If you were to make a Mount Rushmore of the most influential individuals in sports broadcasting, you could make a very good case for Steve Sabol to be etched on that mountain. He never announced a game, never was president of ESPN, and never was the most famous broadcaster at any point in his career.
As a kid, I knew Steve Sabol as the man who would introduce Football Follies videos. Little did I know the incredible work that saw his on-air role as a mere footnote to what he and his father Ed built at NFL Films. The Sabols did more than any other person to grow the popularity of the NFL through his work at NFL Films and mythologize American football.
The success of NFL Films is one of the most groundbreaking achievements in documenting sports and the impact of that group is seen not just in sports, but in all areas of filmmaking. And Steve Sabol was the visionary behind it all.
Sabol passed away in 2012 at the age of 69 after a battle with brain cancer. But his presence still remains hovering over the league and the empire he built at NFL Films. This week SI’s MMQB launched a series looking at 95 NFL artifacts to commemorate the league’s 95th anniversary. One of which is Sabol’s office, which is described in brilliant detail by Emily Kaplan.
The door to Steve Sabol’s office remains open, as always. The lights are on and the computer is plugged in, even though the man who worked behind the large mahogany desk, with a nameplate that reads “King of Football Movies,” died nearly two years ago, at 69, of a tumor on the left side of his brain. Despite his absence, his life’s work pulsates inside these four tan walls, filling the 21-by-22-foot room with a creative energy that spills into the hallways of NFL Films.
Here, in a hideaway corner on the second floor, is where Sabol reviewed highlight films, edited scripts, read as many as five books a week, snipped passages from poems and hosted 5 o’clock cocktails on Fridays. It is where the visionary helped mythologize football, and where the man’s legacy lives on.
A few days after Sabol’s passing, a janitor locked the office. When the staff returned to work the next morning, the building didn’t seem right. NFL Films COO Howard Katz had an assistant unlock the oak door, and it hasn’t been shut since. The space has become a sanctuary for protégés to brainstorm, and a gathering place for an occasional Ketel One on the rocks. Everything in the office remains exactly as Sabol left it, down to the lunch order he scribbled on a white post-it note in September 2012: a wrap and a smoothie.
“Every time I walk by, I say, ‘Hi boss,’ ” says Ken Rodgers, a senior supervising producer. “Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe I sound crazy. But I still feel his presence here, like he is still sitting at that desk. It is as if he never left.”
The rest of the column and a photographic tour of Sabol’s office will be one of the best and most compelling pieces of sportswriting you’ll read this week. Sabol was and still remains one of the legendary figures in NFL history without even playing a down.
[The MMQB]
