Eventually, this highlight film becomes a paean to the Dallas Cowboys, but for the first 16 minutes of the 23-minute piece, two subjects dominate the work, and neither is the winning team.

The first, and most dear to hearts of most of you visiting this site, is of course, an ode to the Broncos’ rapid turnaround and its impact on the emotional state of its fans, who’d never before experienced anything resembling the ride the Broncos took them on during a 12-2 regular season that temporarily displaced 1970s AFC kingpins Pittsburgh and Oakland at the top of the conference’s heap. “After 18 years, the loyal, long-suffering fans of the Denver Broncos finally had something to cheer about,” Facenda intones,

Eighteen years. Seems like a good while, although partisans of the Chicago Cubs, Detroit Lions, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues might disagree.

After it explains the origins of the Broncos’ rise and the exuberance they showed upon reaching the NFL’s summit, the film focuses on the mistakes — and there were plenty of them — eight Broncos turnovers, five of which came on consecutive possessions to close the first half. “It was fiercely fought, but frightfully flawed,” Facenda intones. (It took several takes for him to get that one right, a later NFL Films piece would cheerfully reveal.)

There were obviously plenty of other Super Bowl highlight films of the 1970s to focus on the Cowboys; this was the Broncos’ show.

Curiously, however, we do not hear longtime radio voices Bob Martin and Larry Zimmer here; Films opts for the Dallas playcall from Verne Lundquist — coincidentally now a Steamboat Springs resident — and Brad Sham. Maybe they just wanted to give a little balance to the Cowboys in what is mostly a Bronco-centric film. Even as the Cowboys’ victory is feted, numerous shots of despondent Broncos players and fans are shown, with Facenda reading a quote from Ring of Fame kicker Jim Turner: “We were out there thinking about winning, and they were out there thinking about football.” The focus on the Broncos is appropriate, and with every passing year that the Broncos remain a contender and every season they avoid diving into the repository of rebuilding, the accomplishment of the ’77 team becomes more significant. It brought the Broncos out of the muck from whence they came. Three decades later, they have yet to return.

BEST NARRATION: “It began in the autumn of 1977 in Denver, Colorado. It was a fever that raged throughout the Rocky Mountains, leaving all of its victims colored a resplendent orange. They called it Broncomania.”

RATING:

Much of the music may be of its time, but some of it is also classic, and all of it seems to work. This is not a mellow film; it is dramatic and emotional — much like the game itself.

This is a seminal work in the library of NFL Films — at least when it comes to their Super Bowl highlights. For the first time, Films makes liberal use of radio play-by-play calls in its storytelling narrative, working John Facenda’s oration in between spurts of the radio broadcasts from the Raiders and Vikings radio networks.

The game was a blowout, and in many ways, it was the people behind the microphones and cameras who were the stars of this piece. The film begins with a series of global broadcasters introducing the game in all manner of foreign tongues — which includes then-NBC analyst Don Meredith, speaking his folksy Texas-style interpretation of the King’s English.

This was, as an NFL Films Lost Treasures show noted, the last Super Bowl played entirely in daylight. Subsequent Super Bowls would never begin before 3 p.m. local time, bringing the encroachment of evening onto much of the game. Nowadays, the kickoff time is always at 6:25 p.m. EST — providing about 60 minutes of non-shadowed daylight on the West Coast and no workable natural light east of the Mojave Desert. Photojournalists and Films cinematographers alike mourned the loss of the vibrant daylight, especially when contrasted with the darkness of the Louisiana Superdome the following year.

Nitpicker’s note … watch for the shot of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the montage of birds being released into the sky; that particular shot comes from Super Bowl VII four years earlier. But that’s a small detail, more than made up for by the shot of a dejected Vikings player on the team’s sidelines late in the loss, his lower lip quivering with sadness as the clock runs out on what remains the Minnesotans’ most recent trip to football’s ultimate annual game.

BEST NARRATION: “The Vikings trailed by 19 points, and the remaining seven minutes of the game became a despairing, hopeless quest for a goal they knew they would never reach.”

RATING:

As the reviews of the next few Super Bowl highlight films will demonstrate, Films hits its high point in this era, with the introduction of radio calls, the use of tighter slow-motion shots (beginning with Super Bowl XIII) and enhanced sound that gradually accentuates the timber in Facenda’s voice.

