Steve Sabol
Steve Sabol
Stephen Douglas "Steve" Sabolwas an American filmmaker. He was the president and one of the founders of NFL Films, along with his father Ed. He was also a widely exhibited visual artist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth2 October 1942
CountryUnited States of America
great innovation leading nfl open opener seems special weekend
The NFL always seems open to innovation. Take the opener on Thursday. Now they take one game, make it special and have a celebration around it leading into a weekend of 'Kickoff Sunday.' That's great marketing.
approach business button changed films millions nfl people reach technology touch
All this technology has not changed the way NFL Films does business and our process. Yes, with one touch of a button now you reach millions of people but it is still the same approach that my father and I started out with.
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When we started in the early '60s, football had a little bit of a tradition. But, they didn't have a mythology. And NFL Films, through our music and our scripts and our photography, created a mythology for the sport.
bid double guy huge money nfl relatively rights seemed spend willing worthless year
When my father bid $5,000 for the 1962 Championship Game, that was a huge amount. It was double the bid the year before. Pete Rozelle was flabbergasted. Who was this guy who was willing to spend so much money on what seemed like relatively worthless rights to the NFL Championship Game?
nfl new-orleans broken
There have been nine Super Bowls in New Orleans, and not all of them have brought the best of luck to NFL Films. We got robbed twice there, got food poisoning, and my hotel room was broken into on the day the Bears played the Patriots in January 1986.
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NFL Films has had one continuous, creative vision for 47 years. These are timeless things; timeless stories that we capture just like people go back and read Greek mythology.
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When we started NFL Films, there were no focus groups, there were no demographic studies, there were no surveys. Every decision that we made, we made with our hearts, not with our heads. And, in the very beginning, we really didn't even have a business plan.
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I think in the NFL knowledge is power, and you try to get the knowledge by whatever means.
sunday games nfl
I don't go to games as much as I used to because of the NFL's Sunday Ticket. So I'll watch the games, take notes.
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The pressure is suffocating down there; there's no air to breathe. You make a mistake or come up just short in the Super Bowl, and it feels like the end of the world.
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Covering a Super Bowl is actually one of the easiest things we do because our most experienced people are there. We'll have 25,000 feet of film and there's no way you're going to miss anything.
cranky five last miserable principles seen stood
Everything Lombardi stood for, everything that the Packers accomplished, all the principles that Lombardi has espoused for the last five years would be tarnished if they lost. He was as crabby and cranky and miserable as I'd ever seen him.
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We would get 20 different angles and then cut them all together. That's what I called it at the time - the 'cubistic' treatment of shooting football. It was the same thing Picasso did except we did it with a football play. It's taking a single image and looking at it from multiple perspectives.
cannot duplicate happen life lived talk
So they talk about heaven, and I don't know what is waiting for me up there. But I can tell you this: Nothing will happen up there that can duplicate my life down here. Nothing. That life cannot be better than the one I've lived down here, the football life. It's been perfect.