The New England Patriots’ quest to make history this season and become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls harkens memories of great teams of the past. One man who has seen and chronicled much of the league’s rich history is Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films. Sabol, the creative force behind “This Week in the NFL” and other memorable highlight shows, recently spent some time looking back, starting with his memories of Colorado.
Steve Sabol: I spent a lot of time out in Colorado. I went to Colorado College. I played football and was there for six years. I loved it. We used to drive up to Denver to go to the movies when I was there. Colorado Springs had only one theater and we’d get the movies about two months late.
Anthony Cotton: Speaking of film, off the top of your head, do you have any idea how many shows you’ve done?
SS: Well, I started in 1962, so this is my 43rd year. I’d say 10,000. We’ve done highlight films for every team, all the pregame features for CBS, dating back to Jimmy the Greek and Phyllis George and Brent Musburger. And when you throw in all the things we do for cable and the Internet and home video, it’s easily 10,000. Our film library holds 100 million feet of film. The only documented endeavor with more film than NFL football is World War II. Eventually it will be the biggest library on one specific subject in the world.
AC: For a typical show, how much film do you use?
SS: We’re really dinosaurs in the sense that we still shoot film; everybody else is video. We still shoot film. We’ll shoot between 20 and 40,000 feet for every game and 800 miles for the season. If you put that in a projector it would run for 55 days and nights without stopping.
AC: You have the music and John Facenda and all the other things you guys use. When did you realize that you had a pretty good formula going?
SS: I go back to 1966; we produced a film called “They Call It Pro Football.” It was the first film that wasn’t a highlight film. There had been highlight films before us but this was a film about the game itself. It was the first film that John Facenda ever narrated. It was the first film that contained follies. It was the first film that had a coach miked for sound during a real game. It was the first film that had original music scored just for the film. In effect, it was the “Citizen Kane” of sports movies.
We showed it to commissioner Pete Rozelle at Toots Shor’s in New York. The next day he called my father and me for a meeting. He showed us a piece of paper with the Nielsen ratings. I had no idea what they were. Baseball was first, college football was second and the NFL was third. He said, “In order for the league to succeed and prosper, it must succeed on television, and to succeed on television, the game needs an image, a mystique, and the film I just saw is what we want to create.” That was the closest thing we got to a mission statement.
AC: What’s the story about you guys moving to ESPN and you becoming the host for the weekly show?
SS: Frank Gifford and Don Meredith and Pat Summerall had always done the shows for us, but I wrote the stuff for them. When ESPN got started, they wanted to run our shows. We approached Pat and Don and Frank but they were tied up in contracts and besides, ESPN was this hick station up in Connecticut that was running log rolling and frog jumping. So Steve Bornstein, the man who had developed ESPN, asked why didn’t I host it? The last time I had spoken to anybody in public was in a fifth-grade contest. Steve said, “Don’t worry about it, nobody will be watching it anyway.”
AC: Do the players almost beg you to come out and work with them now?
SS: It’s a lot better than it used to be; it’s a different era. Now, the players realize the value of appearing on television. When we started, our shows aired either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, so our whole audience was milkmen, or fathers of newborns who were up real early, or bartenders and parking lot attendants. That was our constituency. But when ESPN came on, the audience really expanded and that’s when the players began to realize that appearing would help them, not only with their place in history, but also if they wanted a career in broadcasting.
AC: Is there a sense of resistance at all?
SS: John Madden would never wear a mike. I remember we wanted to mike Weeb Eubank in his last season with the Jets, he was very leery of it. I said Paul Brown and George Halas had done it and he didn’t have to worry about cursing. By then, he was in his late 60s and maybe not as sharp as he had been in the early years. He said, “You don’t have to worry about cursing. I don’t curse, I just break wind. And I’m thankful for that.”
AC: How has (Patriots coach) Bill Belichick changed through the years with you?
SS: Not that much. He has a great appreciation for us as historians, but he runs a very, I don’t want to say secretive, but he has rules and he doesn’t want them breached in any way. He feels cameras on the sidelines or bench are distractions to his players, so he keeps them at arm’s length. But he lets us mike him at practice and he’s very cooperative in postgame interviews. He’s the Paul Brown of this era, when you think of coaches who have redefined the way the game is structured, the concepts, and how it’s played. He’s had the same impact that Paul Brown did in the ’50s.
AC: But most compare him to Vince Lombardi.
SS: There’s no comparison, they’re not alike at all. Lombardi would walk into a room and suck the air out of it. Bill could be in a room and you wouldn’t even know he was there. Lombardi felt execution was the key to success. You could put his whole offense on one legal-sized sheet of paper. His thing was, “We know what we’re going to do, and you know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to do it so well, it won’t make a difference.” There were never any surprises. Bill’s thing is scheming and planning and preparation. It’s deception. Bill doesn’t ever want you to know what he’s going to do.
AC: Given the access you guys have, is there anything you haven’t done that you still want to do?
SS: I wish we could do more with (Cowboys coach) Bill Parcells. Although we have an enormous library on him, he’s been reluctant. Well, I can’t really say that. I can’t really say there’s a problem when it comes to access (but) we’re more interested in stories. The story line is the thing that’s most important to us.
AC: You mentioned “Citizen Kane” earlier. Have you ever had the opportunity to do a commercial project, like a Hollywood movie?
SS: We’ve had them before. People say you have to get bigger and bigger. To me, that’s like the ideology of a cancer cell. I like having one specific area and doing it the best I can. I love movies and I go to three or four a week, but I don’t have an interest. I’ve worked on some, “Brian’s Song” and “The Longest Yard” and “Paper Lion,” but I didn’t find it as exciting or stimulating as working on a documentary.
When you’re a Hollywood director, in essence, you’re an inventor. You create your own environment. When you’re a documentary filmmaker, you’re a discoverer. You’re thrust into an environment and you have to be creative and resourceful. Then you take what you shoot and make a story. I just find that very satisfying.
Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
