Shaun Assael

Shaun Assael is one of the original staff members at ESPN Magazine and a member of the network’s Enterprise & Investigations Group. He is a regular contributor to ESPN's Outside the Lines and has looked into subjects as varied as the mysterious hanging of a black high school athlete in North Carolina, the FBI’s investigation into FIFA, professional tennis, NASCAR, World Wrestling Entertainment, and the myriad scandals involving performance enhancing drugs. Although he started out as a police reporter, Shaun has taken some wild rides in sports. He spent a season working as a member of three NASCAR teams for his book, "WIDE OPEN" (1998). He also chronicled the rags-to-riches story (with co-writer Mike Mooneyham) of America’s great showman, Vince McMahon, for the New York Times best-seller, "SEX, LIES, AND HEADLOCKS" (2002). And he put a decade’s worth of reporting on PED’s into STEROID NATION (2007), which the Guardian called “a rip roaring good rock’n’roll read” and “the classic American drug story.” His new book, "THE MURDER OF SONNY LISTON", is a four-year investigation into one of the sports’ world’s biggest mysteries. A native New Yorker, Shaun now makes his home in North Carolina.