Steve Sabol

Man, I loved Steve Sabol.  I didn't know him personally, of course, and his career began decades before I was even born.  But to a kid like me whose appreciation of sports and film were on an equal plane, Sabol's work was absolutely mesmerizing.  Before I even knew who the man was I was absolutely captivated by the slow-motion images of looming football players set to dramatic orchestral music.  It all seemed so epic.

As somebody who never really fully matured into true adulthood what I really loved were the bloopers.  The "Football Follies."  Watching Sabol's follies was like watching a variety show.  There would be a series of short segments, and each segment centered around a theme or told a silly story.  The narratives really made the videos endearingly entertaining.

We take it for granted, the aesthetics of the football highlight reel.  Steve Sabol pioneered a lot of that.  Early on he did a lot of the camera work himself.  Not content with a high static shot from the fifty yard line, Sabol's images were tight and intimate.  And more often than not the best images were just off the playing field, like players gabbing on the bench and psycho fans hollering in the bleachers.

Beyond the imagery, Sabol also pioneered the technique of hooking everybody up with a microphone.  Audio was key, and sound-catching dishes could record the grunts and clangs of offensive lines meeting defensive lines, but only lapel mics could catch actual conversation.  And in-game football conversation is awesome, especially when coaches are wired up.  Players taunt each other, complain about the heat, talk about whatever, but the coaches are viciously ruthless.

And that brings us to the bleeps.  Half the fun of an NFL Films production from the 80s is hearing the naughty words bleeped out.  Imagine Stevie Wonder getting elbowed in the stomach during a harmonica solo, or the sound an old Macintosh computer made when you sat on the keyboard.  That's what Jerry Glanville ended up sounding like in these films every time he tore into a referee.  It was great.

Steve Sabol died Tuesday at the age of 69 from a brain tumor.  He transformed the way we watch football.  He turned a pile of men mud-humping each other into a triumphant spectacle.  He leaves behind decades of work, hours of film, and tons of documented football awesomeness.  I owe Sabol much of my football fandom, and I miss him already.