NFL Film Lost Treasures End of an Era

[Music] [Applause] [Applause] first of all the defensive people are strong not too agile well i always felt that after you went through all that work the only thing you had to shoot for was the film and you got to keep the film i mean that's the backbone that's what it all goes back to that's the heritage the film the old bibles the bones in the ground they dig them up well let's hope that we don't have to go through it again stanley i'd like to see him die out there let him go we won we won man we finished over the win as the 1960s came to a close america was changing and so was the game of professional football at a time when the establishment and the anti-establishment were trying to live together the same thing was happening in football the nfl and afl finally agreed to a merger and you could walk into a locker room then and you'd see veteran players with crew cuts dressing next to rookies who looked like they just got off the bus from woodstock no one knew where the game was headed or what shape it might take we just knew it was going to change and at nfl films we knew that we'd have to change with it in the late 1960s pro football was flourishing on the field and at the gate fans were coming out to the games in record numbers and they were filling the same old stadiums they had filled for generations the dirt infields in places like cleveland gave the game a sort of a timeless quality that traditionalists loved but when it rained the dirt turned to mud and when it didn't rain enough the field would dry out and pretty soon joe namath was vanishing in a cloud of dust the league felt that with the game growing and evolving the playing surface should evolve along with it that's when several teams had artificial turf installed in their stadiums they felt that this space-age surface would be faster and better suited for the new wide-open brand of football [Music] filmed the first installation of astroturf at franklin field in philadelphia it was 1969 and i remember thinking what a shame it was to tear up that grass field gosh that's where chuck bed and eric and norm van brockman once played and now in its place they put down 100 yards of outdoor carpet to me it just didn't look like a football field it looked like an oversized pool table and i thought my dad you know being an old school kind of guy he would really hate this stuff but he didn't really care one way or the other i just heard about it and i saw it but i was not interested in astroturf how did it affect our films though i don't know i don't think it did or did it i didn't i was i never uh i don't know me yeah no hi you know i don't know why that's a strange question astroturf what the hell is that let's like let's talk about this cardboard or lighting i don't know what astroturf was yeah but the players had to play on this yeah i know so that's their job i'm filming not playing roll two lentos two back then most football people saw this new surface as a giant leap forward for the sport i think it's great we played out in seattle and we ordered a strip of this thing about two weeks ago for this game to practice on work it's great it's great yeah it's kind of feels good though i'm not going to mind the heat from working out on you our trainers have told us for example that sprained ankles muscle pulls everything else a lot of it has to do with inconsistency part of the consideration in the injury pattern is the environment in which the individual performs and i think with a consistent uh standardized surface on which to play that there will undoubtedly be fewer injuries overall the only disadvantage i see that if you hit the ground you might bounce up a little too high and the guy might knock you down again i think it's going to be one of the things in the future and i feel that in the near future all the national football league and american league stadiums will have the essentials even guys who looked like they played with bronco nagurski liked astroturf at least at first [Music] the teams put in the surface hoping it would make the game safer but the same hatchet men were out there every week and they were inflicting the same kind of damage they always did [Applause] lonnie stickles number 85 for the 49ers he was one of those players he dealt out punishment for nine seasons he offered no apologies then and he offers none now i was a guy that just went to work every sunday once you start pounding on me i'm gonna play to hurt you and beat you any way i can you were the enemy and i really wanted to destroy you i didn't care about you personally your personal life anything like that you had a different color on and if i could wreck your leg or break your arm or knock your teeth out i would i played very aggressively a lot of times dirty took cheap shots i taped my wrist the bone of my wrists i wouldn't break that and i just time it measured so i'd get him right in the landing right in the throat hit him right up under the throat stumble team dude sent 11 guys after me sometimes if i played nine years but not much of it worked [Applause] and then years later when i was breaking down they just threw me on the old scrap heap there was a lot of vicious play in that era but the league discouraged us from showing it that's why these plays were never aired