"If NFL Films is the Starship Enterprise, Steve and Howard are the booster rockets that are going to take us where no man has gone before."
On the surface, it seemed to make sense. You had a brand new 24/7 network that was going to need a lot of programming, and you had a respected film company with a truckload of sports Emmys that could service all of its programming needs. A marriage made in heaven, right?
Wrong.
Considering what has transpired over the last 8 years, a more apt analogy might be Films as the Titanic and Bornstein, Katz and the NFL Network as the iceberg that sank it.
In the mid-60s, pro football wasn't America's game and the NFL wasn't the $9.3 billion revenue machine it is today. It was running a distant third in popularity to baseball and college football. NFL Films helped change that.
With its unique style of filmmaking and story-telling, which featured things such as super slo-motion and orchestra music and dramatic narration, Films gave the NFL a mystique, a mythology, that mesmerized sports fans and helped pro football soar past baseball and become America's game.
Films' impact on the league, both in terms of popularity and profitability, is unquestioned. It's why, next week, Steve's father Ed, the former overcoat salesman-turned-filmmaker who started the company in Center City, will be getting his very own bronze bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, when he becomes just the 19th "contributor" to be inducted.
Yet, even as the league prepares to pay tribute to Sabol, the company he created finds itself battling for survival against people who seem to think it has outlived its usefulness.
