Dr. Z, the ultimate football scholar, dies 10 years after massive stroke
One Sunday afternoon I covered an NFL game in Chicago and was fortunate enough to be assigned a seat directly behind Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman. I was eager to learn the work process of the ultimate media authority on pro football.
From my vantage point at Soldier Field I saw him typing on a small portable typewriter at a time, late 1980s, when almost all sportswriters had converted to laptop computers.
But what fascinated me most about Dr. Z, as he was called, was his devotion to a sprawling multicolored chart on which he emphatically wrote notes and arrows, detailing each play.
So now I could see how he makes himself an expert, through rigorous study. So that’s why his player evaluations and power rankings always seemed accurate. He had an acute sense for when a champion was about to fall. He was one of the few who predicted in SI that the New York Giants would topple the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
From his copious notes he would grade every player on his performance that day. It was like watching Andy Reid breaking down a film, and yet, this was live.
Sadly, Paul Zimmerman no longer is. Arguably the greatest football writer ever, he died Thursday at 86 in Indiana. Even sadder was his prolonged demise after three strokes ten years ago disabled him. From then on he could not walk or write or speak more than a few words.
How tragic that this master communicator was almost totally muted for the final decade of his life, though he was cognitively sharp until 2013.
Dr. Z was a passionate and witty critic. He once railed about the diminishing visibility of star players: “It’s corporate football and I think it’s dull. I hear Woody Widenhofer, the Steelers’ defensive coordinator, tell me, ‘We can use 20 diffferent players on a series. Everybody makes a contribution.’ I wanna kill him. Make a contribution? What is this, the March of Dimes?”
On at least one occasion his irrepressible candor cost him a job. Covering the draft for ESPN in the 1980s, Zimmerman said, “The player of the ‘90s will be so sophisticated that he will be able to pass any steroid test they come up with.”
The comment stirred so much protest from the NFL office that Zimmerman lost his network job.
Not that he ever had to worry about finding another job. He was remarkably versatile; he wrote a wine column for the New York Post.
The criticism professional athletes constantly make of sportswriters is that “they never played the game.” Well, Zimmerman did.
He briefly played intercollegiate football for Stanford, and he played on the offensive llne of the Columbia Lions, while writing for the Columbia Daily Spectator. He once sparred with Ernest Hemingway.
He knew more than his competitors and he knew how to write it well. He was born in Philadelphia, where abrasive sportswriting is encouraged.
He had a pleasant demeanor except when others would talk as if they knew more than they did. “You don’t know enough yet to express that strong an opinion,” he once reprimanded a younger reporter.
People who worked with him said he was difficult, that he would excoriate editors for changing a precious word of his prose. But he’s one of the sportswriters I miss the most. I always looked forward to reading everything he wrote.
