Mary Kay Cabot's career covering Cleveland sports began with a simple internship at The Plain Dealer while she was a student at Kent State University. More than 40 years later, that internship has led to the highest honor in professional football journalism.
Cabot, who graduated summa cum laude from Kent State in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts in news, was selected as the 2025 Bill Nunn Jr. Award winner by the Professional Football Writers of America. The award recognizes a reporter who has made a long and distinguished contribution to professional football through coverage.
"I am truly overwhelmed and humbled to receive this prestigious award, and I can't thank my colleagues enough for recognizing my contribution to the game over all of these years," Cabot said in a release from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "I am especially grateful to be only the second female to win this award after the great Charean Williams, and I know there will be many more in the future. I hope I have at least in some small way helped blaze a trail for all of the fantastic women in the business today, and I am proud of all of their accomplishments."
Cabot is the second woman to receive the Nunn Award, following Charean Williams in 2018. She is also the second journalist from The Plain Dealer to win the honor, joining Chuck Heaton, who received the award in 1980.
The path to this recognition began during Cabot's Kent State years when she interned at The Plain Dealer in 1983. After graduation, she accepted a full-time position in the paper's sports department, drawn by her love of sports, writing and Cleveland.
Being a female sportswriter in the 1980s presented significant challenges. Early in her career, Cabot was denied entry to locker rooms for interviews, despite policies granting all reporters equal access.
Cabot initially covered various sports, including three years as the beat reporter for the Cleveland Force indoor soccer team. In 1991, she took over the Browns daily beat, becoming the first female in Cleveland media to cover a major professional team in the market.
Over the decades, her role has evolved far beyond traditional newspaper writing. Cabot now appears in daily Browns videos for Cleveland.com, hosts the "Orange and Brown Talk" podcast, serves as a Browns analyst for WKYC-TV, and frequently appears on national radio, television and podcasts. She has the largest Twitter following of any local NFL beat writer.
Throughout her career, Cabot has broken stories that have changed professional football. Her reporting on former Browns quarterback Colt McCoy's 2011 concussion contributed to the NFL placing independent certified athletic trainers in press boxes and implementing video systems to monitor for potential concussions.
Despite her success with breaking news, Cabot says her favorite aspect of the job remains getting to know players on a deeper level and capturing who they are both on and off the field through moving profiles.
The Browns have been a turbulent franchise to cover, but she has remained dedicated to the team throughout the decades.
"Mary Kay Cabot is synonymous with Cleveland Browns news, and it's because she is a relentless reporter," said Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist Nate Ulrich to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "Mary Kay is the epitome of a football writer who deserves to go from Cleveland to Canton."
Cabot's achievements extend beyond daily reporting. She was voted 2015 Ohio Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association and received the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Sportswriter of the Year award in 2024. She was inducted into the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame in 2022.
She serves on the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee as one of four women currently serving as selectors and is president of the Cleveland chapter of the Pro Football Writers of America.
Cabot will be honored at the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Enshrinees' Gold Jacket Dinner on Aug. 1 at the Canton Memorial Civic Center.
Check out a previous Faces of Kent State interview with Mary Kay Cabot below.