David Rosenthal

Did you look at what it would be inflation adjusted?

Still pretty good.

So on the back of this landmark TV deal, Rozelle does two other really brilliant things.

First comes as kind of another accident.

So the league every year sold the rights to the NFL championship game to make a movie out of it.

Yeah, they were kind of hokey, like a really rudimentary highlight reel type thing.

In 1962, they get a bid for the rights.

The bidding is a sealed auction.

They get a bid that comes in from a guy named Ed Sable, who was a suburban dad in Philadelphia who liked to make home movies, particularly home movies of his son Steve's high school football games.

This guy, Ed, bids on the rights to make the NFL championship movie for 1962.

So the bids are unsealed.

And Ed had done a little homework.

He found out that the company that had won the past few years only paid $2,500 for the rights.

So he's like, well, I can bid $5,000.

He wins the auction.

And Roselle's like, uh, who is this guy?

Like, with no experience, what's happening here?

So Roselle goes to visit him and Ed pitches Pete on doing something completely revolutionary for the 1962 championship.

He wants to make it like an actual movie, not a hokey sports movie, a real movie with montages, with cuts, with professional Hollywood quality cinematography.

Slow motion, voiceover.