Paul Zimmerman
Encyclopedia
Paul Lionel Zimmerman is the son of Charles S. Zimmerman
and Rose Zimmerman. Zimmerman, also known to readers as "Dr. Z", is an American football
sportswriter who wrote for the weekly magazine Sports Illustrated
, as well as the magazine's website, SI.com. He is sometimes confused with Paul D. Zimmerman, a sportswriter who covered college football for the Los Angeles Times
from 1931 to 1968.
Zimmerman suffered a stroke on November 22, 2008, which, so far, has left him unable to walk or to communicate. According to fellow SI writer Peter King
's MMQB column, Zimmerman has also recently suffered two other strokes and is undergoing rehab in a New Jersey facility, at this time unable to speak and with right-sided hemiparesis
.
player at Stanford
and Columbia University
, where he wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator
. An offensive lineman, he was a member of a United States Army
football team while stationed in Germany, and later played minor league football in 1963 for the Westchester Crusaders of the Atlantic Coast Football League
. Zimmerman began his formal journalism career at the New York Journal-American and the New York World-Telegram and Sun before moving on to become a regular at the New York Post
in 1966. In addition to football, Zimmerman covered three Olympic Games
for the Post, including the hostage crisis at the 1972 Summer Games
in Munich, Germany.
Zimmerman also wrote a regular wine
column for the Post, and his wine opinions are often referenced in his weekly mailbag, with football fans adding wine queries to their football questions or comments.
, where he wrote a weekly column and game predictions, and awards the magazine's yearly All-Pro
s until his stroke. Zimmerman was best known for NFL picks published every week during the NFL season. He is notorious for hedging his bets. For instance, he'll 'pick the Cowboys—as long as they can stop the run.'
Since the mid-1990s, Zimmerman was a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated' s website. Zimmerman provided the site with a weekly column - "Power Rankings" - of his estimations of the relative strengths of each NFL team, as well as a reader mailbag feature, in addition to his other contributions to the magazine.
Zimmerman's method of football analysis is a comprehensive one. His charts include both subjective opinions on the players and gameplay as well as objective statistical information. At any point afterward, he can then give detailed analysis of the players, teams, and games that he charted, tracking who plays well against whom, which players are improving or declining, which superstars
are over-hype
d, and which underrated players to "plug" in his writings.
Zimmerman also answered a weekly on-line mailbag. He wrote in a stream of consciousness style rather than a simple question-and-answer, liberally sprinkling in tidbits of football history, pieces of popular culture, quotations, admittedly bad joke
s and pun
s, rants, and wine advice. He also frequently attributed a running commentary to his wife Linda, a.k.a. the "Flaming Redhead."
Annually, Zimmerman rated the performance of television NFL sportscaster
s, criticizing those announcers who do little more than hype the stars while making inane comments on the game, ignoring the strategy or play of the game, or generally making mistakes in their commentaries. Zimmerman also went out of his way to praise the sportscasters who provide meaningful, intelligent commentary for football fans. Zimmerman himself briefly worked as an analyst for NBC
's NFL coverage in 1985.
While covering the NFL draft for ESPN
in the '80s, Zimmerman was asked what the NFL player of the '90s would be like. Zimmerman responded, controversially, "The player of the '90s will be so sophisticated that he'll be able to pass any steroid test they come up with," ending his television career.
In January 2008, Zimmerman correctly predicted that the New York Giants
(an overwhelming underdog) would win Super Bowl XLII
over the New England Patriots
.
He currently serves on the 44-member Pro Football Hall of Fame
selection committee, and formerly was a member of the Hall's smaller Senior Committee, a position which Zimmerman resigned in protest over the committee's repeated rejection of players he deemed worthy candidates.
, and this influence is especially evident in his web entries. Zimmerman named Jimmy Cannon
as one of the sports writers he most admires. Zimmerman described George Orwell
as his "literary idol," and his writing shows some thematic similarities with that of the late novelist.