until now you see the league felt that showing these hits would make the game appear too violent yet george hallas the founder of the game always wanted these hard hits in his highlight film he would call up and he'd say hard hitting is legal and he said the game is built on the premise that a good player becomes less good when he's hit so hard that he doesn't want to be hit again you have to remember there weren't as many games on network tv as there are now and there weren't as many highlight shows replaying all the action but when the league started losing stars like chicago's gale sayers well there was no concealing that the fear was if the violence went unchecked and more and more of these marquee players were knocked out by the hatchet men of the league the game would suffer so officials crack down on late hits clotheslining spearing and other dangerous tactics but even played within the rules pro football was still a violent game and that'll never change in 1968 we filmed the first combined nfl afl draft in a cramped new york city ballroom today the co-check room at the draft is bigger than this back then former mortal enemies sat side by side and peacefully divvied up the college talent but this forgotten footage shows that the selection process was still a work in progress i know i'm in a way i'm going as always nfl commissioner pete rozelle kept his cool in the midst of chaos the buffalo bill is selected you have to remember that pete was a former pr man so he knew how and when to deliver his lines the buffalo bills select is their first choice the first round half back o.j simpson the university of southern california and first i would like to ask howard his general impression of his observations of the draft this morning i find it a rather tedious board hard to describe one's reaction to men spending the utter limit of 15 minutes on draft selections when they've had an entire year multi thousands of dollars as you know expended on scouting computerized systems and yet if somebody takes a player before somebody else there has to be a sudden complete revision apparently in someone's thing it's utterly absurd and a manifestation of inefficiency inconsistent with the kind of efficiency that you have brought to professional football with your own operation nfl films well thank you that's very kind jack do you concur in mr cosell's statement yes jack that's very good thank you a lot of people said that howard was oh they had every adjective in the world arrogant conceited full of himself yeah he was but strangely enough a lot of the things he said were true it seems to me a mistake to limit an authentic genius merely to film i think that uh in the reorganized structure pete can move on to industry where he more properly belongs and you can assume the coveted role of commissioner would you answer the phone uh jack please you're not doing a damn thing all right that's uh we'll print that playing for roxanna okay let's roll one lou saban steve sabol with the merger nfl films gained a whole new cast of characters including one of my all-time favorites denver coach lou saber why are you gonna know how to run that pattern by this time get inside where you belong god's sakes man right from the start lou was great for us because he was so intense and passionate and honest and today at the age of 79 he hasn't changed a bit i don't know if he would take wins and losses i you couldn't say i was very successful i thought i did the best i could with the teams that we had but uh i think my greatest strength was that i was up front i had nothing to hide i know a lot of coaches that maybe they burn within and maybe they keep it within their guts but myself i think most of it's on the surface and maybe this isn't the best way to do it but at least it eliminates possibilities of ulcers and so on so forth i'm not going to give you any trouble today i don't promise that to you though i i lose myself into the game because it's genuine there's nothing phony about it there's nothing phony about our business either you do it or you don't do it we really understand we go on stage at two o'clock on sunday afternoon we wired saban for sound several times and unlike some coaches who worried how they would come across on camera lou never changed his style every time we put a mic on him he told me the same thing hey if i said it you can use it i said now steve you got to understand if i wear it you might have a tape full of bleeps he said no he said we'll cut the bleeps out guys coming down in there damn it but that doesn't matter with you guys the alert i'll tell you it's going to cost medicaid and it's going to uh i love dearly but i he used to give me grief like you can't ever believe come on now i wanted to get chip's attention i said chip chip chip chip chip chip chip send him down play football my daughter could do better my daughter you're full of chicken manure and i i was astounded by what i had said you know you know might call me say hey coach you're full of chicken if we get the crack another sideline foil was assistant coach whitey duvall and i looked at woody i said are you sure this guy comply he says give him a little more time give him a little more how much more time are we going to get him he's having a bad day freddie i just said to you now i just