Let’s deconstruct the myth — Lynn Swann’s downfield juggling catch in this game wasn’t the be-all, end-all of the Steelers’ second Super Bowl win, even though it seems to be the singular moment that helped burnish his ultimately successful Hall of Fame candidacy.

This film doesn’t linger on the catch; it shows it from a few angles, says it set up a field goal, and moves forward with the narrative. It tells the game as it was … one that saw a peculiar but noble brand of honor from Jack Lambert, who tossed Cowboys safety Cliff Harris to the turf like a chew toy after the Dallas defender mockingly patted meek-countenanced Steelers kicker Roy Gerela on the head following a missed field-goal attempt. The highlights focus on the two sides of the Lambert — the intimidating s.o.b. who invoked fear in many an opponent, and the honorable leader who defends any of his fellow black-helmeted players without hesitation.

“Super Bowl X was the most exciting ever,” we are told as the “This Week in Baseball” theme music makes a return engagement from the previous year’s highlight film, and with other common musical cues from previous Super Bowl highlight films — “The Raiders,” for instance, serving as the backdrop for Terry Bradshaw’s fourth-quarter touchdown pass to game MVP Lynn Swann — it’s almost as though Films was getting some common threads of early Super Bowl highlight films out of its system. A year later, there would be a significant shift in how the Super Bowl highlights were constructed … but we’ll get to that in the forthcoming Super Bowl XI piece.

Call me a nitpicker, but I know that a shot of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader shown right after the John Warner-conducted coin toss was taken at Texas Stadium, and not in the Orange Bowl. (Ditto for a later shot of Cliff Harris.) There’s also a shot where the camera zooms in on the ample chest of a woman wearing a “Superman” t-shirt. Why do I get the feeling this was a throwaway shot that the cameraman never intended to see the light of day?

BEST NARRATION: “From the opening kickoff to the final gun, Super Bowl X had more fireworks than any bicentennial celebration could possibly match.”

RATING:

A good piece, and it doesn’t make the second-quarter Swann leap-and-catch into more than what it is, recognizing the vaster significance of his fourth-quarter touchdown grab from Bradshaw.

“The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings would meet in the worst weather yet for a Super Bowl setting.”

Thirty-two years later, the conditions for the game that saw the dawn of the Steelers dynasty remain the nastiest in Super Bowl annals, winning a game that was as raw and inelegant as the conditions that caressed it.

The most interesting aspect of this film is its music — which provides three cues familiar to anyone who grew up watching sports in the 1970s and 1980s.

The first, an instrumental called “Gathering Crowds,” is used to accompany a first-quarter Steelers offensive sequence and would later become known as the theme song for This Week in Baseball. (So when I watch this film, I end up with a mental image of Pete Rose making a head-first, slow-motion slide into third.)

Later, we hear “Heavy Action,” better known as the theme to Monday Night Football, and what would later become known as “The Raiders,” the haunting instrumental which could still be used for any NFL team at this time, but which would soon be virtually appropriated by the Raiders –in large part thanks to its use on the 1974 season review film, The Championship Chase.

That film — as well as the Super Bowl IX highlights — show how NFL Films was starting to hit its groove by this point in time. Steve Sabol lauds Championship Chase as one of his personal favorites. (It is available on the Super Bowls I-X DVD set as a prelude to the Super Bowl IX highlight film.) Exquisitely written, the 48-minute film provided many of the Facenda soundbites sampled on the 1998 CD release The Power and the Glory, gave the Raiders their theme poem, gives then-Broncos coach John Ralston a moment in the spotlight and remains not just a football film, but a work of art.

The Super Bowl IX highlights aren’t at that level, but for what the game provided, they remain compelling.

BEST NARRATION: “The popular 74-year-old patriarch (Steelers owner Art Rooney) was a lovable loser no more.”

RATING:

Straightforward, solid and effective.

“Unknown names and faces dwelling in the twilight zone of the sport.”

Phil Tuckett’s writing, read by John Facenda, aptly describes the focus — or lack thereof — placed by most observers upon the offensive line. This film, on the other hand, is a love letter to the men up front, specifically, to Miami’s front five, a group that includes two Hall of Famers (Jim Langer, Larry Little) and perpetual Hall of Fame nominee Bob Kuechenberg.

