Dennis Deninger is an innovative educator and three-time Emmy-award winning former ESPN production executive and who has produced live sports television from six continents and across the USA. He is Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University where he was the founding director of the sports communications graduate program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications. He was twice recognized by Falk College at Syracuse for excellence in teaching, in 2014 and 2024.

Dennis Deninger is the author of The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday, published in 2024 by Rowman and Littlefield. He also wrote two textbooks, Live Sports Media: The What, How and Why of Sports Broadcasting and Sports on Television, both published by Routledge.  He spent 25 years at ESPN leading production teams for studio programming, live remote events, and digital video platforms.

Deninger joined ESPN in October 1982 as the first Coordinating Producer for SportsCenter and held that position until 1986.  That was the year he created the Scholastic Sports America series, which continued for 15 years on ESPN.  During the course of his career at ESPN, Dennis Deninger launched more than a dozen new televised series and events. He was head of production for ESPN Digital where he created the most successful daily sports video series in the history of the internet, SportsCenter Right Now.

Deninger’s comments and analysis have been quoted in national and international media including The New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, ABC News, CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the Financial Times, the International Business Times, The Guardian, the Sporting News and the NFL Network. 

In his hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut, Deninger serves on the board of directors of the Cheshire Education Foundation, which provides private funds and support for the public school system. He was an elected member of the Cheshire Board of Education in the 1990s.

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This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Cheshire Public Library.