said to you blitz and bingo he goes right over this young kid again he flattens him and i looked at what he said they're killing me why they they're telling me and every place i go now the first thing they say lou they're killing me whitey that's an opening statement i'd like to see him die out there let him go and it just tore me up because i wasn't a part of that action i was the guy on the sideline and i couldn't do anything but direct traffic so to speak lou saban wasn't the winningest coach we ever wired but in one area he was by far the best he led the league in classic quotes you can get it done you can get it done what's more you gotta get it done the greatest hits of lou saban the nfl players of the early 60s were from the old school you could see it in their faces and you could see it the way they played larry wilson played part of one season with two broken hands and what i remember about larry is that he used to leave his false teeth in his locker when he took the field if you weren't tough you just couldn't play when the colts dennis gaubot's number 53 chases down the rams tommy mcdonald he makes sure to put a good hard lick on him and you'll notice tommy's teammate marlon mckeever number 86 he doesn't say a word we could probably get away with a little more aggression than than what they get away with now i look at some of the things that they get fined over now and i think it's ridiculous quite frankly but that's the mentality that the sport has developed like most old school players the key vert could take a hard hit like this one with no hard feelings that's the way the game was played mckeever played his first six seasons as a linebacker then he switched to tight end where he made the pro ball he was later switched back to linebacker but he never complained to me it was just the idea that if i was going to play and if i had to be on hand i was going to play it in and if they needed someone at linebacker i i would play linebacker these guys were tough rugged guys but you already know that having met monty stickels here's monty again number 87 when he played with the saints oh i don't know i think maybe he's gotten a little tougher since he's gotten a little older i don't know if he was really that dirty at all that may be what he felt i didn't feel that he's a blowhard another old school player was bill glance number 80 of the browns glass was one of the hardest hitting linemen of that era yet he was also a man of deep and outspoken religious conviction bill since you talk of a god of love how can you play a game of violence well really i think that um this game that you call violence of course has rules and i try to abide by the rules as best i can i think that as long as you play within the rules you need to play with your whole heart and i know that it's a rather violent game in the thinking of some but i believe that it gives me an opportunity a platform from which i can communicate my faith such as nothing nothing else could do i've got the joy joy joy joy we filmed one of glass's tours but the footage you're seeing is footage we didn't use back then that's because bill was so conservative and so critical of the 60s counter culture we felt airing it would just create more controversy after our game in san francisco last year we went through the haight ashbury district of san francisco we had the privilege of visiting this hippie area of san francisco and i have respect for the hippie as long as he's genuinely searching for something for a meaning to his world but when the hippie like many of these out there in san francisco have done use this as an excuse to their own laziness into their own mediocrity then i have no respect whatsoever for them in fact i was amazed as i walked through that area because you could actually smell them before you saw them the people there many of them just don't seem to care about life they've escaped to a world of dope or alcoholism and they've said we're being ourselves but the amazing thing is they must mean they're being their worst self certainly they couldn't mean they're being their best self now glass wasn't alone in his disdain for the so-called flower children a lot of the old school players felt that way but by the end of the decade that younger generation was sending its best athletes to the nfl and they changed the face and the fashion of the game players like eagles linebacker tim rosavich came right off the college campus into the nfl and brought that free spirited attitude with him well there was a whole new uh a whole new culture as they say now and uh they were a little wild and i didn't speak their language very much but they presented a whole new picture uh that wasn't that i wasn't used to so i think i let steve handle that that was his generation dad's right this was my generation that's me leaning against the wall look at those clothes and that hair that looked like a roadie for the monkeys i was filming san diego half back dickie post for a special we did called the new breed and the show explored the issue of the 60s athlete his adjustment to the nfl and the nfl's adjustment to him dickie was an exciting runner who led the chargers in rushing three straight years let's start with we followed him off the field to his clothing store in san diego look at this stuff now and