The game was so decisive (Miami led 24-0 before Minnesota finally got on the scoreboard in the fourth quarter) and so devoid of playcalling diversity (Miami’s run-to-pass ratio was a Darrell Royal-esque 53-to-8) that the focus is not on what the Dolphins did at Rice Stadium, but how they did it. The result is a detailed explanation from Miami head coach Don Shula — working via voiceover — of his line’s use of “cross-blocking” and how its success in defusing the Vikings’ famed front four allowed the Dolphins to eventually go to more straightforward, man-on-man blocking as the game evolved.

More than any other piece of film, this 23-minute piece explains why the Dolphins of the early-to-mid-1970s are among the game’s all-time elite teams; their path to victory was as straightforward as any that has ever been employed by an NFL dynasty.

The highlight of the film, however, is its montage near its conclusion, setting the runs of Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris to Scottish bagpipes and the words of Minnesota defensive end Carl Eller, as read by John Facenda.

And if you’re in bridge construction and are a “bear for detail,” look at the Dolphins’ helmets throughout the film. Never mind that the jumping dolphin on the logo should actually have a Dolphins logo on his helmet, and not an “M” (which means that dolphin logo should have another dolphin on his helmet, and so on and so on into infinity). Rather, look for how the mammal is directly in front of the sun on some logos and down lower and partially out of the sun on others. The ‘Fins were in the midst of a logo tweak back then, but the change came gradually — unlike nowadays, where if a team changed its helmet adornment, it would surely be correct on every player’s headgear within a day.

BEST NARRATION: “There are times when an athletic event transcends the boundaries of sport and becomes embedded in the nation’s consciousness. In eight seasons, the Super Bowl has become such an event.”

RATING:

The haunting bagpipe sequence is one of the finest slow-motion montages NFL Films has ever cobbled together.

Bands running onto the field. A blimp overhead. A filled stadium. And just a few miles from the Washington Redskins’ home ground of RFK Stadium, the first sporting event to lean upon the Super Bowl to help draw an audience, a lead-in showdown of college basketball powerhouses N.C. State and Maryland, both of which were in the top five at the time.

Super Bowl VII was the game that demonstrated the rapid growth of pro football’s spectacle from post-championship-Sunday dessert to the main course on the annual American sporting menu. It’s almost as though this highlight film seeks to remind the viewer that the Super Bowl is still about the game and the teams in it — especially since the winner would cap the only undefeated season in the modern era of professional football.

Ironic, then, that the stars of such an event should be dubbed “no-name,” as in the Miami defense whose key players have their names brought forth towards the viewer — particularly safety Jake Scott, linebacker Nick Buoniconti and defensive lineman Manny Fernandez, all of whom are introduced to the viewer. The film usually rises above what was a mostly dull but occasionally unusual game, given the preponderance of oddball occurrences such as Garo Yepremian’s hilariously botched pass and Billy Kilmer’s toss into the crossbar.

Speaking of Kilmer, he is the focal point of this film’s best sequence — a montage of plays in which he attempts to bring the Redskins back. The narration perfectly describes Kilmer’s style not just for this day, but for his whole career:

“At last, this was Bill Kilmer’s kind of game. Tough, brawling, rough-hewn — but crudely effective. Helmet askew, belly protruding, socks sagging around his ankles, Kilmer was once again spiritual leader of the Redskins.” (Of course, nowadays, the socks around the ankles would be corrected by an on-field observer lest the player incur a fine for non-compliance with the league’s strict guidelines of garb.)

Some interesting choices for the film, however, rest in the sound. The music which accompanies the first live-action game sequence is a little too mellow, almost as though it sounds a little like the television theme songs of the age. A second-half sequence is set to music that sounds like it was straight from The Fat Albert Show. The music ensures that the film is not timeless; it is very much a work of the early 1970s. Another curious choice is in the decision to give Sam Spence’s music and John Facenda’s voice a rest for the endgame sequence, leaving the sound in the hands of a play-by-play that has always sounded to me as if it was recorded four months following the game in a studio.

BEST NARRATION: “The computerized No-names and the romanticized Over-the-Hill Gang.” … “The probing eye of a nation focused on a nine-inch strip of Coliseum turf, control of which would determine the game’s outcome.” … “Miami’s cold persona had extinguished the fires of Redskins spirit.”

RATING:

Gorgeous cinematography and some classic sequences, but the Yepremian pass and the Redskins’ subsequent last-gasp comeback cries out for Spence and Facenda’s collective touch.

Ah, the pageantry of Super Sunday, which is on full display here for the highlight film that chronicles what remains the most frigid Super Bowl to date, proving once again that it does get cold down South (a concept of which I was reminded in Mobile last week).

