Steve Sabol, 1942–2012

Steve Sabol turned football into myth. The creative force behind NFL Films pioneered many of the cinematic tricks that, in the words of ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman, could make a 49–14 game “seem like some kind of epic Greek tragedy.” The director’s highlight films featured passes spiraling through the air in super-slow motion, foggy breath pouring out of players’ helmets, and gladiators colliding with a crunch in the open field. And overlying it all was stirring martial music and “voice of God” narration. With the right soundtrack, Sabol explained, “you can make a coin toss seem like Armageddon.”

Sabol was a football-playing art-history student when his father, Ed, called him home to Philadelphia from Colorado College in 1962, and told him that he needed his help to film the NFL’s championship game that December, said the Los Angeles Times. Ed—then working as a clothing salesman—had persuaded NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to hire him over a boozy lunch, even though he had no experience beyond filming his son’s high school games. It helped that Ed had made the highest bid for the filming rights: $3,000. Still, despite their inexperience, the Sabols’ recording of the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers face-off was a success. Three years later, the NFL bought the family’s production firm, renamed it NFL Films, and hired Ed and Steve to run it.

“NFL Films was not the first company to make game films,” said The New York Times, but its innovations elevated the sport. Sabol packed the field with cameras, and used them to provide new perspectives. “One, called the mole, was a handheld camera that roamed the sideline in search of a spectacular close-up.” The films made an impression in Hollywood. Sam Peckinpah once told Sabol that the slow-motion gunfight scene in his 1969 movie The Wild Bunch was inspired by a Super Bowl highlights reel.

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Sabol also had his critics. Some accused his films of glorifying concussion-causing collisions, which are now known to cause irreversible brain damage, said the Chicago Sun-Times. But Sabol said he only wanted viewers to see the thrill of the game from the players’ perspective, “with the sweat spraying and the muscles bulging and the cursing and the passion.”