"It's seems the good die young"

Since I didn't have my blog in September of 2012 I want to say a few words about the departed Steve Sabol of NFL Films. 

Steve's father Ed Sabol was the man who started NFL Films in 1962. Back then Ed Sabol founded Blair Motion Pictures (named after his daughter) and won the bid to film the 1962 NFL Championshiip Game between the Green Bay Packers vs. the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium. The film of that game impressed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who asked the owners of the NFL to agree to buy out Sabol's company. Although the owners rejected Rozelle's proposal in 1964, they agreed a year later and renamed Sabol's company NFL Films. He received $20,000 in seed money from each of the league's 14 owners, and in return would shoot all NFL games and produce a highlight film for each team. 

I belong to a fraternity, so to speak as do millions of others, who know the NFL Films style. Going back to the late 60's and early 70's (especially the Super 70's) NFL Films began to craft a style that they eventually called their own. Whether it be the music (mostly Sam Spence), the narrators (mostly the great John Facenda), the tight spiral of the fooball in slow motion down the field that the cameramen perfected; it all added up to television critic Matt Zoller Seitz calling NFL Films "the greatest in-house P.R. machine in pro sports history . . . an outfit that could make even a tedious stalemate seem as momentous as the battle for the Alamo.

From highlight films, special programming, weekly highlights (who could forget "This Week in the NFL), the halftime highlights in the 1970's for Howard Cosell, the Super Bowl Highlights stand above the rest. The Super Bowl III is probably the most famous because of the magnitude of the game, but I think my personal favorite is Super Bowl V played on a sunny Miami afternoon, the Colts versus the Cowboys. One of the things Steve said was that since the game was now played about 6:30pm every year, you don't get those clean lighted afternoon shots of Miami or when they played it in the Rose Bowl in 1976. Also 1983 at the height of their popularity, NFL Films recorded a documentary, following the band Journey for about 6 months. Not only was it a film about the band but the story of the crew that puts on the show. Again Steve's ideas.

NFL Films will go on and in the digital and technology age will prosper beyond it's wildest dreams. The NFL Network owes its success to the Sabols.

One of most famous programs that NFL Films ever produced was "The Championship Chase" which was broadcasted before Super Bowl IX, the Steelers and Vikings. Steve Sabol and John Facenda was at the pinnacle of their style in 1974's "The Championship Chase" with John's recitation of “The Autumn Wind,” a football poem written by Steve, personifying fall weather and the Raiders 1974 season:


"The Autumn wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously.
His face is weather beaten
He wears a hooded sash
With a silver hat about his head
And a bristling black mustache
He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold.
The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He'll knock you 'round and upside down
And laugh when he's conquered and won."

According to the NFL, Steve Sabol won more than 40 Emmy Awards and oversaw 107 Emmys for NFL Films.

I had the good fortune to speak to Steve Sabol in 1992 when a video tape order I made with them got messed up. First of all, it was shocking to me that it was actually Steve on the phone and the order matter was cleared up quickly but he took about 20 minutes with me to talk NFL Films and the NFL. He was a gracious man that I know the people who worked for NFL Films will miss him every day.

Again, we lose another talented man. 

Rest in peace.

NFL Films now located at ONE SABOL WAY

So until next time my peeps....

"Tarzan go now. Swing away on vines!"

PS - To all of you that has wrote to me about this blog I appreciate your kind words and feedback. I intend this blog to go in different directions. I have received email from some family members wanting to know if I was going to "pontificate" on a certain situation that happened in our family.

Let me say just for the record.... you goddamn right I am. And if they don't like it, they can get their attorney. I won't be very difficult to find. I will be hiding right behind my first amendment rights. Even a Jewish lawyer can figure that out.