This is a detailed NFL Films documentary on The Ice Bowl which I nearly didn't watch.
I'm not a fan of how Sabol and his father production team seldom use regular speed in their various productions always trying to add drama instead of letting the footage do it.
B,ut I was lured in by the fact that it apparently includes every single play. But I was STILL leery, because I positively detest the way NFL Films always uses add these oh-and-WHAT-A-CATCH!!! -style radio play-by-play guys who stage TRANSPARENTLY (and thus cynical) phony-baloney recreations of what some viewers surely fall for being real, vintage booth-chatter from the game. (Never mind that the re-creating voices are going at real-time pace while speaking over slow-mo footage!)
And those overheated voices NFL Films uses--there are a bunch of them, one as overwrought as the next--NEVER sound legit, especially with all the phony crowd-noice which is overlaid their faux play-by-play.
BUT: it so happens THIS NFL Films doc has the great, late CBS booth man Ray Scott doing the recreation. Scott understood you let the FILED PLAY be the excitement; the guy in the booth (a recordist's booth, instead of a stadium booth in this case, obviously) should just describe the action, not add insincere emoting in a silly effort to punch up the goings on for the audience.
This long-form production indeed includes every single play of The Ice Bowl on New Year's Eve '67-'68 afternoon, but with a GREAT bonus: a detailed wrap with loads of footage from the almost equally memorable Packers/Cowboys Super Bowl I prelude at the Cotton Bowl the PREVIOUS year!
As for the late Don Perkins, he not only had a better Ice Bowl game for the Cowboys than his stats should suggest (along with the late Dan Reeves, who looked even stronger on the tundra), but Perkins ALSO came off as POSITIVELY CHARMING in the looking-back interstitial interview clips! Man, he really shoulda auditioned for the ABC booth with Cosell when Meredith--who had a terrific Ice Bowl game, not incidentally--retired from the Monday Night Football booth!
There's also detail examination about the winning Packers play; turns out Chuck Mercine thought when they lined up that HE was gonna get the ball! Apparently, Starr saw what wide a hole Kramer's block opened up on Jethro Pugh that he kept the ball instead of turning for the handoff. (And whether Kramer was offsides that historic play is also scrutinized; he was, and Jethro was right, by Kramer's eventual admission.)
Hope any of y'all who spend the time to watch this in full get the same thrills I did; jeez, I felt like I was 13 again, in anticipation of the New Year's Eve hoopla that night and 1968 in the offing.
STYBLE/Florida
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