Charean Williams is an American sportswriter for NBC Sports. She was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame as a journalist in 2018. At the time, Williams was in her 25th year of NFL coverage and her second year at Pro Football Talk when she was selected as the 2018 Dick McCann Award winner by the Professional Football Writers of America (PFWA).

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Williams, the 50th McCann Award recipient, was the first woman ever to receive the honor from the PFWA. She is also the first member of Pro Football Talk to be recognized with the award.

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Charean grew up and attended school in Beaumont, Texas. She went to Forest Park High School and served as class vice president for the first graduating class of West Brook High School, Class of 1982.

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Her first media debut came in the second grade, when she was featured in an article in the Beaumont Enterprise about her love of Roger Staubach and the Dallas Cowboys. The headline read: “The Cowboys’ Youngest Fan” and described her dream — as an eight-year-old — to one day cover the Cowboys. That dream became a reality 26 years later.

 

Williams went on to work for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she covered the Dallas Cowboys for 17 years, quickly becoming one of the most respected reporters in the locker room. “I have so many stories that I will remember for a lifetime, especially growing up as a Cowboys fan,” Williams said.

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Charean began covering the NFL as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat reporter for the Orlando Sentinel in 1994. She covered the Buccaneers for six seasons before joining the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she spent 17 years reporting on the NFL and the Cowboys. She has also worked for the Bryan–College Station Eagle and the Orange Leader and currently contributes to NBC’s digital NFL platform, Pro Football Talk.

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In her more than 29-year career, Williams has covered 24 Super Bowls and seven Olympic Games. She has debated Skip Bayless on ESPN’s First Take, served as an NFL Draft analyst for ESPN, and appeared regularly on Fox Sports 1 and the NFL Network.

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Williams earned her B.S. in journalism from Texas A&M University in 1986 and was inducted into the Texas A&M Former Journalism Students Association Hall of Honor in 2012. In 2017, she received the Blackie Sherrod Award for lifetime achievement in sports journalism in Dallas–Fort Worth, presented by the Dallas Sports Commission in conjunction with major championships hosted in North Texas.

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In 2020, Charean was named a Texas A&M Distinguished Alumna — the highest honor bestowed upon former students of the university. In addition to her football coverage accolades, Williams’s investigative report on NASCAR was ranked among the best in the nation by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

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Charean Williams is also the first woman to serve on the prestigious NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. She has been a member since 2007 and, in 2009, was elected by her peers as the first female president of the Professional Football Writers of America. Future Hall of Fame inductees are selected by a 49-person committee announced annually near the Super Bowl. She also served on the Centennial Slate Blue-Ribbon Panel, which selected 15 enshrinees for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2020 Centennial Class — a group that included Coach Jimmy Johnson.

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Charean continues to be recognized for her exceptional career, most recently in her home state of Texas, where she was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in May 2020 for her outstanding contributions to journalism.