Fred Mitchell is an award-winning sportswriter and columnist who spent over 41 years with the
Chicago Tribune. He has recently served as the community correspondent for the Chicago Blackhawks. Mitchell has been teaching sports journalism at DePaul since 2017 and is a member of the Adjunct Faculty Advisory Committee.
In 2023, Mitchell was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame with an "Excellence in Media Award." In 2015, he was presented the national Ring Lardner Award by the Chicago Union League Club for outstanding sports journalism.
Mitchell has written 12 books, including biographies with Bears Hall of Famer Gale Sayers and Cubs Hall of Famers Billy Williams and Ryne Sandberg. He also wrote “Playing Through” with Earl Woods, the late father of PGA champion Tiger Woods. Mitchell received the Jim Murray Award as the outstanding sportswriter in 2000 from the American Football Foundation.
Mitchell, who also served as an adjunct professor of journalism at Northwestern University and Columbia College and as a high school English teacher, is the only sportswriter in Chicago Tribune history to have been the main beat reporter covering the Bulls, Bears, and Cubs during his career. His work also has appeared in national publications such as The Sporting News, The Saturday Evening Post, Ebony, Sport Magazine, and Baseball Digest.
Since 2009, the National Football Foundation annually gives
The Fred Mitchell Award to the nation's most outstanding college placekicker, in honor of Mitchell. The award recognizes that student-athlete's on-field excellence, as well as his community service.
A longtime member of
Wittenberg University's board of directors, Mitchell was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater in 2000. The endowed Fred Mitchell Scholarship is bestowed annually to the Wittenberg student who combines athletic and journalistic achievement. Mitchell was named a Wittenberg Fellow in 2001.
In 2023, he was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame. Mitchell also received the "Excellence in Media Award" from the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and is a member of the Adjunct Faculty Advisory Committee (AFAC).