. Being a writer, it’s a pretty solitary existence. And something I really love about doing television — I didn’t know that I would love, and I didn’t know I wanted to be part of my day-to-day — was being part of a team.

I just absolutely adore it. I love collaborating. I love the sense of shared accomplishment and excitement. And it’s funny, the guys who I work with, they’re former players and they’re obviously very aware of that dynamic. Dan always talks about how there’s some continuity for him between this job and his previous one being a backup quarterback. And it’s something that I just didn’t get to really experience having not played sports at that level, and I just really love it.

Croatto: Can you see yourself at some point doing something completely different from sports in a full-time capacity?

Kimes: I don’t know about a full-time capacity. Definitely a part-time capacity, though, because I just love reading and watching television and talking about those things. And coming from a business journalist background, I’m also still so interested in economic news. That’s something maybe I’ll revisit at some point someday. So I think I could see myself making things outside of sports, but I think football for me is a lifelong love.