Fred Russell (August 27, 1906 – January 26, 2003) was an American sportswriter from Tennessee who served as sports editor for the Nashville Banner newspaper for 68 years (1930–1998).

Born in 1906, Russell grew up in Wartrace, Tennessee, about 50 miles southeast of Nashville, on the main line of the railroad to Chattanooga.

[2] Russell's father started a newspaper, the Wartrace Tribune, but it was short-lived; he became a salesman for a wholesale grocery company and traveled the middle Tennessee territory with a horse and buggy in his early career.

[3][5] Russell attended Nashville's Duncan College Preparatory School for Boys,[6] which was located at a site now occupied by Vanderbilt University's Memorial Gymnasium.

[8]: 6  He wanted a job as a newspaper office boy, but it only paid three dollars per week and he could make much more by working at a soda fountain downtown at the United Cigar Store.

[8]: 18  He was offered a job at the Nashville Banner ; first writing obituaries, then working the police beat, then covering Vanderbilt football.

Russell's career began in the so-called Golden Age of sports—a period beginning about the 1920s when newspapers and radio were a prominent form of media and news.

Russell gained national exposure in the mid-twentieth century for writing a widely-read annual college football article, the "Pigskin Preview", for The Saturday Evening Post.

His article, "Touchdown Engineer" appeared in the issue leading up to the highly anticipated 1940 Rose Bowl (Tennessee vs. USC) and put Russell on the national scene in sportswriting.

[8]: 205  Endowed by the Thoroughbred Racing Association (TRA),[b] the scholarship is awarded annually to an incoming first-year student with an interest in sportswriting.

[8]: 210  For over fifty years, the scholarship has attracted some of the nation's top journalistic talent coming out of high school.

[8]: 80  Russell served its chairman from 1964 to 1991, a role perfectly suited for him because he had, according to Derr, "an instinctive sense of fairness and prudence" along with significant experience in college football and relationships with the coaches and administrators.

[8]: 80  Derr said, "From Paul Bryant to Archie Manning, Frank Broyles to Lee Corso, Johnny Majors to Lou Holtz, Russell had relationships with all of them.

During World War II, the American military distributed I'll Try Anything Twice to soldiers as one of 1300 titles in its Armed Services Editions.

In 1937, the two papers formed a Joint Operating Agreement to reduce costs by putting both in the same building and using the same printing presses.

[8]: 146  Russell, the Banner sports editor, had sources on the inside happenings of Vanderbilt athletics and many more contacts nationally than did the Tennessean.

Writing out his columns on his gray manual Royal typewriter,[20]: 24  Russell's objectives were clear: get the story, protect your sources, and make sure nothing leaked from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning after the Tennessean hit the stands.

"[8]: 152 In 1955, on Russell’s 25th Anniversary of writing at the Nashville Banner, the newspaper held an invitation-only gala for him that included more than 600 guests.

[8]: 137  College hall of fame player and coach Johnny Majors said, "You could talk off the record with him and you knew you wouldn't be reported unless he cleared it with you.

"[8]: 137 Russell covered major championship boxing and was a long-time friend of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey.

[8]: 133  They first met in 1937 on a four-day train ride from Birmingham to Pasadena when University of Alabama went to play in the 1937 Rose Bowl.

He often traveled with fellow sportswriter Red Smith, and they would frequently stay with players at venues such as the Soreno Hotel in St.

[22] After the games, their wives drove to the next town while the two men sat in the back seat with typewriters creating their columns.

[8]: 35 Russell was one of the primary journalists who covered Tennessee State University, an HBCU, whose women's track team, the "Tigerbelles", achieved international acclaim in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

[25] Wilma Rudolph, coached by TSU's Ed Temple, became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.

[26] Temple spent the 1950s building his program[27]: 309  even though the historically black college had run-down facilities[8]: 98  and lacked scholarships.

[c] After Rudolph's olympic stardom, Temple said, "The biggest disappointment in all my 44 years was when we came back from Rome and [the university] didn't get a cent [for scholarships and facilities]"[8]: 99  He confided his frustration to Russell who personally called the Governor of Tennessee, Buford Ellington and arranged for Temple to go downtown and meet with the governor.

With Temple sitting in his office, Ellington phoned the commissioner of colleges and conditions at the university began to improve rapidly.

Two personal tragedies that Russell endured in his life were the death of his wife Kay in 1996 and the demise of the Nashville Banner in 1998.