Blount was born in 1941 in Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up in Decatur, Georgia. He attended Ponce de Leon Elementary School and graduated from Decatur High School in Decatur, Georgia, where he was class president and editor of the school newspaper, The Scribbler. He received the Grantland Rice Journalism Scholarship to study journalism at Vanderbilt University in 1963 where he distinguished himself and was Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude. He went on to Harvard University where he received his M.A degree in 1964. He joined the U.S. Army in l964 to 1966, thereafter becoming a reporter and columnist for Atlanta Journal and part-time English instructor at Georgia State College until 1968. Since 1975 however, he has been a freelance writer.

Blount has authored 23 books in his career. His first book, about hanging out with the Pittsburgh Steelers, About Three Bricks Shy...And the Load Filled Up was named one of the ten best sports books ever by Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post --and called, by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, “the best of all books about pro football.”

He is a panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me, ex-president of the Authors Guild, a member of PEN and the Fellowship of Southern Authors, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, a Boston Public Library Literary Light, a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary, and an original member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. He comes from Decatur, Georgia and lives in western Massachusetts. In 2009 he received the Thomas Wolfe Award from the University of North Carolina.

He covered the 1992 Democratic and Republican conventions and Presidential election night by commenting live on Comedy Central. Via various media he has reported on the Civil Rights Movement, the Ku Klux Klan, the Olympics and several World Series and Super Bowls.