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With another Super Bowl (minus the Eagles) upon us, Main Line native Steve Sabol’s NFL Films is an enduring success story worth cheering about.
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It takes as many cutbacks, twists and turns as a talented tailback on a football field to get to Steve Sabol’s corner office. Lobby receptionist Sue Nelson is an able lead blocker as guests weave left, then right around and between walls adorned with football’s most prized memorabilia, including a program from the 1928 Army vs. Notre Dame game where Knute Rockne gave his legendary "win one for the Gipper" speech.
Behind a teak desk on this Hallmark-inspired National Boss Day, the president of NFL Films is acting like anything but a boss. The Main Line native admits he "could be sitting there in an eight-piece suit." Instead, Sabol is dressed in a wild, multi-colored plaid shirt, khaki pants and sneakers as he sits opening resumes and puffy portfolios. The titanium frames of his eyeglasses match NFL Films’ streamlined corporate décor, if not the leather helmet of 1953 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lattner resting atop a nearby television monitor.
"This is something I do every day of my life," Sabol says about the mail. "Most of these people are more qualified to work here than I am."
A devoted collector of magazines, programs, tickets and other printed memorabilia, Sabol mans a permanent flea market table every Sunday in Lambertville, N.J., in the spring and summer—his off-seasons. In the fall and winter, his Sundays are a bit different. He’s at home in front of a bank of monitors watching three National Football League games at once, six by day’s end. Frantically, he scribbles pages of notes. Sometimes he’s critiquing broadcasters. Sometimes he has a rooting interest.
The self-described "ultimate fan," Sabol has never disguised his loyalties—or his relationships with Kansas City Chiefs president and general manager Carl Peterson and head coach Herm Edwards, along with semi-bad-boy coaches Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots and Jon Gruden of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Sabol’s interest is always piqued by a great narrative—like the New Orleans Saints after Hurricane Katrina or the Patriots’ dominance in recent years. "They’re a modern dynasty in a league that says it has unparalleled parity," says Sabol of the latter.
Then there’s 44-year-old quarterback Vinny Testaverde’s comeback this season with the Carolina Panthers. "I look at it all from a dramaturgical outcome, not the outcome of the game," Sabol says. "I love the story and the struggle, not the stats."
When Peterson and Dick Vermeil were with the Eagles, Sabol was close with the Philadelphia franchise. Under current coach Andy Reid, it’s different. "It’s still a classy, well-run franchise, but I just wish we had a little more access," Sabol says. "That’s not Andy’s style."
Today, in NFL Films’ 200,000-square-foot Mount Laurel, N.J., studio complex, Sabol already has written his opening script for Sunday’s Game of the Week, met with his music department and edited a piece on Minnesota Vikings rookie running back Adrian Peterson. An hour from now, he’ll get a phone prompt for a radio spot—one of six he does per week. Afterward, he’ll meet with his camera department to discuss a new lens they’re using, then work on other scripts.
"I’m doing the same thing I did 40 years ago—and it’s the greatest job in the world," Sabol says. "You can say I’m the president, but I’m still just a filmmaker, and I’m as involved in the creative process as I ever was. Most guys get older and get further and further away from that."
Now 65, Sabol knows he won’t walk away and retire as easily as his fabled father, NFL Films founder Ed Sabol, did in 1995. "I want to attend Super Bowl LXX (70)," Steve says, knowing that when he attends this year’s Super Bowl XLII (42) Feb. 3 in Arizona, he’ll be just one of nine people who’ve attended every one of them so far.
In 1987, Sabol took over for his father. Now he refers to the company as a "son," and his real world looks like the world football fans see on television every Sunday. NFL Films has sculpted a once-groggy, soggy sport into a sleek, sensational marketing machine. The Sabols have done it with low-angle, visceral vig-nettes of miked gladiators grunting against bright blue skies, and with lethal linebackers snorting puffs of hot steam on ice-cold afternoons. They’ve done it with choice cameos (Vermeil crying in the locker room after Super Bowl XV), wonderful words ("the ice bucket chill of a Wisconsin winter") and narrators with deep, powerful deliveries (like those of Harry Kalas, the Hall of Fame voice of the Phillies, and the late John Facenda, who some called "The Voice of God").
"It’s all so much a part of me," says Sabol. "It’s my hobby, but also my profession. And I realize how lucky I am—especially to have done it for so long. I don’t take any of it for granted."
