OUR COMMUNITY

L

egendary Detroit News columnist Jerry Green, 93, returned from 
Los Angeles last month having covered his 56th consecutive 
Super Bowl in person, the only daily sportswriter in history to 
attend every championship game. 
Actually, it’s a title Green has owned since his good friend, now 
retired Newark Star Ledger writer Jerry Izenberg, 
called Green three years ago to 
tell him he was ending his Super 
Bowl run at 53 games. “I can’t 
go; you carry on,
” Izenberg said. 
Hence, as Green has stated: “By 
default, I became the last man 
standing.
”
Green described this year’s 
Super Bowl atmosphere in LA 
to me as “too Hollywood.
” Not a 
surprising depiction from a man who definitely 
doesn’t seem to get impressed by all the sparkle, 
just the sports. Hollywood would be challenged 
to find a screenwriter capable of improving 
on the story of Jerry’s life, both personally and 
professionally.
A fully vaccinated Green experienced a 
breakthrough case of COVID last November. 
While recovered, the status of his challenges 
with pulmonary fibrosis and neuropathy may 
play a role in his traveling to Arizona next February to cover Super 
Bowl LVII. This year’s trip took a little bit of coaxing by the NFL.
“The league has been very, very good to me,
” Green said. “
And the 
truth is, in 2021, I pretty much decided I was going to stop. I was the 
last man to have covered them all but the league asked me to go.
”
Being honored to be, as Green described it, “Summoned by the 
league,
” gave him added incentive to make the pilgrimage to last year’s 
Super Bowl in Tampa, that and he wanted to have another chance to 
witness and chronicle the amazing career of quarterback Tom Brady. 
Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers went on to easily defeat the 
Kansas City Chiefs. 
 Brady made headlines March 13 announcing he was ending his 
short-lived two-month retirement to return to the Buccaneers for his 

23rd NFL season. Despite having already won 7 Super Bowls, Brady 
claimed he still had “unfinished business.
”
If Green does decide to sit out next year’s championship game, his 
Super Bowl coverage streak of 56 consecutive games will have ended 
where it all began — Los Angeles, the site of the first Super Bowl in 
1967. Turns out the number 56 itself, as you’ll read 
further on, influenced Green’s decision to keep his 
streak alive. 
An old proverb says: “a journey of a thousand 
miles begins with one step.
” Jerry Green has logged 
far more than a thousand miles on his way to 
attending 56 Super Bowls. However, it turns out, the 
introduction to another sport is what initially whet 
his appetite and led to his eventual passion for shar-
ing sports with the rest of the world.

PLAY BALL!
Green was born on April 15, 1928, in Manhattan 
Island, New York, but spent his formative years 
in Long Island. He shared that he identifies with 
Judaism more on a heritage level than on its faith. 
“But you would still like a good corned-beef sand-
wich?” I asked, to which he replied, “I prefer pas-
trami.
”
Green’s parents belonged to a Reform synagogue 
and Jerry was bar mitzvahed. I suggested that if he 
received the traditional old fashion gift of a fountain pen, he would’ve 
probably written a sports column with it. For the record he said: “I 
got a baseball mitt.
” I should’ve known better. 
Green recalls vividly his awakening to sports. “I remember the 
day before my 8th birthday, my father told me, ‘the baseball season 
is opening today.
’” It was a classic match-up between the New York 
Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. 
“I was immediately interested,
” said Green. “My father told me I 
could listen to the game on a radio station after school.
” 
It would turn out to be an early birthday gift of sorts that would 
impact his son’s life, and life’s work, for the next 85 years. “That one 
game got you hooked on sports?” I asked, to which Green emphati-
cally replied: “Yes, very much.
” 

Catching up with legendary sportswriter Jerry Green.
The Dean of 
SUPER BOWLS

Alan 
Muskovitz
Contributing 
Writer

18 | MARCH 24 • 2022 

Jerry Green earlier in his career.

