Boston Globe columnist and former NBC analyst Bud Collins has signed on to cover tennis for ESPN, starting with this month’s U.S. Open.
Collins, who was abruptly fired from NBC in July, will analyze the fourth and final Grand Slam of 2007 on ESPN’s various studio shows — ranging from SportsCenter to ESPNews. Starting next year, Collins will join the broadcast team on ESPN’s coverage of the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. Exactly what role Collins will have is unclear; his last several years with NBC saw him relegated to the role of pseudo sideline reporter, conducting interviews after the end of the women’s and men’s championship matches at Wimbledon. According to Globe writer Susan Bickelhaupt, Collins will be teamed with Dick Enberg and Cliff Drysdale, indicating that he will actually analyze matches.
This move gives ESPN arguably the most impressive line-up of tennis broadcasters. Collins, Enberg and Drysdale are tennis broadcasting institutions whose presence, in addition to giving ESPN telecasts a strong amount of credibility, can hopefully balance out the presence of analysts like Brad Gilbert. Whether this will warm hard-to-please tennis fans to ESPN’s coverage is uncertain.
