Mina Kimes Talks X’s and O’s Like a True Football Guy
By James Moreau | 26 Aug, 2025

Her blend of deep football knowledge and sharp wit has made Mina Kimes a highly paid and respected analyst in the male-dominated world of sports media.

The depth of her NFL analyses has made Mina Kimes one of the most respected female voices in sports media.

Since joining ESPN in 2014 Kimes has made regular appearances on First Take, Highly Questionable, Pardon the Interruption, and Around the Horn.  She was named an analyst for NFL Live in 2020 alongside former players Dan Orlovsky, Marcus Spears, Ryan Clark, and Keyshawn Johnson. 

Her acumen with X’s and O’s is the heart of The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, a football-focused podcast produced by Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions since 2022.  The podcast can be found on her YouTube channel which has nearly 90,000 subscribers.  The pigskin prof has won 900,000 followers on X and 376,000 on Instagram.

In September 2023 Kimes signed a multiyear deal with ESPN at $1.7 million per year.  Her podcast deal with Omaha Productions is separate and reportedly pushes her combined income past $2 million annually.

Kimes has also worked as a color commentator for Los Angeles Rams preseason games.

Outside of sports she has hosted after-shows for the Netflix series Love is Blind and HBO’s Big Little Lies.  She was a Celebrity Jeopardy! contestant who won her first show.

Before her sports media career Kimes was a business journalist working for Fortune Magazine from 2007 to 2013 and as a Bloomberg News investigative reporter in 2013.

Kimes was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Gilbert, Arizona where she was her high school’s valedictorian. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale with a bachelor of arts in English in 2007.  Kimes is Korean on her mother’s side.  She has been married since 2015 and welcomed a son in 2023.  She has joked that she decided to have a kid in part because they had the “cap space.”