About Dan Jenkins

By George Solomon

Jenkins has been at sportswriting for more than 60 years, starting at the Fort Worth Press after growing up in Fort Worth, attending R.L. Paschal High School and Texas Christian University. At TCU, he played on the golf team and became a college football fan for life. He also read the sports pages.

Always a newspaperman, at least in his heart, Jenkins left the Dallas Times Herald in 1963 for Sports Illustrated where for 24 years he delighted readers, writing more than 500 stories about college football, golf and professional football, among other sports.

In 1972, he wrote his first novel, “ Semi-Tough” and over the years has written more than 24 books—fiction and non-fiction, including several that were turned into films.

He left Sports Illustrated in 1985 to write books and write columns for Golf Digest and Playboy. His latest book, “His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir, (288 pages) published by DOUBLEDAY, 2014.

Of his distinguished career, Dan Jenkins told Isabelle Khurshudyan of the University of South Carolina, class of 2013: “If I’d never had a chance or lacked the ability to write anything but bowling agate, I’d have been happy doing it the rest of my life.”

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