Former Times Sports Editor Paul Zimmerman Dead at 92

Paul Zimmerman, longtime sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, who covered Super Bowl I in Los Angeles in 1967, died Sunday, the day of Super Bowl XXX.

Zimmerman, 92, of El Toro, was sports editor for 30 years, from 1939-68. He was a throwback to the days when sports editors wrote daily columns and others handled the administrative duties. “The writing was the part I liked,” he said, many times.

Although records are not kept, it is possible that Zimmerman is the only person who covered both the 1932 and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He covered seven Summer Games--in ’32 for the Associated Press and six others from 1948 through 1968 as a full-time Times writer--plus one Winter Olympics, the 1960 Games at Squaw Valley. In 1984, he wrote several stories for The Times’ Olympic sections and also covered the Games for a Japanese newspaper.

On his watch as sports editor of The Times, the Rams, Dodgers and Lakers all moved to Los Angeles.

Zimmerman, who was once the director of Times Charities and a director of the Helms Athletic Hall of Fame, was named to the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame Honors Court in 1951, received an official commendation for his role in bringing the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, and was named to the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

Private services are being arranged at Pacific View mortuary in Newport Beach.