Jarrett Bell

NFL columnist Jarrett Bell has covered pro football for USA Today sports since 1993. Since 1997, Bell has been a member of the selection committee for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was also part of the blue ribbon panel that chose the NFL’s 100-year anniversary team. Previously, he also served as a
contributor at ESPN for four years (2013–2017), primarily featured as a panelist on NFL Insiders and SportsCenter. A father of two, he resides in Northern Virginia.

In addition to winning dozens of in-house awards for USA Today, he has received multiple writing awards from the Pro Football Writers of America. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee since 1997, and since that year, has also served on the media panel that selects the Super Bowl MVP. He also serves on the Alumni Advisory Board for the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University.

Among hundreds of radio and TV interviews, he has appeared on programming for CBS (Face The Nation), CNBC, ESPN, CNN, NFL Films, The NFL Network, Fox Sports, MSNBC, Headline News, Comcast, ESPN Radio, NBC Sports Radio, ABC Radio, Rogers Sportsnet, Sirius Satellite Radio, Pro Football Talk, and WUSA-TV. He was featured in documentaries, The Forgotten Four and Minister of Defense: The Reggie White Story. He also had a cameo role in the feature film, Invincible.

Bell, fifty-nine, previously covered the San Francisco 49ers for the Gannett-owned Marin (County) Independent Journal (1990–1992) and was editor of The Dallas Cowboys Weekly (1989). He began a nine-year association with the Cowboys in 1981, a few weeks after graduating from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Communication. After four years as a contributing writer for the team-owned Cowboys Weekly, he joined the staff full-time in 1985. He also served as sports director for Fort Worth-based KNOK-FM (1984–1985) and covered high school sports as a staff writer for The Dallas Times Herald (1981–1983).

In college, he worked as a student assistant in the Michigan State University Sports Information Office, a news reporter for WVIC-AM and as a teaching assistant for the Department of Communication. He also studied abroad at The University of London during the summer of 1979, participating in The Guardian’s Contemporary Mass Media program.

A Detroit native, he began in sports as a teenager at Olympia Stadium, working as an equipment manager for the Detroit Jr. Wings and as an aide in the PR Department for the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings.