Panel Moderator
The Business of Sports and Entertainment

Ron Thomas
Director of Morehouse College’s Journalism and Sports Program and associate professor in the English Department.

Ron Thomas, a prolific sports writer and copy editor for more than three decades, is the first director of Morehouse’s Journalism and Sports Program. Prior to joining Morehouse, Thomas worked for 28 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1979 to 1991, he covered the Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers for the San Francisco Chronicle, and from 1982-84, he was USA Today’s first NBA reporter/editor.

He wrote game stories, features and columns for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 to 2003, mainly covering the San Francisco Giants, Golden State Warriors, college sports and professional tennis. For the last four years Thomas has been a freelance sports writer and copy editor, contributing articles to BlackAmericaWeb.com and the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine. He currently is chief copy editor for the African American Sports Magazine, a Bay Area publication.

Much of his impetus for becoming a sports writer stemmed from the writings of Harry Edwards and Sports Illustrated’s Jack Olsen in the 1960s, which made Thomas acutely aware of racism in sports. Much of the work he is most proud of relates to that topic, including: a 1999 column titled “Why So Few?” about the lack of black NFL coaches that led to him winning a National Association of Black Journalists first-place award; a 1987 column about Al Campanis’ infamous “necessities” interview; a 1997 column about pro football’s Bill Romanowski- J.J. Stokes spitting incident; and a 2006 Crisis Magazine article about the lack of black female head coaches at predominantly white colleges.

Thomas’ book, They Cleared the Lane: the NBA’s Black Pioneers, is a culmination of those efforts and was published in 2002 by the University of Nebraska Press. The idea for the book originated when Thomas received overwhelming reader response from a 1987 newspaper series about how the NBA became integrated in 1950. The book is the first written about the process and turmoil that brought black players into the NBA after they were banned secretly from the league's first four seasons.

It has been critically acclaimed by Sports Illustrated, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Library Journal and other publications.

Since 1987, through their firm The Sports Institute, Thomas and business partner Mike Brown have given lectures, workshops and invited conferences about racial, gender and media issues in sports. In 1996, Thomas’ chapter “Black Faces Still Rare in the Press Box” was published in the sociology textbook Sports in Society: Equal Opportunity or Business as Usual?

A native of Buffalo, New York, Thomas virtually grew up in sports stadiums by regularly attending baseball, football and basketball games with his family. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1971 with a degree in political science and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1973. A 28-year member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Thomas was an original co-chair of its Sports Task Force and currently co-hosts its annual ceremonies honoring black sports pioneers.

Now residing in Atlanta, Thomas’ hobbies include playing tennis, hearing actors and directors talk about movies he seldom has time to see, and having fun with his teenage daughter, Kali.