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Private Notes
NFL Films was witness to the implosion of Three Rivers Stadium on February 11, 2001. They also filmed some demolition shots of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. Ex-players, fans, a bandleader, and grounds crew recall their memories of how these stadiums were perfectly suited to the Baltimore Colts and the Pittsburgh Steeler dynasty.
Through the years, NFL Films has filmed selected teams intently for an entire week. These have aired several times under various titles, among them Six Days to Sunday and Countdown to Kickoff. The prototype for all this was a film intended for theatrical release, according to Ed Sabol. From November 1 to November 7, 1976, NFL Films kept its eye on the New Orleans Saints as they struggled to find the winning ways. This project, however, was shot down after the Saints fired head coach Hank Stram after the 1977 season. After 25 years, NFL Films finally presents the ultimate Lost Treasure: the original Six Days to Sunday, featuring the 1976 Saints.
Expansion teams of the 1960s and 1970s had no edge when they started play. No team exemplified this better than the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They finished their inaugural season with an 0-14 record, unique in NFL history. At the time, NFL Films followed the Bucs every step of their troubled training camp, exhibitions, and regular season. The result was Birth of the Bucs, which, according to Steve Sabol, consisted of nothing but football follies. Because the Buccaneers' management made no attempt to honor the original Tampa Bay squad, this Lost Treasures episode was the only recognition the 1976 Bucs received. Interviews with former players and assistant coaches who toiled for head coach John McKay, who had died in June 2001, vividly retell the worst season in NFL history.
For a year and a half, the World Football League represented opportunity to a few hundred men who loved the game. For the first time, NFL Films devotes a show to the WFL, interviewing its principal architects, players, and fans. Includes rare film and TV footage of WFL games and teams that are largely forgotten.
The listless waters of Washington sports were stirred up in 1971 as George Allen took over as coach of the Washington Redskins. His trades for familiar players and spending large sums for a first-rate training complex, were part of a true rebuilding program. The result: Washington made the playoffs for the first time since 1945. In shooting an hour-long film called Three Cheers for the Redskins, NFL Films was with George Allen every step of the rebuidling. Now, after 30 years, members of the 1971 Redskins are interviewed for this program. Steve Sabol chips in, explaining that some of George Allen's habits–labeling the trees just outside the Redskins' camp, for example–rubbed off on him. There was a certain eccentricity to Allen that Steve Sabol thinks about all the time.
Unused footage from the Super Bowls of the mid- to late-1970s is unearthed. Shots of the last all-daylight Super Bowl (Number XI, played Jan. 9, 1977) are a stark contrast to the first Super Bowl in a dome (Number XII).
