Parting Schotts

Remembering NFL Films pioneer Steve Sabol

It is a very sad day for fans, like myself, of NFL Films.

Steve Sabol, a filmmaker and later the host of many of the NFL Films shows, died today after an 18-month battle with brain cancer. He was 69 years old.

Sabol, with his father and founder of NFL Films Ed and the baritone voice of John Facenda providing the soundtrack, helped make the NFL what it is today. For those of us in my generation in the days of no ESPN, NFL Films was the vehicle to watch highlights of other games.

Steve Sabol (pictured) was in front of the camera many times hosting various NFL Films shows that appeared on ESPN in the 1980s and '90s. He became the face of the company.

If you ever watch an NFL Films production, it always seems to be excellent, with many great camera angles, and always artistic. That was Sabol's lasting influence on NFL Films. And it's great that they still use film instead of video tape.

Probably Sabol's most important contribution to NFL Films is his poem about the Oakland Raiders called "Autumn Wind."

An except: "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."

NFL Films will continue on, and Steve Sabol's influence will live on.

NFL Network obituary on Steve Sabol

NFL Films is more than a production company, it's an institution. The life's work of Steve Sabol, a football player turned artist who transformed American television for half a century.

In 1962, Ed Sabol won the rights to film the league's championship game and NFL Films was born. In a sense, so was Steve, who was there that freezing day at Yankee Stadium working as a cameraman. For the next 50 years, he never stopped working for the NFL.

Few men in the League have ever had a longer run. None has ever had a better one. He was the game's first quintuple threat. An Emmy-winning auteur who won statuettes for cinematography, editing, writing, directing and producing. The only man ever to be so honored.

But it wasn't hardware that Steve loved, it was the game. And he saw it as no one ever had. Through the eyes of an artist. With an unerring eye for detail, and a pitch perfect ear, Steve quickly transformed NFL Films from simple chroniclers of the game, to epic myth makers. And he did it, as all great artists do, by taking chances.

Super slow motion, wireless mics on players, reverse angle replays, follies films, and custom composed musical scores. All that's standard stuff today, but before NFL Films it was unheard of. But then, Steve never thought like a sports filmmaker, he thought like a Hollywood storyteller. Big, bold, honest, and, funny. Those were the hallmarks of Steve's work. And Steve himself.

Across fifty years, and tens of thousands of programs, there was one constant at NFL Films: Steve Sabol. He was one of that now rare breed of executive who not only had done every job in the company at one time or another, but could still do any of them better than most. More than the company's head, he was its heartbeat.

Last summer, Steve presented his father for induction into Pro Football's Hall of Fame. Big Ed, reminded the crowd that his motto was: “Tell me a story and it'll live forever.” Like any good son, Steve always listened to his father. Then worked until he became the greatest storyteller the NFL has ever known. But he also listened to his heart. And by turning to the game he loved, he also embraced a piece of wisdom he learned while studying art at Colorado college.

Art is love’s accomplice, take love away and there is no art. Steve Sabol knew that better than anyone.

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