Remembering Steve Sabol of NFL Films: 1942-2012

Photo: Steve Sabol behind the scenes. Photo credit: Daniel Hulshizer, Associated Press.

Cover photo: Steve Sabol of NFL Films in 1993. Photo credit: Scott Halleran, AllSport.

Any lifelong football fan will tell you that while Ed Sabol was the man behind NFL Films, his son Steve was the voice of it. 

Any lifelong football fan will tell you that whether it is Madden’s Raiders, Landry’s Cowboys, Lombardi’s Packers, Knoll’s Steelers or whichever legendary coach’s team, that it was Steve Sabol that brought those teams to your living room. 

Before social media and clever sound bites and unique camera angles and graphics and any other special elements to a broadcast than you can think of, NFL Films was a revolutionary and groundbreaking force that pioneered in a lot of ways how we view and consume not just the NFL today but all sports in general. 

Ed Sabol in 1962 founded Blair Motion Pictures, which quickly became NFL Films (based in Mount Laurel, N.J.) after he went to then-commissioner Pete Rozelle with the idea to film the 1962 NFL Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants. The Packers won the game 16-7.

NFL Films’ programming was largely voiced by Steve Sabol (born October 2, 1942) and became an enduring staple of NFL coverage and video -  the never-before-seen access and sound that brought games and moments right to you. 

Steve, a Moorestown, N.J. native who passed away in 2012 (his father Ed, who passed away on February 9, 2015 at age 98, was born in Atlantic City), was the narrator and interviewer for the company’s content. When a player was interviewed for its programming, it was Sabol who was asking the questions and walking and talking alongside the players. Think back far enough if you are old enough, and you can also still hear the iconic voice of John Facenda narrating certain programs, such as the profile videos of Madden’s Raider teams. There are also the instrumentals composed by Sam Spence, which provided the soundtrack to each NFL Films production. Those instrumentals have also been a part of the soundtracks to the Madden video games of the past.

Steve Sabol was diagnosed with a brain tumor in March of 2011 and succumbed to the tumor on September 18, 2012. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020. 

In the digital world of today, many camera angles, special graphics, and varying genres of music blanket sports coverage. A lot of that, maybe all of it, should be attributed to the work of NFL Films and what they pioneered for generations to come. 

Ed Sabol had a vision and his son Steve saw to it that we all came to intimately know what that vision was and looked like. The legacies of Ed and Steve Sabol endure forever. 

We remember Steve today on the 13th anniversary of his passing. Thank you for all that you did for the sport of football and the NFL.