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This is sad news from the sports media world. Paul Zimmerman, the grouchy football columnist better known as Dr. Z, suffered two strokes in late November and is currently on a leave of absence while he recovers. He'll survive, but how it'll affect the rest of his writing career is still undetermined. Peter King wrote a pretty fantastic tribute to the man in his latest column, highlighting some of Zimmerman's long-form football pieces that he used to write for SI before he became the Dr. Z persona full-time. More »
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It's rare that an NFL column makes us feel like we just drank a bottle of wine, but that's what Paul Zimmerman — Dr. Z, if you're down with the hip parlance — does for us. More »
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So here's something we hadn't realized: Billy Joel is singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Though we are impressed that the NFL remains current and cutting edge with their selection of everyone's favorite rapidly decaying crooner, we are also curious about just how long it's gonna take him to sing it. Paul Zimmerman historically times national anthems — he says the longest he ever timed was 2 1/2 minutes — and CNBC's Darren Rovell is curious as well. More »
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We know, we know: The unconditional love for SI scribe Rick Reilly's "Riffs Of Reilly" segment — sample comedic genius moment: "USC's quarterback is John David Booty and Texas' is Colt McCoy. Hey, weren't both those guys on 'Gunsmoke?'" Oh, Rick, you slay us! — makes you think that SI.com must be so tapped out producing such an earth-shaking segment that they couldn't possibly come up with anything else. But fear not, intrepid online sports content consumer: they've got so much more! More »
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We'll get into an update of all the fun Zinedine Zidane theories a little later today, but we wanted to pause to take a look at Paul Zimmerman's column for SI.com yesterday. We have no shame about this: We love Paul Zimmerman. We know he's old, we know he's cranky, we know he probably spends most of his evenings drinking wine at his kitchen table while grumbling about the kids on the "Information Superhighway" and how the Whole Goddamned World Is Going To Hell. We know all this, and we don't care. He's a wonderfully natural writer, he knows more about football than just about anyone else we read and, mostly, he seems half-drunk most of the time. How do you not love him? More »
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