The 44th Super Bowl is at hand, and NFL Films has been there for every one of them, documenting not just what happens on the field, but also lots of things that even the most ardent fans wouldn't see otherwise. NFL Films' Steve Sabol, son of founder Ed Sabol, recently sat down with NFL reporter Sam Farmer and told some of his many behind-the-scenes Super Bowl stories. Here's some of the stuff from the cutting-room floor:
The tie that bindsEverybody always said Packers coach Vince Lombardi was so confident before the first Super Bowl. That wasn't the case at all. It's not that he was unsure about his team, but he realized if he lost, everything he stood for - the legacy of the Packers and all those championships - would be diminished because he lost to this upstart league.
That whole week, he had been getting calls from NFL owners telling him that the prestige of the league was on his shoulders. It was an enormous amount of pressure.
Coaches wore a coat and tie in those days, and Lombardi was so tense before the game that he tied his Windsor knot as small as a marble. It was one of those things a cameraman notices.
The Packers won the game, and we followed Lombardi off the field as he headed for the locker room. When he got there, before he talked to reporters, he tried to get undressed. He tried to loosen his tie, but he couldn't get it off.
The trainer, Dad Brashier, came over with a tape cutter and said, "Coach, just a minute …" He just cut the tie off. Nobody thought much of it at the time.
We went back to Green Bay about a month later to show Lombardi the film. He had a game room and a bar in his basement, and he set up the projector and movie screen down there. It was one of those old threaded projectors, and he liked to thread it and fiddle with the focus. At the end of the film, you could see he was struggling with his tie. We didn't show the trainer cutting it off.
When the film was over, we could hear it slapping on the reel. Usually, Lombardi would stop it, but the slapping kept going. There was a discussion going on about the tie.
It was Lombardi's wife, Marie, she had had a lot to drink and she was angry. She had given him that tie as a Christmas present. Apparently, it was very expensive. She couldn't believe he had the audacity to have someone cut that tie.
"How could you do that!" she screamed. "How could you be so stupid! You should have left it on! That tie was silk! Do you know that cost $40!"
The whole evening just went downhill after that. Lombardi was sort of subdued, and Marie was in a bad mood.
Who could have guessed Super Bowl I would have ended with a tie?
(New Orleans) Saint ElsewhereOur most memorable story of nine Super Bowls in New Orleans came before Super Bowl IX, when the Steelers played the Vikings in 1975. We were staying at a place called the Bienville House. It's still there, on Decatur Street. We had a group of about 40 people and a lot of equipment.
When we went to check in, my father told the concierge we needed more than the 20 rooms he said we had booked. We needed storage for our equipment, and we really had booked more than 20.
The concierge said: "We had to re-sell your rooms. There's a dry cleaners convention here, and they're paying more money."
We had 10 people who had no place to stay. Everything in town was booked. Luckily, one of our assistant cameramen - actually, he was an amateur photographer and he knew how to load the cameras - was a doctor at a local hospital. He said he could arrange a place for us to stay - the hospital where he worked.
So we drew straws, and 10 guys went to the hospital, where they were admitted under the designation "unconfining observation." That meant they could come and go as they pleased.
Our head cameraman was Moe Kellman, and he got one of the hospital rooms. He didn't have a private room, though; he shared it with a guy who hooked up to some kind of defibrillator, with tubes coming out of him and everything. This guy was legitimately sick.
The next night we had a meeting, and Moe comes in looking sick. He was our oldest cameraman, in his 60s, and he was white as a sheet.
He comes in and says, "The guy next to me died last night. I was talking to him and went to bed. The next thing I know, that machine showed a flat line and was buzzing. … I don't know if I can work today. I'm really upset."
So we had to switch our main guy to an isolation camera because he was so emotionally overwrought.
He said: "I've never been next to a man who died in the middle of the night. Plus, I knew his name. He was a World War II veteran. We had talked about our children."
That was a strange trip.
Mr. MicrophoneKansas City's Hank Stram was the first coach to wear a microphone in the Super Bowl. Getting him to do it wasn't easy.
It was January 1970, when the Chiefs were playing the Vikings in Super Bowl IV at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
Hank had the whole top floor of the Sonesta Hotel, with one bedroom just for his clothes. I always said he was the only man to win the Super Bowl wearing a toupee and a sports jacket made out of the same material - beautiful jacket, bad toupee.
