NFL Network: A Football Life

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The NFL Network is now running a series titled, "A Football Life." Last week the subject was Walter Payton. This week it's NFL Films founder Ed Sabol. Next week, Mike Ditka will be profiled, then Tom Landry and finally Al Davis.

The Ed Sabol episode was interesting. For those who don't know, 1964 was the year pro football became Show Business. That year Sabol's NFL Films company took on the job of romanticizing and glorifying the NFL through film. The combination of John Facenda's voice ("The autumn wind is a Raider.") and bombastic music became the norm.

Another staple was making the coaches and players epic super-heroes, Vince Lombardi ("Lombardi, the name has a special magic.") was made the Patron Saint of pro football by NFL Films. Ed Sabol told Lombardi he would make him the John Wayne of football. Lombardi liked the idea.

Another idea of Sabol's was shooting the games in slow motion. This may be a reason why the DWFs think football decades ago was "slow."

When the NFL Network started, it was thought the NFL Films library would be a programming staple. It has not. Those in charge of the NFL Network don't like anything before around 1990.

Many fans complain of being tired of the NFL Network's endless loops of talking heads, but this is what you get.

The Football Life series is something of an exception to the usual fare.
 

Colonel_Reb

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Thanks for the info, sport historian. I can't stand to watch those old clips in slo-mo. It definitely makes the Whites from that era seem less athletically gifted than the often sped-up highlights we see today. It is kind of a mixed bag that they don't show those old clips though, as people today don't get to see the majority White NFL but they also don't get to see the slo-mo effect put on White athletes of that era.
 

TheAnimal

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I'll tune in for the Landry one, could care less about any of the others. Although the Belichick one wasn't half bad.
 
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I'll tune in for the Landry one, could care less about any of the others. Although the Belichick one wasn't half bad.

Last year the NFL Network had a program titled "The NFL's Man In The Hat: Tom Landry." You can find it on youtube. I don't know how much like it this upcoming program will be, but the earlier one is very good.

Tom Landry's reputation has gone up in recent years. When he died, I saw a piece by Peter Golenbock who acknowledged Tom Landry to be a better man than today's coaches.
 

Colonel_Reb

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I'll tune in for the Landry one, could care less about any of the others. Although the Belichick one wasn't half bad.

You mean you couldn't care less. :biggrin: That is a more accurate way of stating it than the other way.
 
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TheAnimal

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Last year the NFL Network had a program titled "The NFL's Man In The Hat: Tom Landry." You can find it on youtube. I don't know how much like it this upcoming program will be, but the earlier one is very good.

Tom Landry's reputation has gone up in recent years. When he died, I saw a piece by Peter Golenbock who acknowledged Tom Landry to be a better man than today's coaches.

Thanks S.H., I will definitely check that out. I've always had a soft spot for Mr. Landry ever since I was a little boy watching on the TV. His composure on the sidelines along with his business suits and fedoras created this aura about him for me, like he was the Godfather of the NFL and the guy who carried a deep respect from everyone.

It's nice to see the NFL is starting to acknowledge him a bit better these days. My guess is they are finally realizing just how loved Mr. Landry is across the world and that the "forget this Landry guy, Jimmy Johnson over here is the true face of the America's Team" BS isn't working. The white fans still remember and still have that respect and place in their hearts for the man.
 
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The "A Football Life" show on Mike Ditka airs at 10pm ET Thursday night and is repeated often the next few days.
 

Don Wassall

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Thanks S.H., I will definitely check that out. I've always had a soft spot for Mr. Landry ever since I was a little boy watching on the TV. His composure on the sidelines along with his business suits and fedoras created this aura about him for me, like he was the Godfather of the NFL and the guy who carried a deep respect from everyone.

It's nice to see the NFL is starting to acknowledge him a bit better these days. My guess is they are finally realizing just how loved Mr. Landry is across the world and that the "forget this Landry guy, Jimmy Johnson over here is the true face of the America's Team" BS isn't working. The white fans still remember and still have that respect and place in their hearts for the man.

Jimmy Johnson replacing Tom Landry and Bill Cowher replacing Chuck Noll a couple of years later helped usher in and solidify the introduction of larger numbers of sumo o-linemen, all-black defenses, and fullbacks who almost never carried the ball.
 

Westside

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Jimmy Johnson replacing Tom Landry and Bill Cowher replacing Chuck Noll a couple of years later helped usher in and solidify the introduction of larger numbers of sumo o-linemen, all-black defenses, and fullbacks who almost never carried the ball.

Yes, Don you are correct. The enemy we have to fear are White men! Now the question, Why are they so easy to be interloopers? Yes, we can condemn jews, blacks, minorities to a certain degree. But WHY do WHITE men sell us and kindred down the road? This is the MAIN question as why the caste system flourishes.

If this question could be answered and those held to account, the caste system would crumble alot sooner.
 
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The Tom Landry episode of the NFL Network's "A Football Life" premieres at 10pm ET tonight (Thursday). Forum members should find it worth watching. It will be repeated numerous times over the next week.
 

GiovaniMarcon

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I think that White Uncle Toms are the worst enemy of the White race.

One can expect the Blacks, Hispanics, and Asiatics to look after their own; that's natural and it would be weird if they concerned themselves with White interests rather than those of their own color and creed.

White Uncle Toms on the other hand see that the social wind is blowing in the direction of politically-correct (ie, anti-White male), Jew-driven anti-White and pro-colored folk propaganda, and they seek to "get in good" with the winning team.

