A sports columnist is a writer whose primary job is to give his or her opinion on sports. A sports columnist, who usually must work up from being a regular sports writer, is typically someone who has many years of experience – and therefore has developed a respected presence within a sports community to the point that his or her opinion is highly regarded among readers.

Because the job of a sports columnist is to give his or her opinion, sports columnists are often – rightly or wrongly – thought of as being rude or disagreeable. The tone of their work is often negative, but their job is also to find stories which might otherwise not be found – a sports columnist must typically become a newspaper's best sports reporter first. Depending on the status of a newspaper within a community, a sports columnist can often influence public opinion and thus influence – at least in a small way – the actions of a team. If a sports columnist calls for a coach to be fired, and the public opinion becomes that the coach should be fired, the team could be inclined to fire that coach.

A sports columnist is generally required to write somewhere around three columns per week. Columns can be generated from games or events – usually, the columnist will accompany a reporter to a game, writing a column to go along with the game story – or they can be more like features. These feature-type columns often resemble features more than columns, with perhaps only a veiled opinion underlying the tone of the column. The sports columnist might also be required to write an occasional "takeout" – a particularly long and multilayered feature – once a month or so.

Because of the relatively light workload – and because of the experience and status the writer has attained through his or her career – it is common for a sports columnist to branch out into writing books, which can be one of the most lucrative opportunities afforded a sports journalist. In modern times, it has become common for columnists at very large metropolitan newspapers – such as the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times – to branch into radio and television work. In this way, a sports columnist can often become a celebrity in his or her own right.