Paul Lionel Zimmerman (October 23, 1932November 1, 2018), known to readers as "Dr. Z", was an American football sportswriter and former player who wrote for the weekly magazine Sports Illustrated, as well as the magazine's website, SI.com. He is sometimes confused with Paul B. Zimmerman, a sportswriter who covered football for the Los Angeles Times from 1931 to 1968. Biography Early life Zimmerman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1932 to Charles S. Zimmerman and Rose Zimmerman, and moved to New York in elementary school. Playing career Zimmerman graduated from Horace Mann School in the Bronx before becoming a college football 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 was a founder member and player for the rugby union Columbia Old Blues in the 1960s. Early journalism career 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. Sports Illustrated In 1979, Zimmerman moved to Sports Illustrated, where he wrote a weekly column and game predictions, and awarded the magazine's yearly All-Pros until his stroke. Zimmerman was best known for NFL picks published every week during the NFL season. He was notorious for hedging his bets. For instance, he would 'pick the Cowboys—as long as they can stop the run.' Since the mid-1990s, Zimmerman was a frequent contributor to the Sports Illustrated 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 was a comprehensive one. His charts included both subjective opinions on the players and gameplay, as well as objective statistical information. At