Steve Sabol Quotes

The importance of an artist is bringing new signs into a language.

A perfect record does not mean that someone is the greatest. Rocky Marciano never lost a fight, but I never hear anyone say he’s the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.

There have been nine Super Bowls in New Orleans, and not all of them have brought the best of luck to NFL Films. We got robbed twice there, got food poisoning, and my hotel room was broken into on the day the Bears played the Patriots in January 1986.

When my father bid $5,000 for the 1962 Championship Game, that was a huge amount. It was double the bid the year before. Pete Rozelle was flabbergasted. Who was this guy who was willing to spend so much money on what seemed like relatively worthless rights to the NFL Championship Game?

I’ve always been fascinated by Picasso and how he would look at a single image through multiple perspectives and from separate moments in time. He would look at a woman’s face and he would see almost a three-dimensional look even though it was a flat canvas. I thought, well why couldn’t we do the same thing with a football play?

Football is a sport of emotions, and we have to capture that in our films.

You know how I came up with the name ‘Road to the Super Bowl?’ It’s an homage to the old Bob Hope – Bing Crosby buddy movies – you know, like ‘Road to Zanzibar’ or ‘Road to Morocco.’ Can you tell? All I’ve done my whole life is go to movies.

I don’t go to games as much as I used to because of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket. So I’ll watch the games, take notes.

Life is good. Football is better.

But I can tell you this: Nothing will happen up there that can duplicate my life down here. That life cannot be better than the one I’ve lived down here, the football life. It’s been perfect.

I think in the NFL knowledge is power, and you try to get the knowledge by whatever means.

I never thought of what I was doing as a way to sell the NFL. I was making movies about a sport that I loved, about players and coaches that I respected. I wanted to convey my love of the game through film. And most artists convey their love through art. And my art and my love was expressed through film.