Deford offered
Sports Illustrated readers probing features of athletes and coaches that went beyond mere scores and statistics to explore the motivations and emotions of people who dedicated their lives to competing. His "features" take more extended form in the many books he has written, profiling competitors from Miss America to tennis stars Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe. And in the 1980s, Deford began to offer commentary on the world of sports for National Public Radio (NPR), Cable News Network (CNN), and ESPN radio.
In the 1990s, Deford shifted the attention of his features to "the movers and the shakers," and his prose portraits began to appear in Newsweek and Vanity Fair. Though he is best known for his connection with sports, Deford has always been more than a sportswriter, having published a number of novels that are set in the world of sports and, in 1993, penning his first historical novel, Love and Infamy, which earned Deford the kind of praise usually reserved for his sportswriting. Content now to pen a few magazine features a year, Deford concentrates on becoming what he has always wanted to be: a successful novelist.
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