Special announcement: Chip Brown joins OB

Chip Brown, an award-winning reporter and columnist for The Dallas Morning News the last 10 years, has joined the Yahoo!/Rivals.com family and will have his coverage of the Texas Longhorns featured on Orangebloods.com beginning Aug. 1.

Brown has covered Texas since 1992, when he moved to Austin as a reporter for The Associated Press. He joined The Dallas Morning News in 1998 and continued to cover the Longhorns until 2001, when he moved to Dallas to cover the Dallas Cowboys for two seasons before returning to Austin to resume coverage of the Longhorns in 2003. Brown has also been the Big 12 columnist at the Morning News the past three years. In 2004, Brown also covered the Big 12 for ESPN.com.

In covering Texas, Brown has documented the highs and lows of the John Mackovic Era, Ricky Williams' Heisman Trophy run in Mack Brown's first year and the 2005 national championship. One of Brown's claims to fame was asking the question that prompted James Brown to say Texas could beat Nebraska by three touchdowns in the 1996 Big 12 title game.

In addition to breaking numerous stories on the Texas and Big 12 beats for the Morning News, he has written memorable player features and columns with a unique, conversational writing style. Brown has covered the Super Bowl, BCS national title game, the Final Four, NBA Finals, Wimbledon and The Masters. He also does an afternoon radio show with Sean Adams of Orangebloods.com on 1530 ESPN Austin that can be heard every day from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. CT (espnaustin.com).

Brown's awards include the Dougherty Award as the top young writer in The Associated Press (1992) and a Headliner Award for the best sports writing in Texas (1998).

Brown grew up in Kalamazoo, Mi., where he was a decorated junior tennis player and won a state championship at Loy Norrix High School. Brown attended SMU, where he attempted to play tennis for the top-ranked Mustangs but soon realized his future was in covering sports, not competing in them any longer.

"This is a landmark day in the history of our website," Orangebloods.com owner/publisher Geoff Ketchum said. "Our ultimate goal has always been to emerge as not just the top website covering Longhorn athletics, but we've wanted to eventually become the ultimate one-stop-shop for Longhorn football fans. We feel like in adding Chip to the Rivals family, we've added the best beat reporter of Longhorn football on the planet and our expectations are to blow away everyone's concept of what outstanding coverage of the team looks like. I've long been an admirer of Chip and now that we have a chance to work together on a daily basis, I believe that Orangebloods is about to reach new levels. Simply put, this is just an incredibly exciting day."