Unless the White male in question is just utterly stupid, it's safe to assume that no truly rational, intelligent and well-educated White male truly believes that Whites are so evil and overbearing, where as Blacks and the other coloreds are such victims.

I'm hoping that no reasonably intelligent White male denies that anti-White, "reverse racism" is prevalent all over today's society, particularly in the media.

Thus, White Uncle Toms who've achieved a measure of success are probably just as racially aware and intelligent as those of us who recognize the caste system for what it is and call it out. The difference is they use their intelligence for short-term gratification and success.

They are perfectly willing to emasculate their White sons, and their sons' sons, for a payday today. They sold their souls for riches or whatever advantages they get in life, be it as NFL coaches or school board members, college admissions recruiters or politicians...

White Uncle Toms probably did nothing to promote "civil rights" during the 1950s and 1960s, either. I'm betting most of these people and their ilk did nothing, just as they always did nothing during periods of titanic social upheaval. They simply wait to see who wins, then make love to the winners.

If Hitler took over the world, these White Uncle Toms would be Seig Heiling just as loudly as they're boo-hooing now over the 82% Black dropout rate in Los Angeles public schools, and how it's "only because of racist honkeys that it's happening."

White Uncle Toms do nothing, believe nothing, except in gaining wealth for themselves, whether this wealth is money, status, power, or even friendship.

They never can seem to figure out that no one likes a turncoat. These people sold out the White race, so no decent White person will have anything to do with such folk.

And of course, no matter how hard you try to act Black, talk Mexican, learn Chinese, bow like a Hindu... You ain't never gonna be one, and they're never going to love you like they'll love themselves.'

Jimmy Johnson an Bil Cowf**ker are perfectly aware that they are White men, and that they are screwing over many a good young White boy coming out of college, gunning for a roster spot and GOOD enough to get one over the Black loser who eventually got picked.

They don't care, because they're White Uncle Toms. And, as such, deserve a nice, warm spot in Hell after they die.

Harsh? So is willfully, enthusiastically, and unjustly promoting the destruction of the White race.
 
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The Tom Landry program was the same one the NFL Network showed a year ago as "The NFL's Man In The Hat." As I wrote before, it should be seen by anyone interested in pro football history.

The show mentioned in passing that the players after 1985 didn't respond to him as before. Landry ended his coaching career with three straight losing seasons from 1986-88.
 

TheAnimal

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That Tom Landry special was...... Interesting to say the least. It came off as almost as much of a hit piece as a documentary. The way they framed it kind of downplayed his contributions to the game of football. A few things that stood out:

- In one part of the footage they show one of Landry's DB's, a White gentleman whose name escapes me. Naturally the in game footage was of him being beat by a black WR for a TD. This was all part of a story where Tom Landry ripped into the player in the locker room for costing the team the game before commenting that the gentleman had alot of heart and was hard working. I don't think I need to explain further what the objective with adding that in there was.

- It struck me as odd at the time how they portrayed Dallas early years in the NFL. They kind of fobbed it off that Tom Landry's system was the culprit of all the losing and that the team almost magically got good when he "dumbed down" the system for his QB. It struke me as odd because during that era of the NFL there wasn't a free agency or a cadre of scouts working around the clock and it took almost every upstar franchise years if not decades before they turned into a winning program.

- They also added in footage of Mike Ditka's Bears absolutely destroying an injured and rebuilding Cowboys squad 41-0, complete with Mike Ditka discussing his remorse that he had to beat up his mentors team that bad and how he regrets it.

- The above was part of the portion where they portrayed Landry as an over the hill old man the game had passed by as he ran his QB, Roger Staubach, off into retirement and brushed off repeated attempts by his players and staff to get him to change his "system" of doing things, complete with the entire state of Texas supposedly all but begging the man to retire.

- They also portrayed him as the issue in his longstanding feud with Tex Schramm. I do my history and I know that his issue with Schramm was the Hollywood glitz and glamour, outspoken affletes and "Tex" attempts at making the Cowboys a circus sideshow.

- Jerry Jones was certainly rewarded with this Documentary. Poor Jerry, being put into a hard position and having to let Mr. Cowboy go.

- Personally I found it classless that the NFL Network seems to revel in playing footage of Tom Landry sitting at his desk boxing up his playbooks after being fired. It all seemed so odd to me... Until it made perfect sense. All the double meanings, the subliminal messages that Tom Landry was this out of touch, Southern Evangelical Christian that "didn't adapt to the modern(AKA blacker) NFL" and was living in the past. Obviously it wasn't ACTUALLY his system that was the culprit considering the Giants, Titans and Saints all run the same system with minor variations. Yes of course, they meant his system of White DB's, DT's and DE's with White offensive lines and gritty Southern QB's(Or worse, devout Mormons) at the helm. Of course.

I get this sense that had Landry had some more blacks on his rosters and at the chosen positions the NFL Network would be treating him ALOT differently.
 

icsept

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Thanks for the recap. I definitely will not be watching the Landry episode, it sounds totally depressing. The Ditka episode was entirely pro-Ditka, brushing over his disastrous stint in New Orleans. In my opinion, Tom Landry outclassed Ditka in every way. He deserves better.
 
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Landry was somewhat controversial until the Cowboys won Super Bowl VI. Many thought Tom Landry was the reason Dallas couldn't win the big one. The program overall was favorable to Tom Landry.
 
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