An Independent Patriots Blog
Steve Sabol, Creative Force Behind NFL Films, Dies at 69 – NYTimes.com
What an amazing life!!
The director Sam Peckinpah once told Steve Sabol that he got the idea for the classic slow-motion gunfight scene in the 1969 movie “The Wild Bunch” after watching a Super Bowl highlights film Mr. Sabol had made.
As I’ve written a couple times here I owe most of my love of football to NFL Films, and today we’ve lost a legend in Steve Sabol. It was the theatrical and epic nature of NFL Films that hooked me on the NFL early in life and I think their influence here on PatsPropaganda is pretty obvious.
So I just wanted to share a couple Steve Sabol-related items that I’ve enjoyed over the years. The fingerprint that Steve and his father Ed Sabol left on the NFL will not soon be forgotten. They defined how sports should be filmed, and in a way that television just doesn’t capture.
Sabol on Belichick, from Lombardi vs. Belichick:
Belichick is a brilliant planner who creates a mental map of each game, then plays it out in his mind before his team has to play it out on the field. His complex schemes work like a kaleidoscope: with each little twist they present different pictures to the opposition.
Video of Sabol on the Patriot Way.
Steve Sabol on how to shoot your kids football games.
Steve Sabol is one of my personal heroes. It was NFL Films that first made me fall in love with the game of football. Even though I was a hockey player there was nothing like watching a football game to me. Every clip NFL Films does gives such an epic sense to the game. Without NFL Films the NFL would be nowhere near where they are today. Here’s what Sabol had to say about the Patriots…