it looks like we're filming an austin powers closet probably pocket like this our lighting crew blew out the fuse box in vicky's store but you have to remember you know we were still learning how to do our job too so we moved outside to san diego's balboa park the idea was to film him doing an imaginary concert that's me coaching dickie on how to play the air piano now the hat was dicky's idea you look at it now and it's like we were crossing billy jack with billy joel i always thought the new breed was one of the most interesting films we ever made because it spoke to what was happening in america at the time but in a fun way at least i thought it was fun some nfl owners disagreed in fact two of them sent angry letters to my father they said that we saw your show of the new breed and we don't want those elements of society represented in the nfl you know we were confused because we thought this was a way to appeal to the young people and show that the game was contemporary and football's always been a mirror of our culture then the letter ended nfl films is soiling the nest they said the scenes of rosovich making candles on the beach were and these were their exact words subversive and immoral i mean he was making candles on the beach for crying out loud but those were the differences that defined america during that time with the new breed we addressed those points and hopefully we made a few people smile at the same time [Music] sticky sid break big play big play now i had a unique connection with tim rossovich number 82. for two years i shared an apartment with tim and gary pettigrew gary's the defensive tackle to tim's right number 88 when their careers ended they both moved back to the west coast but i thought it would be fun if we got together again so we did naturally i captured it all on film this is a story that i was not privileged to but i remember about the donuts it you know when the reporters used to come in and there would be the big thing of donuts and you don't know what i'm again you know the story of course of course tim doesn't remember very conveniently because he's the one in the middle of the donut or the donut was in the middle of tim you don't remember some treasures are best left lost but you get the idea what we had the three of us was more like a lab experiment than a living arrangement i was this aspiring filmmaker rooming with two football players who themselves were very good on me we clashed instantly maybe that's why we became friends but we were very different tim's whole attitude was was well it's just like the difference between northern california and southern california he was that la type and i wasn't oh that makes me sick it is right out there right out in your face and all the time we got to make up for it we'll straighten but it was interesting the dynamics because there were players that resented you because they felt you know pettigrew's a snob he went to stanford he's an intellectual and rosso they thought this guy was from mars you know with the tie-dye t-shirts and the capes and the rawhide necklaces and stuff and there was eye in the middle we didn't even know you where the hell do you fit in anyway okay so i didn't fit in but no one fit in with rosso not even in the 60s rosso used to sleep on the floor you know how he wouldn't go you wouldn't use a bed and i remember waking up and seeing rosso would be laid out you know just this like this this is the way you'd wake up in the morning and come out and it would be like this well you know you do you've got to get up and step over them like that and i say you know come on what the hell yeah that was wait a second now that was because that you used to say you had to sleep with the magnetic north the magnet your electrical waves had to go through to recharge your body if you slept with your head towards the magnetic north it energized your body except that he wasn't sleeping he was just pissed off well that doesn't make me a bad person not at all you remember the times when we took old dick butkus's films and rolled him before the ball game and took a look at the way he used to take all of that whole thing i remember the three of us just sitting around nice just talking about butkus dick butkus he was a source of fascination for me as a filmmaker because he was such a primitive visceral presence on the screen and tim and gary identified with butkus because like them he played on a losing team but he never let the losing diminish his passion for the game and a passion for football was one thing tim gary and i all had in common the knowledge that i gained about football through steve and his background help might help me play better and i think that his inside information that he got for me as far as a player's attitude probably helped him be a better filmmaker so it was a good relationship we had a kind of a guinea pig menage a trois what are they running that trap in there i'll never forget the day timmy wore a microphone for nfl films i shot the sideline camera and for four quarters i lived inside my roommate's world where they hit gary nice tackle otherwise i'm not doing anybody any good because i'm getting blocked away from the hole living with both you guys it gave me a respect for the the intelligence the toughness and the demands that the game put