Ed Mailliard honored with Dow Carnahan Media Award at PAC Football Media Day
· Yahoo Sports
Ed Mailliard has been to more fanciful places than Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in his illustrious 50-year career as a sports media member.
That’s not to say Saint Vincent College, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ training camp for 60 years now, is beneath Mailliard. It’s quite the opposite, in fact.
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Mailliard, a Meadville native, has spent 40 years as a sports photographer. His most recognizable work can be seen on Topps’ trading cards for the MLB’s spring training, which he has been doing since 1987. But Malliard’s sports career began long before those iconic photos.
It started in 1972, when Mailliard began working for the Meadville Tribune as a sportswriter. He retired from the Tribune in 2013, but he stayed active in the local sports scene by continuing to shoot photos for Allegheny College other local schools.
Over the course of 54 years, Mailliard has been promoting local athletes through his photography work. His roots are deep in the Crawford County Area and his passion for Allegheny College athletics is what brought him to Saint Vincent College on Tuesday.
Since 2016, the Presidents’ Athletic Conference has awarded the Dow Carnahan Media Award to a media member or on-campus representative for their coverage or promotion of the conference’s student athletes, coaches and programs.
On Tuesday, Mailliard became the 11th winner of the award.
“This is a distinguished award that I was really surprised to hear that I was receiving,” Mailliard said in his acceptance speech. “And I did some research on previous winners and I quickly realized I was in pretty good company. I’m truly humbled to accept this on their behalf as well as my own.”
The Dow Carnahan Award gets its namesake from former Saint Vincent College play-by-play announcer Dow Carnahan. The legendary Latrobe voice spent 30 years at WCNS-AM 1480, calling numerous Saint Vincent and Latrobe High School football and basketball games.
Like Carnahan, Mailliard recognized early on the impact the PAC had on his community.
“54 years ago next month,” Mailliard said, “I, as a sportswriter for the Middle Tribune, covered my first Presidents’ Athletic Conference event and I quickly realized what a special place the PAC holds in this region.”
While Mailliard has been all over the country shooting photos of some of sports’ best players, his heart is with Meadville and in turn the PAC, which shows in his work.
Yes, he’s worked with brands such as Sports Illustrated, Sporting News, Baseball Digest and Topps. But he didn’t do it for the recognition or the stature. He did it out of love.
Receiving the Dow Carnahan award, just like the opportunity to work for those brands, is a byproduct of a passion to freeze moments in time for fans to look back on.
Sure, he’s got photos of Shohei Ohtani, but the way he takes photos of the Dodgers’ ace is the same way he does of Allegheny athletes.
“… I always say, always take a knee because you make the players look taller, you make them look bigger and stronger, and get ready if they get the ball in their hands.”
Sports are sports. And it’s that approach that made Ed Mailliard the 2026 Dow Carnahan Awardee.