A Man Of Influence

Earlier today it was announced that Steve Sabol, the co-founder of NFL Films along with his father Ed, had passed away after a battle with brain cancer. Tributes immediately began to pour in from all corners of football and they are incredibly well-deserved. You could sincerely argue that the Sabols have done more to advance the popularity of professional football in this country than anyone with the exception of the man who invented the forward pass. The Sabols paid $3,000 for the right to record the 1962 Championship game, never looked back after that and along the way NFL Films became one of the greatest PR machine sports has ever known. Football is a sport which is made for television, but NFL Films took it to an entirely new level of popularity with unprecedented access through innovations like miking up players and coaches. Entire generations of fans don't know what it is like to not have shows like "Inside the NFL" or "Hard Knocks" in their lives and neither of those things exist without the simple yet brilliant idea to slow down tight shots of collisions and put them to music with John "The Voice of God" Facenda narrating the action. Every high school team video is nothing more than that school's AV teacher attempting to audition for NFL Films.

To me, the music was always an inspired choice. The easy and obvious solution would have been to use rock or the occasional hip-hop song. They did veer off and try that tactic every once in a while, but most of the time they stuck with a formula which largely consisted of original orchestra music. You have to be willing to go pretty far off the board to decide that the perfect musical choice for your sports movie is heavy with flugelhorns, but damned if it doesn't work every time. Now seeing an NFL highlight set to any other kind of music almost feels foreign and you know it didn't come from NFL Films. Honestly, their music makes even the most boring game of the week seem like a life of death struggle between good and evil with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. I have a CD of nothing but NFL Films music and it even makes things like mowing the lawn feel infinitely more dramatic. What's weird is that it really doesn't work for any other sport. Basketball highlights set to this kind of music wouldn't work and baseball highlights combined with orchestra music might put people to sleep. They really captured lightning in a bottle with that one.

But to just call NFL Films mini-documentaries almost cheapens their influence. I feel like watching these clips over the years has actually changed the way fans watch football. Being able to hear what the coaches were talking about before they made various decisions gives people a level of understanding that they wouldn't otherwise have gotten. Fans still may not have agreed with a particular decision, but at least they knew why the coach of their favorite team came to that conclusion. You could argue whether or not it actually made football fans smarter about the game, but there is no doubt it made them think they were. That also gave fans a more intimate feeling about their teams and coaches, making them feel more connected and also more invested. Until HBO recently launched their "24/7" series, no other sport let you go in the locker rooms after the games and gave you a look at what players were like off the field. I know plenty of people that have said they root for certain players more after watching "Hard Knocks". Like I said, it was a hell of a marketing campaign.

While they personally only worked on NFL football, the Sabols' influence can also be seen in just about every sports movie made in the last 30 years. Everyone knows filmmaking is full of copycats and they don't care where they steal their ideas from, so a sports documentary is as good a place as any. Not only has their style been duplicated by everyone who films sports today, if you have ever watched a sports movie which featured a slow-motion training montage set to dramatic music and gotten goosebumps you probably should send the Sabols a thank-you note. And in case you think this is just one football fanatic and movie buff blowing smoke, it should be pointed out that Steve Sabol alone won 35 Emmys through the years in several different categories, so clearly the man knew how to put together a film. They would have been successful no matter what topic they decided to focus on, and fans as well as the NFL should be thankful they decided it would be football. The good news is that despite Steve's passing and Ed being nearly 100 years old NFL Films will just keep chugging right along, which is what I'm sure Steve would have wanted. I'm also pretty sure he will have the most epic tribute video ever.