John Feinstein, Who Wrote ‘A Season on the Brink,’ Dies at 69

John Feinstein, an indefatigable sportswriter for The Washington Post and the author of more than 40 books, including the best sellers “A Season on the Brink” (1986) and “A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour” (1995), died on Thursday at his brother’s home in McLean, Va. He was 69.

His brother, Robert, said the cause was probably a heart attack.

Mr. Feinstein’s last column, about Michigan State men’s basketball coach, Tom Izzo, appeared in The Post on Thursday.

Mr. Feinstein became one of America’s best-known sportswriters after “A Season on the Brink,” which focused on the 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team led by the mercurial coach Bobby Knight, became a best seller. The book gave readers the kind of journalistic access to Mr. Knight, a brilliant tactician but a complicated personality, that sports books usually did not offer.

Although Mr. Knight didn’t speak to Mr. Feinstein for eight years after the book’s publication — angry about all the profanity that spilled from his mouth and onto its pages — Mr. Feinstein praised the coach after his death in 2023 for boosting his career.

Mr. Feinstein’s “A Season on the Brink” focused on the 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team led by the mercurial coach Bobby Knight. It became a best seller and was made into a TV movie.Credit…Macmillan

In a column for The Post, Mr. Feinstein wrote that the open door Mr. Knight gave him made “A Season on the Brink” an enormous success, “which has allowed me to pick and choose book topics for the past 38 years.”

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