Steve Sabol, an art history major and football star in college who combined those two passions to help transform the family business, NFL Films, into a modern mythmaking marvel, died Tuesday at 69.
Sabol had been battling brain cancer since 2011. An inoperable tumor had been discovered just days after his father, Ed, the NFL Films founder, was elected to Pro Football's Hall of Fame.
A lifelong Philadelphiaarea resident who never lost his accent or his boyish idealism, Sabol forever changed the way Americans view their sports.
The theatrical instincts that grew out of his love of movies altered what had been a mundane business of filming sports highlights into an acclaimed art form, one that 50 years after NFL Films' birth is universally imitated.
"We all realized pretty quickly that Steve was the force behind what we were doing here," Hank McElwee, NFL Films' director of cinematography, said earlier this year.
"Big Ed had the idea and he sold the owners on it, but when it came to the actual vision of this company, without a doubt it was Steve. Steve saw things in a unique way that every network is copying right now."
Combining classical scores, poetic scripts, and the "Voice of God" narrations that John Facenda embodied with a variety of serious filmmaking techniques, NFL Films won critical praise, widespread popularity and scores of Emmy Awards.
Sabol, a kind of Renaissance man who brought those sensibilities to the brutish sport, was honored himself with 35 Emmys in a variety of disciplines - writing, editing, directing, cinematography and producing.
One of the poems Sabol wrote, The Autumn Wind, accompanied a short 1974 film on the era's villainous Oakland Raiders that would become one of NFL Films signature pieces.
"The Autumn Wind is a Raider," Facenda says in a dramatic voice-over as slow-motion hits depict the team's ferocity, "pillaging just for fun.
He'll knock you round and upside down and laugh when he's conquered and won."
"Steve's passion for football was matched by his incredible talent and energy. Steve's legacy will be part of the NFL forever," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said.