In the 1980s, Zimmerman, a self-described "round-head", was the last writer at Sports Illustrated allowed to continue using a typewriter and fax to file his stories when the rest of the writers had started using computers.
); The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank (Farrar Straus and Giroux 1974); and Duane Thomas and the Fall of America's Team (Warner Books 1988; credited to Thomas and Zimmerman, it contains diary entries by Thomas but otherwise the text is that of Zimmerman).
Charles S. Zimmerman
Charles Sasha Zimmerman was an American socialist activist and trade union leader, who was an associate of Jay Lovestone. Zimmerman had a career spanning five decades as an official of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union...
and Rose Zimmerman. Zimmerman, also known to readers as "Dr. Z", is an American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
sportswriter who wrote for the weekly magazine Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, as well as the magazine's website, SI.com. He is sometimes confused with Paul D. Zimmerman, a sportswriter who covered college football for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
from 1931 to 1968.
Zimmerman suffered a stroke on November 22, 2008, which, so far, has left him unable to walk or to communicate. According to fellow SI writer Peter King
Peter King (sportswriter)
Peter King is an American sportswriter. He currently writes for Sports Illustrated and its Web site, including the weekly multiple-page column Monday Morning Quarterback. He is the author of five books, most notably Inside the Helmet, as well as a TV analyst and reporter...
's MMQB column, Zimmerman has also recently suffered two other strokes and is undergoing rehab in a New Jersey facility, at this time unable to speak and with right-sided hemiparesis
Hemiparesis
Hemiparesis is weakness on one side of the body. It is less severe than hemiplegia - the total paralysis of the arm, leg, and trunk on one side of the body. Thus, the patient can move the impaired side of his body, but with reduced muscular strength....
.
Early career
Zimmerman graduated from Horace Mann School in the Bronx before becoming a college footballCollege football
College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...
player at Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, where he wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator
Columbia Daily Spectator
Columbia Daily Spectator is the daily student newspaper of Columbia University. It is published at 112th and Broadway in New York, New York. Founded in 1877, it is the oldest continuously operating college news daily in the nation after The Harvard Crimson, and has been legally independent of the...
. An offensive lineman, he was a member of a United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
football team while stationed in Germany, and later played minor league football in 1963 for the Westchester Crusaders of the Atlantic Coast Football League
Atlantic Coast Football League
The Atlantic Coast Football League was a minor football league that operated from 1962 to 1973. Until 1969, many of its franchises had working agreements with NFL and AFL teams to serve as farm clubs. The league paid a base salary of $100 per game and had 36 players on each active roster.For the...
. Zimmerman began his formal journalism career at the New York Journal-American and the New York World-Telegram and Sun before moving on to become a regular at the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
in 1966. In addition to football, Zimmerman covered three Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
for the Post, including the hostage crisis at the 1972 Summer Games
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....
in Munich, Germany.
Zimmerman also wrote a regular wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
column for the Post, and his wine opinions are often referenced in his weekly mailbag, with football fans adding wine queries to their football questions or comments.
Sports Illustrated
In 1979 Zimmerman moved to Sports IllustratedSports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, where he wrote a weekly column and game predictions, and awards the magazine's yearly All-Pro
All-Pro
All-Pro is a term mostly used in the NFL for the best players of each position during that season. It began as polls of sportswriters in the early 1920s...
s until his stroke. Zimmerman was best known for NFL picks published every week during the NFL season. He is notorious for hedging his bets. For instance, he'll 'pick the Cowboys—as long as they can stop the run.'
Since the mid-1990s, Zimmerman was a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated
Zimmerman's method of football analysis is a comprehensive one. His charts include both subjective opinions on the players and gameplay as well as objective statistical information. At any point afterward, he can then give detailed analysis of the players, teams, and games that he charted, tracking who plays well against whom, which players are improving or declining, which superstars
Superstars
Superstars is an all-around sports competition that pits elite athletes from different sports against one another in a series of athletic events resembling a decathlon....
are over-hype
Hype
Hype may refer to:*A media circus*Hype , 1981 album by Robert Calvert*Hype , American comedy television series*Hype!, documentary about the popularity of grunge rock in the early to mid 1990...
d, and which underrated players to "plug" in his writings.
