Super Bowl program has a decidedly local flavor

LYNN – Nine years ago – the same year Adam Vinatieri put the ball through the uprights for the Patriots’ second Super Bowl victory – H.O. Zimman Inc. took over the publishing duties for the Super Bowl.Sunday, when patrons file into Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, they will, once again, see a Zimman production as the company is still pumping out programs ? as well as a lot of other things.This may sound “very sexy,” says Joshua Zimman, owner, president and publisher of the company located in Seaport Landing, but he concedes it’s “really a labor of love. We love sports. We love football, and we love the Patriots.”But,” he said, “it’s a lot of work, and a lot of deadlines. And if you don’t sell ads, it costs a lot of money to produce something like this.”Zimman’s father, Harold O. Zimman, and his mother, Helen, founded the publishing company in 1940. The next generation has not only kept it alive, but has seen it grow immeasurably since taking it over.”We do a lot of different things,” Zimman said. “I’d say we have about 500 deadlines a year. We do auto shows, skating shows, tennis exhibitions – we do a lot of tennis – and we have corporate clients, where we do their brochures and annual reports.”For an event that comes together so quickly, the program for the next Super Bowl begins production shortly after the last one has ended.”It’s a long process,” says editor John Veneziano. “If you’re looking for immediate gratification, this isn’t the place. The book comes together over the courts of six to eight months, which is when we select story ideas and assign them. Over the course of that time, they come in, they’re edited, designed, sent to the NFL and approved, and – at the very end – we put them into print.”The pace may be slow at first, Veneziano said, but it speeds up as game time approaches.”Then,” he says, “we go into our two-minute drill.”It all takes place the day of the AFC and NFC championship games, where the team gathers with two computers, TVs going, designers on the grounds, statisticians, and press people.”A certain amount of what’s in the book you want fresh,” Veneziano says. “And all of a sudden, it has to be ready to go within hours after that second game ends. A lot of the time, you root for a blowout, just so it’ll be a little easier. Not this year, though.”Veneziano said that by the day of the two championship games, his team had produced enough material on all four surviving teams to fill 16 pages each in a book that totals 264. There are biographies on both coaches, both owners, team previews, rosters in both numerical and alphabetical order, final statistics, a list of officials and head shots of all the players.And, he says, once in a while luck is involved.”This year, we had a 10-year anniversary of 2001, with 9/11, and the pall it cast on the NFL and – of course – the Patriots winning, with Robert Kraft saying ‘we are all Patriots’.” That was luck on our part.”There are two different covers, Zimman says. There’s a regular cover that’s distributed all over the country, for $15, and there’s one with a hologram on it that goes for $20, that fans can get at the game.Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].