After more than two decades, USA Today sports television columnist Rudy Martzke will hang up his pen and his remote control when his final column appears Friday.
Martzke’s columns are considered a must-read by sports television professionals, even if they sometimes are loath to admit it.
 |
| Martzke |
“For 23 years most people in the media have claimed they never read him, when the reality is we all read him,” said Fox Sports President Ed Goren. “It’s always been an interesting column for people in the media, and a frustrating column. I don’t think there’s any executive in sports television who hasn’t called Rudy to yell at him.”
USA Today sports section managing editor Monte Lorell said sports TV will remain a core piece of the newspaper’s coverage, but no final decision has been made on if Martzke will be replaced.
Columns by fellow USA Today sports television writer Michael Hiestand will assume the schedule held by Martzke’s column for an interim.
Martzke critiqued production and on-air talent, reported ratings and often broke news.
In major rights negotiations, Martzke reported the blow by blow. Usually, every possible incarnation of what a new television deal could look like ended up in Martzke’s column at some point. At NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s Super Bowl press conference this year, the commissioner made a point of disputing the latest report by Martzke, by name.
While questioning Martzke’s accuracy was a pastime for top sports television executives, most say that in the end he was fair and right far more often than he was wrong.
They also credit him with creating the genre of the sports television column.
“He certainly changed the whole complexion of covering television,” said ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale. “His Monday column, though a lot of guys will not admit it, they all ran to it to read his evaluation.”
Efforts to reach Martzke were unsuccessful.
Martzke takes some of the credit for discovering Bob Costas. Long before joining USA Today, Marztke was vice president of operations for the ABA St. Louis Spirits, and played a role in hiring the then 22-year-old Costas as play-by-play man on radio station KMOX.
At the time, Costas said, Martzke was not so appreciative of fair and balanced sportscasting, and he objected to Costas’ occasional praise of the opposition and critiques of the Spirits.
“He soft-pedals the fact that he was once angry enough to fire me and [team owner] Harry Weltman had to talk him out of that,” Costas said.
Since then, Costas said Martzke has always been fair.
“He has worked at his job,” he said. “He goes to the big events and covers them from a television in the production truck, in and around the broadcasters. He works stories with sports television executives and producers and announcers. He works it like a beat. A lot of other guys who do it just write reviews off what they see on television.”
