You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Steve Sabol is dead.
Sabol is a man who helped turn the NFL into the megalopolis it is today.
Many of you might not know him, but you have undoubtedly been touched by his work.
Football follies and the Ice Bowl. NFL Films was there from the beginning forming a relationship like a Mafia mob boss and his brass knuckles.
If the NFL is a shoe. NFL films is the shoe horn that eased your foot into a comfy loafer of big hits and incredible action.
The ESPN announcer doing the OBIT said “Steve Sabol mixed film and football into a Greek Tragedy.”
That’s true. He used close ups and camera angles and slow motion to transform a sport into something mythical. He married classical music with a visual ballet of violence.
He made the NFL something more.
Sabol died of brain cancer Tuesday.
ESPN called him a genius with a beautiful mind.
Long time broadcasting legend Al Michaels said Sabol made football more interesting.
In the 60s the Sabols paid 3,000 dollars to secure the rights to broadcasting the NFL Championship game between the Packers and the Giants. They never looked back.
Then commissioner Pete Rozelle was impressed and saw something even the Sabols didn’t see.
A cinematic future.
Rozelle wanted to use the films as a way to create a mythology for the sport, Sabol said.
Back then, the NFL was hardly the juggernaut it is now. Back then, it was a so what, a yawn of a sport, languishing behind baseball and maybe tiddly winks.
But NFL films transformed the sport into something memorable.
In many ways, it was like the birth of the NFL.
Sabol started as a camera man and producer
In 1979 ESPN signed NFL films as a production company and Sabol worked on air with the likes of a very young Chris Berman.
Sabol was a legend according to John Skipper, ESPN President.
According to ESPN, there is a million feet of game film in the New Jersey vaults where NFL Films is located. That’s special.
Sabol’s 96 year old father survived him.
Steve Sabol was 69 years old.
RIP Steve Sabol.
Your work will always be remembered. The NFL is the biggest sport in the world, and many say it is because of the imagery and vision you demonstrated covering it for decades.
And that is crazy.™