on the players living with you and and knowing what you went through not only physically got some analgesic man my i got some torn muscles in my neck man but mentally and the anguish and especially the seasons that were bad the way you guys would get beat up and then the fans would boo you oh shut up man the next sunday it was the same you could see the energy start to build all right first down first down and then you'd be right back there again we got to get another one right now man we come out in the second half we just run over it's such a pleasure to be able to play in the thing that you're it's your dream as you're growing up is is that's the thing that you know is mind-boggling to me that i actually ever got there we won we won man we we finished up with the win i remember asking you one time how can you stand doing this film business about football traveling watching going over films reading about it you know 12 14 hours a day day in day out 365 years because it would make me puke [Laughter] and you said i love it i really enjoy it gary i really do we played it we we got down and dirty and and bloody and uh and injured and uh steve has brought what we know is football to to the masses to the public right and uh and i can understand why he would enjoy that are you getting close to the end of a reel i have to run into because i can run into the end of the piece get up and go ahead we'll film you leaving okay i'm going to pee now all right i'm going to lay down here don't let him fall down want to go upstairs take a rest should i pee between gary's legs while he's paying for or should i just like you know i can pee over a bus oh yeah what well we probably should move along now i think this is it bill another eagles player halfback timmy brown lived in the same apartment and we became such good friends timmy and i that i probably took his football career for granted it wasn't until i looked through our film vault that i realized timmy had some of the best footage of any runner in that era but because he played for the losing eagles hardly anyone noticed when timmy left the game he went to holly when he made movies he even appeared in the film version of mash but still most people today don't remember his name by 1969 timmy was winding up his career in baltimore but he and i were reunited on the colts bench at super bowl three i was shooting the sideline camera and timmy that's him number two he was a colts backup and he came over to talk a few times during the game once it was late in the first quarter and the cults were just starting to realize that beating the jets wasn't going to be as easy as they thought i don't know exactly what it is but uh we'll be all right it's just way i'm relaxed we score once and we'll get loose now i wasn't really interviewing timmy i wasn't trying to be a sideline reporter but at the same time i knew that he might say something good so i kept the camera rolling even though as you can see it was pointed at the ground timmy didn't know we were recording so i didn't use any of this sound in the original film if timmy had known we were rolling i don't think he would have been as frank as he was just too tight just made all the mistakes just too uptight they're a good team but we should beat them 20 points any way you look at it it's just that they're getting every break in the book on their way maybe the guys are with them today maybe i don't know what the hell it is but i just think because you guys weren't because of training you were really tight huh i would say that was amazing i don't want to knock anybody it's not shoeless for any more than others but a whole week since sunday since saturday night we got down here you're already tired from the trail i think it's a saturday night off well hell everybody's beat this sunday 11 o'clock bed check on there's too much sitting around the colts lost of course and it was the last game timmy ever played one last frustration in a frustrating career but the men who played against timmy they knew how great he was they voted him into the pro bowl three times but i'll always think of him as pro football's ultimate lost treasure i've had a lot of frustration that i never fulfilled what was there what was in me people don't remember you you know tim brown raiders not the original the original i still have dreams i came back i'm always coming back it's weird i think god am i ever going to outgrow this let it go but i had too much left i had too much to give i didn't get a chance to but i come back and uh always run that opening kickoff back so they know so they know hey don't question me don't question what i could do all you got to do is give me the ball [Music] one of the first shows that brought attention to nfl films was our 1968 documentary lombardi it was a one-hour prime time special that aired on cbs and it was an intimate portrait of this legendary coach and his final days in green bay lombardi had that tough exterior what's going on out here hey and when i would come out and try to talk to him about filming his practice no way say look and he never knew my name he called me lou saban for three years the most surprising thing about the film was that my dad was able to talk lombardi into doing it this was the great lombardi he didn't open himself up to anyone it took