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Dan Jenkins, a sportswriter whose rollicking irreverence enlivened Sports Illustrated’s pages for nearly 25 years and animated several novels, including “Semi-Tough,” a sendup of the steroidal appetites, attitudes and hype in pro football that became a classic of sports lit, died on Thursday in Fort Worth. He was 90.
He had experienced heart and renal failure and had recently broken his hip, said his daughter, Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for The Washington Post.
Mr. Jenkins was among a cadre of Sports Illustrated writers — including Roy Blount Jr., Mark Kram and Frank Deford — recruited by André Laguerre, the managing editor who oversaw the magazine’s emergence as a leader in literate, and occasionally literary, sports journalism as well as a powerhouse in the Time Inc.