Here in the Super Bowl VI film, we see Ella Fitzgerald. Lots of southern belles. Carol Channing — twice. And one dancer whose skirt gets tossed up by her gyrations and thus shows her underwear-covered derriere to the camera in perfect time with the music.

With the game decidedly lacking — the defeated Dolphins became the first and only team to not pierce the end zone in a Super Bowl contest — presenting the context of the game is the path of the filmmakers, and it works well, especially in explaining what the game would mean to the Dallas Cowboys, who bore “somber resolve” as the game began thanks to five straight postseason appearances that fell short of a world championship which they would finally snare at Miami’s expense.

The decision to isolate a camera on Cowboys wideout Lance “Bambi” Alworth also paid handsome dividends, especially in his frantic hand gestures for the football amidst an acreage of open PolyTurf.

BEST NARRATION: “They (the Cowboys) were labeled loser, a team with a Roman appetite for victory without the Spartan will to sacrifice for it.”

RATING: 

The opening two musical pieces are classics of NFL Films, and the accompanying on-field video demonstrates the best of what can be achieved from the pregame, where credentialed photojournalists are given much more latitude than in the actual game.

There are 44 listings on Google for the phrase “magic of NFL Films,” which has been uttered in countless conversations among those in NFL circles for four decades. Never was it more apt than here, when NFL Films somehow turns a miscue-marred contest commonly referred to as the “Blunder Bowl” into an elegant, gallant struggle reminscent of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

A gorgeous South Florida day helped, as the film effectively incorporates the dropping sun and lengthening shadows throughout — although it creates some chronological manipulation as it is easy to discern when a late-game play was used during a first-half sequence. The music helps, as well, using pieces that would be sampled for other highlight films — a Dallas fumble is accompanied by a piace used in the Super Bowl VII film, and second-half montage has the same music cue as a second-quarter Terry Bradshaw fumble in the Super Bowl XIII film, as well as an early-game sequence in the Super Bowl VI film.

But the soundtrack takes a strange detour about one-third of the way into the film to accompany Johnny Unitas’ touchdown pass to John Mackey, a piece never heard before or since in a Super Bowl highlight film, and best described by a conversation between George Costanza and his one-episode (The Cigar Store Indian) girlfriend Sylvia:

Sylvia: “What’s this we’re listening to?”

George: “The Ray Conniff Singers.”

FINEST MOMENT: One of my favorite openings, a four-minute, one-second segment that stars a tart-tongued ticket-booth sentry who tells a spurned and obviously peeved will-call visitor to “take a blimp ride” after his indignant response to her assertion that there were no tickets in his name.

The lady’s name? Ella Mae Weatherwax, or “Mrs. Weatherwax,” as she emphasizes. I’m putting her name in here because I Googled this name during last year’s Super Bowl week and retrieved no mentions. So congratulations, Ella Mae — or Ella May, or should I say, Mrs. Weatherwax — you’re on the Internet.

BEST NARRATION: “Once in a great while the clouds of chance will overshadow the plans of man.”

RATING: 

The soundtrack, aside from the Conniff-esque detour, is perfect. It is not only of its time, but laced with classic NFL Films riffs still used to this day. And presenting a hard-hitting but error-filled game as a masterpiece is an accomplishment indeed. This is one that always causes my ceaseless clicking around the digital-cable galaxy to pause. The shots depicting the Cowboys’ game-ending despair are also classics — and just where and when did Bob Lilly’s helmet finally come down?

This should have been entitled “The Hank Stram Experience.”

The Kansas City head coach was always among the most loquacious of sideline bosses — even moreso when compared to his Super Bowl IV doppelganger, Bud Grant. (It’s not that the stoic Hall of Famer isn’t shown moving his mouth in this highlight film; it’s just that it’s usually chewing gum.) Stram is the star of this piece, and unlike in previous Super Bowl highlight films — and some to follow — where a singular figure was emphasized, the mic on the coach gives ample material with which to massage the storyline.

If you’ve watched this film during any of its hundreds of airings on the ESPN networks, you’re familiar with “matriculating the ball down the field” and the Chiefs’ first touchdown play, “65 toss power trap,” which is said no fewer than eight times during a one-minute sequence.