He was a very vain guy, and underneath his suit he wore a vest made out of scuba material just to keep his stomach in.
When we got up to his room, he was wearing that scuba vest and these little tight shorts. He was watching college football, and he had this incredible spread of food and crudités - Crab Remick, Shrimp Louie, pralines …
My dad said: "We think it would be great for history if you could wear a mike for the Super Bowl." Hank had this vocabulary where he'd use funny words. He called my father and me "Big Schmush" and "Little Schmush" for some reason. He also would refer to himself in the third person as "The Mentor."
So Hank said: "The Mentor will consider that, but there's going to have to be some coin of the realm that changes hands if The Mentor were to wear a microphone in the world championship game of professional football."
Well, we didn't know what that meant. We didn't pay anybody in those days. And Hank said: "Schmush, some dead presidents. Something I can fold up and put in my wallet. That's what I want."
My dad thought about it and said, "How about $250?"
Hank said: "That won't even pay for The Mentor's dry cleaning! Schmush, you're going to have to do better than that."
We eventually got up to $750, and that was a big deal back then. Hank agreed to do it, but only if we would bring it in cash right into the locker room. Can you imagine doing that in this day and age? Bringing a wad of cash into the locker room to pay the coach?
Anyway, Hank wore the mike, and he was terrific. He was so confident that the Chiefs were going to win, it was like having Henny Youngman on the sideline. Everything was a one-liner. He was so funny, I couldn't keep the camera steady. It was jiggling because I was laughing so hard.
"Keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys!"
"65 toss power trap. What'd I tell ya boys? 65 toss power trap!"
He understood that he was on the biggest stage possible, and he was an entertainer. This was going to be his greatest moment.
Hank was the kind of coach where, if he were a card player with a great hand, he'd clean the table. And he did that day. That was a butt-whipping - and he told us all about it.
Rozelle's trophy prepAt the end of the Jets' historic upset of the Colts in Super Bowl III, my job was to go in the locker room. For some reason the Jets had closed the locker room for about 10 minutes. Nobody could get in.
I was under the stands standing next to announcer Pat Summerall and Commissioner Pete Rozelle. This just shows you how PR-conscious Pete was. The upset had caught him off guard, so he was quizzing Summerall, "Who are the leading receivers for the Jets?"
And Pat would say, "Well, it's Don Maynard, and it's George Sauer." And Pete said, "Who are the names on the defense?" So Pete was getting a prep from Pat, so when he went in to present the trophy and talk to the players, he knew their numbers and everything.
You could see Pete's mind registering all these names. He wanted to seem gracious and knowledgeable. I always thought that showed a lot about Rozelle, that he really cared.
No ordinary JoeThere have been a lot of entertaining Super Bowl coaches. But there's one coach I wish could have reached the biggest stage, a coach who would have drawn reporters 20 deep at his podium: Joe Kuharich.
Kuharich coached the Eagles from 1964 to '68, and he was long-winded and bombastic, but in a very amusing way.
His sentences were like this long train that would be rolling along and then somehow fall off the tracks. The front half of his sentences would rarely match up with the back half.
He would come up with some of the greatest mixed metaphors, like a guy busting through the line "like a bat on a hill." Or he'd talk about somebody being "a different kettle of fish." Or somebody would have an idea, and Joe would say, "Let's run it up the flagpole and see if it floats."
He had another great line once when someone was asking him about coaching. Somebody was saying how complicated it was, and Joe said: "Wait a minute. This is not rocket surgery."
That might have been the best one I've ever heard.
In 1966, he had three starting quarterbacks: King Hill, Norm Snead and Jack Concannon. He would never tell you which one was going to start because he would make that determination on how far their kick returner would run back the opening kickoff.
If he had a short return, he would put in Hill because he was the best ball-handler. If the return got to the 30, he'd put in Snead because he was the best all-around quarterback. But if they got a really good return, Joe would put in Concannon because he was a scrambler and he could run a lot of reverses and stuff.
Someone asked Joe if that was a really unusual strategy, and the coach's response was, "It's rare, but not unusual." That answer just sort of hung in the air. Everybody just kind of sat there and looked at each other.
In 1968, the season started really bad, and fans were flying these banners that read, "Joe Must Go." Then, three games before the end of the season, the Eagles won two in a row. Joe had the perfect response.
"I think things are going to get better," he said. "I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel."
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