Filed under: NFL InjuriesSteve Sabol produces two quotes to illustrate the dichotomy of thought on violence in professional football, the love of his life.
First, he reads an observation from a Harper's Weekly in 1893 that "The brutality in football must be done away with and the danger minimized." Then, there's a quote Sabol got directly from Vince Lombardi in the early 1960s in which the legendary coach told him, "This is a violent game and to play it any other way but violently would be imbecilic."
It's precisely that mish-mash of ideas that challenges the work of Sabol, the president of NFL Films, the organization charged with chronicling the history of the league.
"What you're seeing now is those two points of view about players' safety which is very important, but don't mess with the core and the essence of the game," Sabol said from his New Jersey offices.
Sabol said he places no restrictions on what his cameramen shoot at each game, and that he receives no marching orders from the NFL to excise violence from NFL Films productions.
But they will not show illegal contact, unless it's germane to the game. Even then, it must be documented in the script and narration that the offender was penalized and the hit was illegal, Sabol said.
"We've been aware of this issue for 20 years and have been very careful about it," Sabol said. "Anybody that says that we're capitalizing on these illegal hits is way off base. We realized 15 years ago when the (videos) came in that we couldn't be making money on something that they were fining the players (for)."
"Somebody that's saying that is 20 years out of date."
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