But Stram’s garrulous nature went beyond those thoroughly masticated soundbites. After all, it wasn’t just about “matriculating” the football down the field, but “negotiating” it … and there were more plays than just “65 toss power trap,” as the Chiefs provided “Blue slot 32 X-G-O” and the “51 G-O reverse.”

The other aspect of this film that stands out is one tune that is repeated until the viewer is left humming it at the film’s conclusion — a lyricless version of Kansas City, borrowed from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. “Everything’s up to date in Kansas City,” the song goes. My musically-inclined father used to cite the song whenever the bi-state metropolis came up in conversation. (“Everything’s up to date in Kansas City,” he’d say. Obviously he wasn’t talking about Kemper Arena.)

BEST NARRATION: “Mr. Official, let me ask you something. How can six of you miss a play like that?”
– Stram

RATING: 

The experiments of the Super Bowl III film largely failed to enhance that piece. Here, a different concotion from the film lab provided a template for concepts that would become a staple of NFL Films’ work in the decades that followed. — gobs of coachspeak and detailed explanation of key sequences. The result is a film that was ahead of its time in its execution — except for the primary piece of music, which was a 1970 interpretation of something from 1944. (And, to be certain, the Rodgers and Hammerstein piece probably lends itself better to an instrumental rendition for a football highlight film than Wilbert Harrison’s 1959 classic Kansas City.)

If you happen to buy the DVD collection, make sure to watch the special feature on the calamitous pregame and halftime shows that saw a hot-air balloon crash into the end-zone stands and a disastrous on-field re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans that saw one poor cannon operator get his hand blown off. Small wonder that “Up With People” became a Super Bowl staple for the next decade.

“Look at them sideburns! He looks like a girl! Now, Johnny Unitas — there’s a haircut you can set your watch to!”

Twenty-seven years after Super Bowl III, the anthologic pop-culture encyclopedia provided by The Simpsons would offer its take on the game through the always-crochety Grampa Simpson, then just a middle-aged, beer-swilling layabout “stuck in his button-down, plastic-fantastic Madison Avenue scene.”

Behind many jokes there is an element of truth, and so it went with this one. Under center, Joe Namath was a Western-Pa. bred, Bear Bryant-molded, tough-guy quarterback who played through pain that would felled many a player. But his white shoes, Fu Manchu, sideburns, pantyhose commercicals and bar ownership spoke otherwise — especially when contrasted with Unitas, who was still a couple of years away from his ’70s-appropriate moptop. Namath was in equal coiffed contrast with the Colts’ starter that day, Earl Morrall, who would keep his crew cut right into the mid-1970s and beyond.

Which brings us to the highlight film itself, a fairly bold experiment as far as Super Bowl highlight films go that is a tad curious for a game that turned out to be a crucial turning point in pro football’s annals. It takes five minutes and 29 seconds in the 23-minute film until we are actually taken to game day; we are treated to a build-up that underscores the contrast between the quarterbacks and teams, with a song called Broadway Joe by a group called the “Super Chicks,” who sound like high-school cheerleaders.

(Someone who was supposedly a countercultural hero probably should have been feted with a song that sounded less like the Dixie Cups and more like Jefferson Airplane. Although, at first, I thought the song closed with “No one else can score like Broadway Joe,” which could be interpreted in multiple manners, and fit in with a verse earlier in the song that called him a “swinging ladies man.” Alas for the lecherous among us, the song closed with “No one else can throw like Broadway Joe.” But I digress.)

In a word, this highlight film is “different.” At the least, it’s a film of its age — daring and presented in a manner that seeks not only to break the mold, but shatter it. I’m sure that this probably falls into a the love-it-or-hate-it pile for most; I can’t be so decisive because while this has never been one that I would repeatedly watch after taping it off of ESPN as a kid, I admire the effort and the filmmaking risks that Steve Sabol takes here, especially considering the weight of the game and the fact that the championship-game highlight film was still a fairly nascent concept, with NFL Films just a few short years removed from Ed Sabol’s original Blair Motion Pictures incarnation.

It was a chance worth taking … although it falls short of representing the game’s place in history.

BEST NARRATION: “Two champions on a Sunday afternoon. A new one as a quarterback. An old one as a man.”

RATING:

Perhaps a scosh too much is made of the quarterback storyline at the expense of the efforts of Matt Snell and George Sauer, who were probably at least as responsible for the Jets’ win than the Hall of Fame quarterback himself, but whose efforts have been relegated to the ashbin of history because of the overarching storyline of Namath’s “guarantee.”