Rudy Martzke, pioneer columnist for USA TODAY, dies at 82

A pioneer in sports journalism, Rudy Martzke rose to national fame for covering sports television and media in the late 20th and early 21st centuries before it was its own cottage industry. Nobody had covered sports entertainment that way before Martzke started his column at USA TODAY as an original employee during the newspaper’s launch in 1982. Decades later, few – if any – have.

Martzke died Wednesday at the age of 82, his wife Phyllis Martzke – known affectionally to Rudy, those at USA TODAY and in the sports media world as ‘Mouse’ – said following complications from pneumonia.

He is survived by two sons, Michael and Brett, and three grandchildren.

In the heyday for newspapers in America, Martzke’s back-page column ran three times a week and was a must-read for not only people in the business – from the C-Suite to the production truck – but for fans who wanted to see how their opinions stacked up against the announcers they watched all the time.

His words revolutionized how fans watched sports. The Internet was fledgling at best as his career wound down, and social media didn’t exist. To figure out who was up and who needed to improve behind the mic, reading Martzke was essential. The information was valuable. The prose was entertaining.

‘You ever been on a really, really, really scary roller coaster?’ former USA TODAY Sports editor Reid Cherner said. ‘That’s Rudy. You’re scared entire time and then when it was over, you said, ‘Let’s do it again.’

‘The ride down was the single-greatest thrill of my editing career. It was great. You just hung on. Rudy was Rudy. There was nobody better at what he did. He basically created the sports TV column.’

Martzke began his career writing about sports for the East St. Louis Journal and covered the city’s professional teams. But he jumped into the public-relations side of the business and became a publicist and director of operations for the ABA’s Spirits of St. Louis. It was while working there he encouraged the local radio station KMOX to hire a kid from Syracuse University named Bob Costas to call the team’s games in 1974. Costas became a lifelong fan of Martzke’s work, and Martzke said Costas was among his favorite people in the business to cover.

Because of his experience on the PR side of the business, Martzke would often coach younger network representatives on best practices. Beyond Costas, he interacted with every major announcer, analyst and reporter – as well as the executives who employed them – on a consistent basis, to say the least. He always made the extra call.

‘Nobody worked the phones like Rudy Martzke,’ NBC Sports executive vice president for communications Greg Hughes said.

His subjects didn’t always love what he wrote. But he always gave them the time of day.

‘He took every criticism seriously – not that it kept him from writing anything,’ Cherner said.

Dozens of people took to social media Friday afternoon as news of Martzke’s passing circulated.

‘Rudy was both a critic and a reporter. He had sources and he broke stories. He worked it like a beat,’ Costas said.

‘For those of us in the sports TV business, he was social media to us,’ former CBS senior vice president for communications LeslieAnne Wade said. ‘He was our common denominator. His column, that’s how we learned who got promoted, who was fired. There was no other way.’

Martzke retired from USA TODAY in 2005 with his wife to Florida, outside of Orlando. ‘Mouse’ was alongside him for the entire ride of his career.

‘Everything he did, he did with Mouse,’ Cherner said.

There were people on staff who Cherner was closer to than Martzke, but nobody with whom he had more fun.

‘He was as unpredictable as anyone you’ll ever meet,’ Cherner said.

Martzke would write 80 lines – word counts were a futuristic idea – and some section, inevitably, would have to come out. Any suggestion from the editing staff hurt his soul.

‘It was like you insulted one of his children,’ said Cherner.

Bruce Lee “Rudy” Martzke grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism in 1964. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve for six months and spent six years in the reserves, spending one weekend per month on duty.

Rudy and Phyllis met while both were students at Wisconsin but on a spring-break trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They didn’t know each other but were introduced by mutual friends.

Martzke held other roles in the early parts of his career, such as the sports information director for St. Louis University, public relations for the ABA team in Miami (The Floridians) and with The Valley News (Lebanon, New Hampshire). He landed at the Gannett-owned Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and was on the staff that did the mock-up papers for what would become USA TODAY; Martzke’s placeholders led to his signature column.

Even after his retirement, Martzke was constantly on the other end of phone lines connected to USA TODAY as he voiced his various opinions on the paper’s operation since his departure.   

He was the type of person who began his sentences with ‘here’s the thing’ and ended it with the belief he’d swung his conversation partner to his side of whatever debate was being held. He had a distinct voice and held nothing back when using it.

As Cherner put it: ‘He was one of those guys you could argue with forever and then you could just say, ‘OK Rudy I’m with ya.’ … But he listened.’

Listening. Watching. Reporting. All what made Rudy Martzke a trailblazer in a business that’s been around for a long time.

‘They ain’t making another Rudy,’ Cherner said, “that’s for sure.’

USA TODAY Sports columnist Jarrett Bell contributed to this story.