Ben Gilbert

There wasn't SportsCenter.

So there really was no place to go and watch highlights.

Now, football and all sports are unbelievably highlightable events.

that if you string together a bunch of the very best plays, it's really, really interesting and really entertaining, especially if they're covered by great cameras.

Now, compare this to baseball, where not only was there no place to go watch them, but there was no one capturing them.

footage to even highlight it.

But NFL has NFL Films, and using high-quality cameras and film stock, they are capturing great camera angles of every game.

And so between Sunday and Monday, the NFL Films team would go and take all of the footage from the game the previous day, cut up a highlight reel, and as soon as possible, get that to whatever city the Monday Night Football broadcast was happening in so that they could play it

at halftime.

And Howard Cosell could give his commentary, often having never seen the footage while the highlight reel is playing in the background, and really invents this idea of, for the first time, we're going to watch highlights of yesterday's games.

Totally.

All within 24 hours.

It's really amazing.

God, I can't believe we're only up to 1970.

I know.

gonzo for the NFL.

There's one more presidential intervention in 1973.

Nixon really, really, really likes watching the Redskins, but he's sick of taking the helicopter to Camp David to watch their away games, which he actually was doing, which is unbelievable.

He was a nut.

Maybe should have been paying more attention to foreign policy and things like that.