a long time to keep talking to him at every owner's meeting sometimes i'd get him one he'd be having his cocktail hour say coach you know you got to let us do something you're a legend you've got to go down in history and i think one of the lines that he loved best was when i finally said you know coach i'm going to make you the john wayne of pro football oh he liked that he thought that that was uh from that time i started to make a few little inroads you know that line works so well that we've used it on dozens of head coaches since then anytime a coach was reluctant to let us film a practice or wear a wire during a game we'd say but coach will make you the john wayne of pro football we figured if it worked with lombardi it would work with anyone [Music] to film lombardi my dad and i spent two months of that season in green bay and everything in town revolved around football and the packers everywhere you turned even on the radio you were reminded that this is football country the morning 22 degrees the wnfl temperature looks like it's going to be a beautiful day in greece we had to squeeze our whole crew into the back of lombardy's car you should have seen it three guys with cameras wires microphones and all that equipment were all piled on top of each other in the back seat i'm glad lombardi didn't drive a compact or we really would have been in trouble what made the show unique was the access that lombardi gave us he let us follow him through his day beginning with mass each morning then he run some errands before going to the office we shot so much great stuff what you're seeing here didn't even make the original show lombardi was so deep and thought most mornings he'd forget we were in the car and sometimes he'd leave his keys in the ignition and we'd have to say yo coach you forgot something first of all all of the defensive people are strong not too agile lombardi allowed our cameras into the team meetings which were strictly off limits nobody'd ever been allowed to do this short situation safety's up there's a back survivor and brother you're never relaxing anything more open than that he even invited us into his house to film a cocktail party lombardi was a great host he loved to have people over he loved to entertain he loved a good joke he wasn't a good storyteller but he was a good audience and he had that great laugh during the film by now he got into it and he became a producer he said now tomorrow ed this is what we're going to do and i think you might like this it's the nutcracker drill you're going to watch that guy's going to get slammed around there we're going to do this and we're going to do that and tell you something else i want you to uh i'm gonna i do my exercises every morning i think a good shot would be working on the the weights and the equipment and let the people know i keep in shape and then he got through with that and he is i said where are you going i'm going to steam room hey not a bad idea take me in the steam room and mary would sit with a towel in the steam room by now i had to sometimes fake the shots not even roll film because i knew we'd never use it but he he began to like being filmed i always admired him a lot of things i liked about lombardi he was very fair he had a lot of guts and courage and he believed in what he was doing and he was not a stoic type of coach he was never born he was excitable he was fun to be next to he he the sparks came out he had a perfect storyline coming up the hard way and not getting into coach until he was over 45 years old just like me i didn't get into nfl films while i was 45 years old but there he went to this little town and started from scratch and bingo two nfc championships super bowl [Music] he was lonesome too i remember i used to have dinner with him at some restaurant in green bay almost every night i felt a little self-conscious because i thought i was taking him away from his friends and his groups and i said you know vince you don't have to eat with me i could he said no he said ed i eat alone everywhere [Music] [Applause] when we were filming lombardi during that 1967 season we didn't realize he was suffering the onset of the stomach cancer that would take his life just three years later many times on the sidelines he would suddenly bend over and hold his stomach and i once asked him i said vince what are you doing i see you do that a couple of times again he said i just have a i think it must be an ulcer or something and he once told me he took about 15 aspirins a day and i said 15. he said yeah i've been doing that for years i'm not a diagnostician i didn't know what that meant i just thought he had ulcers and all coaches have ulcers i guess much rather lombardi denied his health was an issue when he stepped down as head coach in 1968. i would like to preface my remarks first by saying that i'm an excellent health and i believe in good physical condition he stayed in green bay for one more year then he went to washington as coach and general manager lombardi coached there only one year then his failing health forced him to resign he died in september of 1970. he was just 57 years old nfl films had come a long way from the days of wind-up bell and hal cameras and two-man crews we now arrived at a game with a battalion of skilled personnel and cases full