5 things to know about first Super Bowl broadcast
With the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl for a second straight year, it created some renewed interest into Super Bowl I, the iconic occasion — though famously not sold-out game — at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between the Green Bay Packers and the Chiefs.
The AFL-NFL championship game, which Green Bay won, 35-10, was a firstof-its-kind endeavor that had a long way to go before developing the traits that make the Super Bowl an annual must-see. But what you may not realize, because surely you’ve seen pictures or video snippets, is how difficult it is to see a full broadcast of that first game, which aired on both ABC and NBC.
Here’s what you may learn from either reading Mike Vaccaro’s story about the broadcast in the New York Post or listening to Pablo Torre’s podcast interview with correspondent Devin Gordon, whose lifelong obsession with Super Bowls made the opportunity to glimpse the broadcast a childhood dream:
The broadcast is so rare, it’s basically locked in a vault and you’re not allowed to bring your cell phone with you
Plenty of Super Bowl I images exist. One of the more famous pieces of video features Packers players Willie Wood and Max McGee on the sideline ridiculing Kansas City thumper Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who had been knocked out in the second half after a week’s worth of trash talking directed at Green Bay.
But the broadcast that actually aired for all to see on Jan. 15, 1967, was taped over by both networks (as was customary in the era) and not archived. When a copy of the CBS broadcast was found in an attic in Shamokin, Pennsylvania (recorded at the time by engineer Martin Haupt of Scranton), the NFL secured the footage and placed it in the Paley Center for Media in New York City. The reporters who have seen it aren’t allowed to take video and have to turn over their cell phones.
The football might look the same, but not the extracurriculars
Vaccarro noted that the on-field play was littered with late hits and tensions between teams, including one moment when Kansas City’s Buck Buchanan grabs Packers running back Jim Taylor long after the play was over and heaved him to the ground — with no penalty.
Williamson boasted heading into the game that he expected to use his “hammer” clothesline move to knock players out of the game, specifically Boyd Dowler
and Carroll Dale. Dowler did hurt his shoulder early, though that opened the door for Max McGee to check into the game and deliver a legendary performance. Dale did receive a “hammer” but bounced right back up and didn’t beg for a flag.
When Williamson was injured, Vaccarro wrote that announcers didn’t come back to Williamson’s pregame bravado and didn’t make any mention of how Packers players might be reacting to his demise.
A made-for-TV innovation could have been a mass casualty disaster
Gordon explains that the Super Bowl avoided a near-disaster that would have been caused by a television innovation.
“During the entire week leading up to the Super bowl, the plan for the network broadcast, their big innovation was going to be an on-screen game clock,” he told Torre. “This did not exist. When you were watching football, you had no idea how much time was left in the quarter, in the game, anything.
“That required attaching an electronic device to the back of one of the clock’s hands, which they tested all week. They got it perfect, and then for the opening kickoff, they went to flip it on, it malfunctioned. The clock hand broke off, plummetted downward into the stands. The only reason Super Bowl I isn’t remembered for some kind of “Final Destination” style bloodbath is because there was no one in those seats below. Because the game was not even close to being sold out.”
The second-half kickoff had to be replayed because of Bob Hope
The second-half kickoff had to be replayed because NBC missed it the first rime around. An interview with Bob Hope had gone too long, and the Orlando Sentinel once wrote that CBS sideline reporter Pat Summerall was asked to break the news to Vince Lombardi about the replay, a request Summerall refused.
Williamson went on to a lengthy post-playing career in movies
Williamson, who was interviewed for the podcast, is still alive at age 85, and though he’s not a Hall of Famer like teammates Len Dawson, Bobby Bell, Johnny Robinson or Emmitt Thomas, he might have had the most notable career of any player on that Chiefs team.
The Hammer went on to a career in “blaxploitation” action cinema, following in some of the same footsteps as NFL legend Jim Brown. His numerous list of film credits include movies as recently the 2020s.