Bud Collins, a tennis writer who foreshadowed today's journalists as multimedia brands, died Friday in Brookline, Mass., The Boston Globe reported. He was 86.
As The Globe's obituary put it: "In the early 1960s, after joining The Globe as a tennis writer, Bud Collins took a giant leap into the future of sports journalism when he stepped in front of a TV camera to offer commentary."
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Known as much for his wild trousers as his punchy, upbeat yet pointed commentary that strayed outside tennis' staid lines, Collins had been in failing health. He was able to travel in September to New York for the U.S. Open, where the media center was named in his honor.
Collins is considered the first sports print journalist to establish a regular presence on TV, a harbinger of networks that regularly feature reporters who both write and appear in front of the camera.
He began by offering tennis commentary on WGBH in Boston but became a regular on NBC's Wimbledon coverage from the 1970s into the new millennium. He also appeared regularly on ESPN, the Tennis Channel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"He broke the barrier, the notion that you could be a newspaper guy and they would want you on TV," Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy said in his obituary.
According to The Globe, when Collins was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1994, his pants got a shout-out in the citation.
He received the Associated Press Sports Editors' Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement in sports writing in 1999, an award named for the longtime New York Times columnist.
