My lasting memory of Steve Sabol will be that of sitting in his hotel suite in Miami watching a preview of one of his NFL Films’ “Road to The Super Bowl” productions.
I can’t remember the year or the teams, but I remember Sabol sitting on a sofa intently watching his production while passionately detailing the history of just about every scene. He loved every foot of that production just as he loved what must be the millions of miles birthed by Films. It wasn’t narcissistic. Rather, as corny as this may read, it was his love for the game, its characters and the final product.
Never have I met a man more passionate about his work.
Steve Sabol died Tuesday. He was 69. The brain cancer that he had battled for 18 months finally got the better of him.
We met maybe a dozen times over the years. The telephone was more our umbilical cord. Mostly, he talked. I listened. He had an encyclopedic memory and a gift for storytelling.
In our last conversation, more social than work-related as the cancer continued sapping his strength early this year, Sabol reported, “I’m in the game, but I only have about half a roster. But I’m fighting with everything I have.”
I didn’t write it down. No need. It just stuck.
Steve Sabol was a genius. He took NFL Films, the company his father Ed founded back in the 1960s and helped grow it into a monster.
There isn’t a network that covers the NFL that hasn’t used NFL Films footage. Often it is a peek behind the scenes. It is revealing but never is it expose’. It is frequently entertaining. It is sometimes genius. It is an Emmy magnet, having won more than 100.
It was NFL Films that tagged the Cowboys “America’s Team” and twice followed the team’s every training camp move for HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”
Sabol once told me that Tom Landry hated Films because it put the Cowboys on a pedestal that inspired other teams to try their hardest to knock them off.
Hate Sabol’s NFL Films? Landry may have been the only one.