Sports institution undeterred by digital age, layoffs, network focus
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NFL Films President Steve Sabol poses at his desk with an old 16mm movie camera while the company's new live Internet program airs on the computer screen behind him at their headquarters on Sept. 26, 2000. Sabol, whose father, Ed, started the company in 1962, began as a cameraman using a camera similar to this one. Associated Press
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — The first of Steve Sabol's collections visible upon arrival at NFL Films' headquarters in suburban Philadelphia is the 90-plus Emmy statues the company has earned since the early 1960s, testament to its expertise as the Homer and/or Virgil of professional pigskin mythology.
The displays continue upstairs, where Sabol collects, among other things, faucets, games, books, keys, locks, buttons, milk caps, matchbooks, stamps and bug sprayers. He buys old magazines, color-copies photos of interest, and uses the copies to create mixed media artwork, which he, of course, collects.
Sabol's newest collection is esoteric even by his standards. Alongside the two dozen or so filing boxes filled with notes and details for future film projects resides a budding nest of toy dinosaurs, contributed by well-wishers and friends after a recent suggestion that as media morphs in the digital age, NFL Films is headed in the direction of the T-Rex and raptor.
In a similar vein, pinned to Sabol's bulletin board is a copy of a suggested new design for NFL Films stationery, rendered in the same typeface as the logo for the movie Jurassic Park.
"People sent me these things and said, ‘Dinosaurs may be extinct, but they lived for 10 million years, so don't worry,' ” Sabol said. "It was nice. There were a lot of people who were genuinely concerned. I was touched by it.”
There are fewer faces these days around NFL Films, which in part promoted the dinosaurs and the calls of concern. The company laid off 21 of 283 employees earlier this year in the wake of suggestions that its epic style of filmmaking had fallen out of favor with viewers and the NFL's corporate hierarchy, which is focused on pumping up the struggling NFL Network.
"It seemed to be sort of an emotional and sentimental thing with people,” Sabol said. "They've been calling to ask if we're doing OK.”
In fact, Sabol said, things are fine.
After a year in which the NFL Network seemingly struggled to find a role for NFL Films, the company is developing three new series that will air on Thursday nights this fall.
Starting 11 will be a football-sized weekly top-10 show, listing 11 points of interest for the coming week, such as strangest play, biggest blooper or greatest catch. It will be followed by Sounds of the Game, which will match the best sideline sound of the week with excerpts from players miked dur
