Bud Collins came to Boston for graduate school and stayed in the city for the sports journalism. Since then, he has interviewed legendary athletes, such as Muhammad Ali and Roger Federer, and worked for the Boston Globe, NBC and ESPN.
‘This life of mine has been very fortunate . . . because I’ve gotten to go to a lot of places on somebody else’s bill,’ Collins said.
Collins told stories about coming to Boston and covering boxing and tennis as a journalist to 50 students at BU’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Tuesday night. HGARC currently houses a collection of Collins’ papers.
‘BU is the reason I came to Boston,’ Collins said. ‘I came in 1954 to spend one year. I’m still here.’
Upon his return from war, Collins said he discovered the G.I. Bill would not pay for all his expenses and was forced to look for a job.
‘I started out as a copy boy. I was just trying to make enough money to stay at BU,’ Collins said. ‘I got lucky ‘-‘- a guy left and [the Boston Herald] had an opening.’
Collins got a full-time job covering sports without obtaining a journalism degree, he said.
‘In those days, Boston was a great boxing town. It was a great sport to cover,’ Collins said. ‘There were lots of opportunities to cover lots of different things.’
Collins said he joined WGBH-TV Boston, which was the first station to broadcast a tennis tournament in its entirety on TV.
‘They thought we should cover tennis because nobody else does it,’ Collins said.
Though athletes he interviewed included greats Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King and John McEnroe, Collins said Muhammad Ali was the best athlete to interview.
‘He was unabashedly egotistical, but in a very nice way,’ Collins said.
Known for wearing individualistic custom-made pants made from fabrics he collects on his travels, Collins solidified his name over the 35 years he spent at NBC by interviewing the Wimbledon champion each year.
‘The man who still makes these trousers . . . said one day, ‘You look very boring on television,” Collins said. ‘In 1966 they were pretty inflaming. I wanted to disappear . . . but then I decided I kind of liked it.’
Collins has faced critics over the course of his career he said. When he picked tennis player Rafael Nadal to win over Federer at this year’s Australian Open, a prediction that turned out to be correct, Collins said one critic told him to retire.
‘But what would I do, raise goats in the backyard?’ Collins said. ‘No, I guess I won’t retire.’
Students said they came to the event for class, or because they have been familiar with Bud Collins’ work over the years.
‘Bud is like a walking encyclopedia,’ School of Law student Eric Hsu said. ‘We’re lucky that he has some connections to BU.’
Hsu said he appreciated his sense of history in evaluating modern players.
‘I think it’s interesting how he puts Federer into kind of an historical context,’ Hsu said.
Former BU history professor Saul Engelbourg said he’s been following tennis since before World War II.
‘He had an interesting career, including things about which I knew nothing,’ Engelbourg said.
LAW student Richard Wang said seeing Collins in person was surreal.
‘You see him every Sunday in June [at Wimbledon] interviewing the players after the match,’ Wang said. ‘I thought it was neat how he sort of grew up with the sport.’
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