Biography:

Author, documentary filmmaker, magazine executive, entrepreneur, writer, and sportswriter.  Born:  November 2, 1964, Athens, Alabama. Parents: Robert (Bob) and Marjorie Dunnavant.  Education: The University of Alabama.

Keith Dunnavant is the author of seven books, including SPY PILOT, a true story of Cold War intrigue and redemption (with Francis Gary Powers, Jr.), and definitive biographies of football icons Paul “Bear” Bryant, Bart Starr and Joe Montana. His books often explore the collision of sports and culture, including THE MISSING RING, which focused on the 1966 University of Alabama football team’s pursuit of perfection in an imperfect world, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and a time and place on the brink. THE FIFTY-YEAR SEDUCTION, his book about television’s manipulation of college football, the rise of the all-powerful NCAA, and the impact of the Supreme Court’s landmark Board of Regents decision, has been widely utilized as a college textbook. Dunnavant started his career as a teenage sportswriter for small newspapers in North Alabama and parlayed his early experience into a full scholarship to the University of Alabama as a writer/editor inside the Crimson Tide athletic department. He covered college football and other sports for several major publications including THE NATIONAL before transitioning into magazine management and ownership in New York and Atlanta.  The writer/director of the documentary film THREE DAYS AT FOSTER, which focused on the long-overlooked African-American pioneers who shattered the athletic color barrier at his alma mater, he has been a featured historian on ESPN, HBO, Showtime, Epix, and SEC Network.

 

Sources:

Keith Dunnavant

Publication(s):

Coach. Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Time Out. Will Publishing, 1999.

The Fifty-Year Seduction.  St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

The Missing Ring. St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

America’s Quarterback. St. Martin’s Press, 2011.

Montana. St. Martin’s Press, 2015.

Spy Pilot. Prometheus, 2019.