Mary Kay Cabot rose from Plain Dealer intern to being the winner of PFWA’s 2025 Bill Nunn Jr. Award for her coverage of the Cleveland Browns with the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com. The award recognizes those who have made a long and distinguished contribution to pro football through their coverage and will be honored at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement.
A trailblazer, Cabot, a native Clevelander and Kent State alum, became one of the first full-time female beat writers in the NFL and the first in the Cleveland market at 29 years old in 1991.
Since then, she has covered pro football in Cleveland for 36 years. Even earning the nickname “The Queen of the Damned” in a 2016 The Ringer article for her longtime coverage of the Browns.
Through those 36 years, she has won multiple awards for her coverage, including the 2015 Ohio Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association, and the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Sportswriter of the Year in 2024.
Cabot has been a finalist for the Bill Nunn Jr. Award in 2023 and 2024. In her 2022 introduction to the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame, legendary Cleveland reporter Terry Pluto told Ideastream that the Pro Football Hall of Fame was a possibility for Cabot.
“One day she might end up in (the) Pro Football Hall of Fame, the media wing. That's a possibility. I mean, she's one of the pioneers…Mary Kay, I don't know when she sleeps. She's relentless.”
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