December 30, 1962: The Birth of NFL Films

Ed Sabol (left), Steve Sabol,

and the camera that started it all.

December 30, 1962: The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx. Aside from being bitterly cold, with New York dealing with the kind of weather that Green Bay was used to, the game itself was not especially remarkable.

But it was filmed by a crew from Blair Motion Pictures of Philadelphia. This was the birth of NFL Films. That company would be nearly as responsible for the League's growth in popularity as Commissioner Pete Rozelle and the various television network executives.

A son of Romanian Jewish immigrants, growing up in Blairstown, Warren County, New Jersey, Ed Sabol served in World War II, then sold topcoats. But he got a home movie camera as a wedding present. He used it to record his son Steve's high school football games. Then he formed a small film company, named for his daughter, Blair. In 1962, he won the rights to film the NFL Championship Game, by bidding $5,000. And even that was double the winning bid of the season before.

Rozelle was impressed by the resulting film, and in 1965, the NFL team owners bought Blair Motion Pictures, renaming it NFL Films. Each of the League's 14 team owners gave Ed $20,000, and the right to shoot all NFL games, and produce an annual highlight film for each team.

In 1967, NFL Films released a half-hour documentary, The Call It Pro Football, including footage of the game that was retroactively renamed Super Bowl I. It began with the narrator, Philadelphia newscaster John Facenda, saying, "It starts with a whistle, and ends with a gun. Sixty minutes of close-in action from kickoff to touchdown. This is pro football: The sport of our time." It was one of the earliest successes for the company.

In 1970, ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football, and, during halftime, showed NFL Films' footage of the previous day's games. In 1971, the company began producing This Is the NFL, a Saturday show that showed highlights of the previous week's games, on CBS, featuring the network's lead announcing team, former New York Giants tackle and kicker Pat Summerall, and former Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Tom Brookshier. That program did such a great job of raising the NFL's profile, it inspired Major League Baseball to start Major League Baseball Productions, and start the series This Week In Baseball in 1977.

Three things stood out in NFL Films' broadcasts: The marching-band music, the use of slow motion to capture things like the spinning of a passed football in flight, and the narration of Facenda. Let the record show, however, that he never described the field in Green Bay as "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." That was later ESPN announcer Chris Berman, imitating him.

ESPN eventually began doing historical programs, featuring footage from NFL Films' vault at their massive headquarters in Mount Laurel, Burlington County, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia; and interviews with surviving figures from those films, conducted by Steve Sabol.

These included Old Leather, from 1976, about stars of the 1920s, with Red Grange, Fritz Pollard, and Johnny "Blood" McNally among those alive and well enough to sit for interviews; and Their Deeds and Dogged Faith, from 1977, about some of the toughest figures in NFL history, including Chicago Bears (and NFL) founder George Halas.

Facenda died in 1984, his last film being the highlights of Super Bowl XVIII. Another Philadelphia broadcast legend, Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, took over until his death in 2009. They have used various announcers since.

Ed Sabol was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a "Contributor" in 2011. It seemed to be just in time: He was 95 years old and in a wheelchair; and Steve was dealing with brain cancer. Steve died the next year, at age 69. Ed lived until 2015, age 98. Steve was posthumously elected to the Hall in 2020.

*

December 30, 1962 was a Sunday. There were no other football games that day: The NCAA had college football bowl games scheduled for the day before and the day after, but not this day; and the AFL Championship Game was the week before, with the Dallas Texans (soon to be the Kansas City Chiefs) beating the Houston Oilers in double overtime.

There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 135-130 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Elgin Baylor scored 38 points. And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 107-100 at the Chicago Coliseum. The failing Zephyrs moved the next season, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played to a 4-4 tie at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at the Chicago Stadium. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.