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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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PROGNOSTICATORS
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A Pundit Extraordinaire
Is the Irrepressible Dr. Z
of TheColumnists.com
The classic story about Paul Zimmerman, now more popularly known as Dr. Z, concerns the time he was covering a football game in Yankee Stadium. At one point his neighbor in the press box, Lou Effrat of The New York Times, missed an action on the field. He asked Zimmerman, “What happened on that play?
Zimmerman responded by diagramming the play, noting the various elements of the action down to the blocking of the guards. The puckish Effrat said, “Look at this guy. I ask him what happened on a play and he gives me a lesson on football.”
It is right and proper that Zimmerman, who charts football games with half-a dozen colored pens, is now one of the reigning football pundits in the land because he is the man who lays down the National Football League gospel for Sports Illustrated. Those of us who worked in the newspaper trenches with him many moons ago knew him as Paul Zimmerman; he morphed into Dr. Z when he joined Sports Illustrated in 1979.
Editor Mark Mulvoy noted that Julius Erving was the Dr. J. of pro basketball, and declared that Zimmerman would be Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated. It was a match made in heaven.
Dr. Z had his finest hour last season when he predicted the underdog Giants of New Jersey would beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. He did it, he said, by picking from his gut.
“It stems from the big upset win by the Jets in the 1969 Super Bowl. I had a feeling the Jets, big underdogs against Baltimore, would win, but I went with logic and stats and all that, and picked the Colts. The Jets won, of course, and only Shithead [Len] Shecter, on my paper [The New York Post], picked the Jets--and gloried in it. I was pissed.
“This time I admired the toughness
of the Giants as they kept winning playoff games on the road
last season. I began to have the feeling the Giants were a team
of destiny and could win. And I resisted logic and handicapping
principles and went with them.”
Pro football crazies are serious about picking or betting on
winners and this has given Z an eminence even he knows he doesn’t
deserve. But he is quite willing to accept acclaim as a peerless
prognosticator. He said, “I went to England and they knighted
me. In Moscow they gave me the red star.” I have known Z
long enough to know that he is irreverent and funs a lot. “I
got lucky,” he admitted. “The blind pig got the acorn.”
This is the time of Dr. Z’s time because the pro football season opened this past weekend. Sports Illustrated greeted the NFL start with Dr. Z’s selections for the season--the entire season. He picked the winners of all eight divisions along with won-and-lost records for each team. And he went on to select the results of the wild card round, the divisional round, the conference championships leading up to the Super Bowl. Dr. Z does it all.
The pro football zanies eat up this stuff,
and attention is paid to Dr. Z because of last year’s coup
with the Giants. Nowhere is he a bigger man these days than in
Philadelphia because Dr. Z has chosen the Eagles as the dark
horse team of the year He has them winning the National Football
Conference East division, beating the Dallas Cowboys in the second
round of the playoffs, beating the Minnesota Vikings in the semi-final
round and then playing the New England Patriots in the Super
Bowl.
“So you are still the guy who talks to the offensive linemen,”
I said.
“No, the secret is out,” he said. “Everybody talks to the offensive linemen. But these days they don’t talk to you. Today’s pros are billionaires who say, ‘Get out of my face.’”
So how does he come to his conclusions? “I throw out a lot of crap,” he said, “and people believe me. Yes, I go to the camps and talk to people, but what it comes down to is 50 years of covering pro football.”
His weekly picks for Sports Illustrated are a sham because the magazine doesn’t let him pick off the point spreads. Pro football is a betting game, and people who can beat the spread are the respected oracles. He is given a little more freedom on the magazine’s website, SI.com, where point spreads are not verboten.
He explained a “Beat the Trap” method of picking games off the point spread, which I confess I don’t understand. It has something to do with making your own point spread in advance of the Las Vegas betting line and betting with the official line team when it is counter to your own by at least three points. I think.
Z, a Columbia/Stanford product, 75, worked for The Sacramento Bee, The New York World Telegram, and New York Post before Sports Illustrated. I became a fan writing about him when he played on the [Columbia] Old Blue rugby team, and when he introduced me to the fine art of timing "Star Spangled Banner" renditions.
Z lobbied for shorter anthem renditions and once inspired the organist at Fenway Park to race through the opus in less than a minute. I gloried in what still stands out as the granddaddy of all anthem renditions, a more than three-minute epic at an NBA All Star game by Marvin Gaye. It was played again and again in a clip promoting basketball on the telecasts of the recent Olympic Games.
This effort gives only a sense of the irrepressible Dr. Z. He is in full flower each week tilting with letter writers on his SI.com NFL link.
And oh yes, Dr. Z prognosticates that the Patriots will beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl, 26-23.
(Editor's Note: This column with Dr. Z's Super Bowl prediction was written before the injury to the Patriot's Tom Brady Sunday, Sept. 7.)
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Paul Zimmerman is courtesy of Sports Illustrated. This column first posted Sept. 8, 2008.
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