of the best camera and recording equipment that money can buy all customized to our needs we were young yet experienced energetic but under control and we attacked our job with a passion and finally we had found a voice that matched our imagination i can still remember the first words that i wrote for john fasenda and i remember tapping him on the shoulder and the first words that he ever read for us were it starts with a whistle and ends with a gun and i just remembered that remember thinking back and hearing that and knowing that boy we were onto something something really different we're ready to go if you are okay uh john he read our scripts as if he were an after dinner speaker at the last supper can i use the word frightfully rather than uh fighting for lily i'm gonna have trouble with that yeah that is that's a that's a tough word okay that's fine because we still keep the alliteration and it's a good line and i don't want to change it okay so it's okay frightfully instead of frighteningly i'm glad you said it okay all right nowhere else right from the very first we call john the voice of god but he wasn't infallible it was fiercely thought but frightfully blood let's take that over again okay john right from the top and no mistakes we're rolling the chiefs responded to the viking score by returning to the strategy oh now middle back of dawn death oh shoot john be careful these next names not even the wizardry of fred the whitney coffee your bastard name there men like i shide and buller beulah you son of a i hope i didn't say that lasty word forgive me mayor cooper mayor cooper mia max mccooper i have sinned before thee and god and everyone right from the very audience never heard the flaws just the finely tuned instrument it was fiercely thought but frightfully flawed you know john was italian and he loved the opera and he would make notations in the margin this is very base this is trepid oh this is profundo and he would have all these notations relating to a musical scenario there he was using his voice as an instrument as right the only film john actually appeared in was one that nobody outside the company ever saw he hosted the nfl films softball team highlights the 1970 baseball season for nfl films was one of frustration and hope frustration because of a lack of talent hope well let's hope that we don't have to go through it again they had style they were dedicated they had poise they had pride they had execution they had talent they had hats and t-shirts this whole movie represents the foundation that built nfl films thirty years later lou schmidt is still with us as a producer behind the camera that day was jay gerber who became our head of production my dad's driver was ralph caputo who went on to build and maintain our facility in mount laurel new jersey bob ryan coined the phrase america's team in a dallas cowboy highlight and today he's our editor-in-chief producer phil tuckett was hired after one year as a chargers wide receiver 32 years later he had the idea to do a series called the lost treasures of nfl films john hence was our first general manager and he was the backbone of our early production staff and of course there was our head coach i believe we have a real fine baseball team we have some real fine hitters real fine pitchers real fine fielders and barring any serious injuries on the field or venereal diseases i think we should have a real fine season when we found this old film it reminded me of how much time has passed and how things have changed john hence died suddenly in 1980 in the prime of his life and we still miss his strength and his vision john fasenda passed away six years later but his voice will always be identified with nfl films i love both of these men and i'll never forget what they contributed to our company [Music] [Applause] in 1970 the game took on a whole new look with the merger of the afl and nfl for the first time afl and nfl teams met in the regular season and this was the first game kansas city and minnesota now these teams had met nine months earlier in super bowl four and the chiefs beat the vikings convincingly minnesota coach bud grant used our film of that game that's the one that hank strand was wired for sound he used it to fire up his team for this rematch and it worked the vikings hammered the chiefs 27-10 but what mattered really was the big picture in the fact that the two leagues were now one and the future of all the teams was brighter as a result i guess i'll always have a a warm feeling for the game of the 1960s that was the decade when nfl films was born so it was like a whole new world open to us and if pro football and film was a perfect marriage as people often say then this decade was our honeymoon the game was was just unpretentious in a charming kind of way you just don't see livestock grazing in the end zone anymore it was a decade in which all of us players coaches and fans could see the future of the sport while still feeling close to its roots these are the players and the personalities who built the game as we know it today the lost treasures of nfl films is our tribute to them

Channel: jstube36

Views: 643

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Id: xZDhKxF0PyU

Length: 43min 38sec (2618 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021