Will Leitch
Will Leitch is an Opinions columnist at The Washington Post who uses sports and pop culture to explore how fandom, power and modern media shape everyday life. His columns focus less on box scores and more on the emotions and structures behind being a fan, from long-suffering basketball loyalists to viewers of late-night television. A longtime sports and culture writer and author, he brings experience across outlets and formats to a column that treats games, shows and movies as windows into contemporary America.
Sports fandom, authority and the emotional cost of loyalty
Leitch’s sports work centers on what it feels like to be a fan in systems where power is distant and outcomes are often unfair. In his writing on the NFL commissioner, he examines how Roger Goodell’s accountability to 32 team owners leaves supporters to absorb the fallout of league decisions they cannot control.
His coverage of college football coaches such as Lane Kiffin looks at the cycle in which fan bases return to figures they profess to dislike because winning and familiarity override frustration.
In basketball and women’s sports, he tracks how culture wars and online arguments distort the conversation around leagues like the WNBA, even when the on-court product is strong. Across these pieces, he ties strategy and governance to the lived experience of loyalty, focusing on the gap between how institutions operate and how fans feel.
Global soccer, tournaments and chance
Leitch writes regularly about international soccer and major tournaments, treating them as shared civic events rather than niche sports broadcasts. He has described a recent World Cup as a “huge success” and as a moment that helped restore his faith in the United States, emphasizing crowds, public celebrations and the sense of national participation around the matches. In his column on penalty kicks, he leans into their arbitrariness, arguing that the drama comes from accepting that crucial outcomes hinge on luck as much as skill. His pieces on U.S. soccer pundits such as Alexi Lalas highlight how commentary can both energize and exasperate supporters, turning postgame analysis into part of the spectacle. These stories blend tactical detail with reflections on fairness, chance and identity, using global tournaments to ask what kind of stories fans want sports to tell.
Late-night television, comedy and modern media
Alongside sports, Leitch devotes substantial attention to television and film, treating them as parallel arenas of fandom and status. His column on John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” describes late-night satire as a stabilizing force in a chaotic news environment, connecting a personal viewing experiment to broader questions about how audiences process politics through comedy.
Pieces on figures such as Andy Rooney and Stephen Colbert examine why certain personalities once defined television and why that model of late-night commentary now struggles, blending industry data with cultural history. In film coverage, he writes about Christopher Nolan’s large-scale epics, the strain of superhero fatigue and whether directors such as Steven Spielberg can still command attention, framing each as a test of how much spectacle and legacy matter to contemporary viewers. His October 2026 column asking where big-screen comedies have gone links the decline of studio comedy to the rise of horror as “the funniest thing” in theaters, treating genre shifts as evidence of changing audience tastes and risk profiles.
Across these topics, he approaches entertainment with the same fan-centered lens he uses for sports, attentive to how viewers negotiate nostalgia, time and trust.
Newsletter voice and cross-platform presence
Leitch extends his column sensibility into a newsletter for The Washington Post titled “Fanfare With Will Leitch,” published weekly. The newsletter is positioned as a place where he unpacks the stories, people and cultural moments capturing the country’s attention, reinforcing his focus on the overlap between sports, media and everyday culture.
Public professional bios describe him as a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor at New York magazine and the founder of the sports site Deadspin, noting that he also writes for outlets including MLB.com and other major publications. These profiles present him as an author of multiple books and as a critic involved in film-focused projects, underlining that his Washington Post work is part of a broader career in sports and culture writing.
Taken together, his newsletter, columns and external roles form a consistent voice: a writer who treats fandom as a serious subject and uses opinion-driven, narrative pieces to connect games and shows to the larger mood of the country.
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