Cris Collinsworth is a former NFL wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals and has spent much of his careeer after football in various NFL broadcasting positions.
As a wide receiver at the University of Florida Collinsworth made the College Football All-America Team as a senior. During his career at Florida, he caught 120 passes for 1,977 yards and 14 touchdowns, while also scoring 2 rushing touchdowns and 1 on a kickoff return.
After college, Collinsworth was drafted by the National Football League's Cincinnati Bengals in the second round of the 1981 NFL Draft.
During his NFL career, Cris Collinsworth surpassed 1,000 yards receiving four times (in 1981, 1983, 1985, and 1986) and was named to the Pro Bowl in 1981, 1982 and 1983. At 6' 5" in height, Collinsworth often created mismatches against much smaller cornerbacks. In addition to his height advantage, Collinsworth was a legitimate "deep threat" due to his speed.
In Super Bowl XVI, Collinsworth caught four passes for 107 yards.
In 1985, Collinsworth signed with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League, but the contract was voided when he failed the physical due to a bad ankle. He returned to the Bengals and played for them until the end of the 1988 season, catching 3 passes for 40 yards in Super Bowl XXIII, the final game of his career. He finished his 8-season career with 417 receptions for 6,698 yards and 36 touchdowns in 107 games.
In 1991, Collinsworth received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
After retirement, Collinsworth began his broadcasting career as a sports radio talk show host on Cincinnati station WLW. Initially he was a guest host for Bob Trumpy (himself another Bengals alumnus), but took over the show full-time as Trumpy accepted more television assignments. He then became a reporter for HBO's Inside the NFL.
In 1990, he became a part of the NBC network's NFL broadcasts, as well as some of the college programming. He joined the NBC pregame show in 1996.
In 1998, Collinsworth joined the NFL on FOX team after FOX gained the AFC broadcast rights to CBS. After several years as a color commentator on the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show, Collinsworth was assigned to the network's lead game broadcasting crew (teaming with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman) in 2002. He worked on Fox's Super Bowl XXXIX telecast three years later.
In 2006, Collinsworth could be seen on three networks during football season. In addition to co-hosting Inside the NFL on HBO, he returned to NBC as a studio analyst for that network's Sunday night NFL coverage and does color commentary on the NFL Network. He also served as color commentator for NFL Network Thursday night games (and one Saturday-night game) alongside play-by-play man Bryant Gumbel. In 2007, Collinsworth was the color commentator on NBC's Notre Dame Football package.
In May 2006 he added a fifth with an Emmy Award again in the category "Outstanding Sports Personality/Studio Analyst" for his work on HBO. It was announced on April 16, 2009 that Collinsworth would fill the role vacated by John Madden on NBC's Sunday Night Football