Zimmerman also answered a weekly on-line mailbag. He wrote in a stream of consciousness style rather than a simple question-and-answer, liberally sprinkling in tidbits of football history, pieces of popular culture, quotations, admittedly bad joke
Joke
A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...
s and pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s, rants, and wine advice. He also frequently attributed a running commentary to his wife Linda, a.k.a. the "Flaming Redhead."
Annually, Zimmerman rated the performance of television NFL sportscaster
Sportscaster
In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. The comments are normally a voiceover, with the sounds of the action and spectators also heard in the background. In the case of television commentary, the commentator...
s, criticizing those announcers who do little more than hype the stars while making inane comments on the game, ignoring the strategy or play of the game, or generally making mistakes in their commentaries. Zimmerman also went out of his way to praise the sportscasters who provide meaningful, intelligent commentary for football fans. Zimmerman himself briefly worked as an analyst for NBC
NFL on NBC
NFL on NBC is the brand given to NBC Sports coverage of National Football League games until 1998, when NBC lost the NFL American Football Conference rights to CBS...
's NFL coverage in 1985.
While covering the NFL draft for ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
in the '80s, Zimmerman was asked what the NFL player of the '90s would be like. Zimmerman responded, controversially, "The player of the '90s will be so sophisticated that he'll be able to pass any steroid test they come up with," ending his television career.
In January 2008, Zimmerman correctly predicted that the New York Giants
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
(an overwhelming underdog) would win Super Bowl XLII
Super Bowl XLII
Super Bowl XLII was an American football game on February 3, 2008 that featured the National Football Conference champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League champion for the 2007 season...
over the New England Patriots
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots, commonly called the "Pats", are a professional football team based in the Greater Boston area, playing their home games in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts at Gillette Stadium. The team is part of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National...
.
He currently serves on the 44-member Pro Football Hall of Fame
Pro Football Hall of Fame
The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame of professional football in the United States with an emphasis on the National Football League . It opened in Canton, Ohio, on September 7, 1963, with 17 charter inductees...
selection committee, and formerly was a member of the Hall's smaller Senior Committee, a position which Zimmerman resigned in protest over the committee's repeated rejection of players he deemed worthy candidates.
Influences
Zimmerman's style shows similarities to New JournalismNew Journalism
New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...
, and this influence is especially evident in his web entries. Zimmerman named Jimmy Cannon
Jimmy Cannon
Jimmy Cannon was a sports journalist inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his coverage of the sport.-Early career:...
as one of the sports writers he most admires. Zimmerman described George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
as his "literary idol," and his writing shows some thematic similarities with that of the late novelist.
In the 1980s, Zimmerman, a self-described "round-head", was the last writer at Sports Illustrated allowed to continue using a typewriter and fax to file his stories when the rest of the writers had started using computers.
Books
Zimmerman is the author of the football tome The Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football (Dutton; revised edition, 1970) and his 1984 update of that book, The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football (Simon and Schuster). His other books include Football Lingo (WW Norton 1967, with Zander Hollander); The Linebackers (a 1972 short text for Scholastic PressScholastic Press
Scholastic is a global book publishing company known for publishing educational materials for schools, teachers, and parents, and selling and distributing them by mail order and via book clubs and book fairs. It also has the exclusive United States' publishing rights to the Harry Potter book...
); The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank (Farrar Straus and Giroux 1974); and Duane Thomas and the Fall of America's Team (Warner Books 1988; credited to Thomas and Zimmerman, it contains diary entries by Thomas but otherwise the text is that of Zimmerman).