Jerry Green, a sportswriter notable for covering the first 56 Super Bowls, has died at the age of 94.
Green missed Super Bowl LVII last month after covering each of the first 56, citing his declining health, although he said he was looking forward to watching a Super Bowl on TV for the first time.
No other sportswriter covered as many Super Bowls as Green. Only six other people attended each of the first 56 Super Bowls: fans Don Crisman, Gregory Eaton and Tom Henschel, photographer John Biever, groundskeeper George Toma and Norma Hunt, whose family has owned the Kansas City Chiefs since before they played in Super Bowl I.
Green wrote about sports in Detroit for so long that he was believed to have been the last active sportswriter who covered the Lions’ last NFL championship, in 1957. He was the Detroit News Lions beat writer early in his career and then shifted to a sports columnist role before retiring. He occasionally wrote columns for the News after retiring and continued covering the Super Bowl for the paper.
The media experience at the Super Bowl was so different that before Super Bowl III, reporters who wanted to interview Joe Namath just had to meet up with him beside his hotel’s pool, and Green was one of the reporters in the iconic photo of Namath relaxing a few days before his Jets upset the Colts in one of the games that established the Super Bowl as America’s greatest sporting event.
In 2005, Green received the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s award in recognition of long and distinguished reporting on pro football.
