Armen Keteyian
Armen Keteyian has been a correspondent on 60 Minutes Sports, the sports edition of the CBS News magazine that appears on Showtime, since its debut in January 2013. The next month, he was the only reporter inside the control room at Super Bowl XLVII when the lights went out. Other standout stories he reported for 60 Minutes Sports include the plight of early black NFL quarterbacks, the Penn State scandal, a rare interview with heralded Alabama Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban an investigation of the controversial NFL concussion settlement. He also contributes to 60 Minutes, on which he broke the news that several Russian medal winners at the Sochi Olympics were using steroids.
Few can equal Keteyian’s decades of experience as a sports journalist, beginning in print as an investigative reporter at the most prestigious sports print magazine, up through network news and cable television sports assignments at the highest levels, including CBS Sports’ “The NFL Today” and 60 Minutes. Expanding beyond sports, Keteyian reached a new level in his career as Chief Investigative Reporter for the CBS Evening News, where he was nominated five times and won three Emmy awards since joining the broadcast in 2006.
Keteyian, an 11-time Emmy award winner, was honored in 2013 for his revealing story about personal information stored on resold copiers that can be mined by identity thieves. In September 2010, he won for “Rape in America: Justice Denied,” a five-month 2009 investigation into the startling backlog of tens of thousands of rape kits. In 2008, he revealed the shockingly high suicide rates of veterans, another Emmy winner.
From December 1997 to March 2006, Keteyian was a special features reporter for CBS Sports in New York, where he roamed the sidelines during top NFL games and covered the league for “The NFL Today.” He also regularly covered the NCAA Basketball Tournament and anchored the network’s award-winning coverage of the Tour de France. During that period, through a special arrangement with HBO, he was also a featured correspondent for HBO Sports’ magazine show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”
In July of 2002, HBO Sports, as part of its highly acclaimed “Sports of the 20th Century” series, aired a documentary co-produced and co-written by Keteyian entitled “A City on Fire: The Story of the ‘68 Detroit Tigers.”
Prior to joining CBS and HBO, Keteyian worked as a network correspondent for ABC News in New York for eight years (1989-97). During that time he wrote and reported more than 400 stories on a wide variety of sports-related issues for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” “Nightline,” and other ABC News broadcasts. Prior to joining ABC News, Keteyian worked as a writer-reporter for Sports Illustrated in New York for seven years (1982-89), specializing in investigations. While there he reported on subjects ranging from corruption in college football and basketball, to sports gambling in America, to point shaving scandals, to the widening use of steroids in professional and amateur sports.
Keteyian has also written or co-written 10 books including, “The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big Time College Football” and “Why You Crying,” The New York Times bestselling autobiography of actor/comedian George Lopez. Among his previous books are: “Money Players: Days and Nights Inside the New NBA,” a critically acclaimed account of the rise of the NBA under David Stern; the New York Times bestseller “Raw Recruits,” and the autobiographies of baseball great Catfish Hunter and Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary.
He began his career as a sports and feature writer in San Diego, where he was graduated cum laude from San Diego State University in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Keteyian was a starting infielder on the university’s baseball team. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives with his wife, Dede, in New York City and Fairfield, Connecticut.