NBC's telecast of 1972 AFC Championship Game

[NFL500]

Every so often I do a Google search to see if any footage of long-lost films or telecasts (particularly sports telecasts) has been found lately. Along with learning about the discovery of a 1928 cartoon featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who 80 years later would be traded by NBC to ABC for Al Michaels, I came across a short YouTube clip featuring second-half highlights of NBC's telecast of the 1972 AFC Championship Game.

I'd never seen any network footage of this game before. It was in black and white and was most certainly from a truck feed of the broadcast, Still, it was wonderful to see the footage and hear Charlie Jones, one of my favorite football announcers, call the action. Has anyone here recently seen any first-half coverage of this game by NBC?

It's discoveries like this and most of Super Bowl V's telecast early this year that make me wish the NFL would make a concerted effort to seek out and preserve as much as it can of its videotape heritage before it's too late to do so. Imagine what might be found: CBS' Super Bowl II telecast, perhaps? Or NBC's "Sea of Hands" coverage? One can only hope.

[MatthewToy]

There's also a "reconstruction" of the 1972 AFC Championship Game on YouTube using still photos, NFL Films clips and I think that b&w NBC footage as well as the Steelers radio play by play.

[7DnBrnc53]

On Page 4 of this thread, they said that Kyle Rote and Jim Simpson called the game, and that Charlie Jones' voice was tacked on to the TV clips:

http://506sports.com/forum/index.php?topic=2850.75

[NFL500]

Happy New Year everyone!

Earlier this week I came across a different short video of broadcast highlights from this game on YouTube, and it apparently is the actual game audio, as it features Jim Simpson calling the action. Also, just out of curiosity, I did a search for video of the 1972 NFC Championship Game and found an even shorter clip (less than a minute) of highlights from that game voiced by Jack Buck. The game was originally broadcast on CBS, but the time stamp shows this surviving video aired on NBC.

Small discoveries like these have me hopeful that videotape of other significant moments in NFL postseason play from the 1970s might yet be out there waiting to be unearthed, perhaps from a newscast. If it's in black-and-white and has a time-stamp on it, that's fine. Just the ability to relive the moment as it actually appeared on TV would make it worthwhile.

[Evan]

Feel free to add any new footage to this string if you like:

http://www.profootballresearchers.com/f ... f=5&t=3231

[NFL500]

I'm afraid I don't know how to do that. But if somebody else could, that would be great. I like the collection of videos on that thread.

[MatthewToy]

Happy New Year everyone!

Earlier this week I came across a different short video of broadcast highlights from this game on YouTube, and it apparently is the actual game audio, as it features Jim Simpson calling the action. Also, just out of curiosity, I did a search for video of the 1972 NFC Championship Game and found an even shorter clip (less than a minute) of highlights from that game voiced by Jack Buck. The game was originally broadcast on CBS, but the time stamp shows this surviving video aired on NBC.

Small discoveries like these have me hopeful that videotape of other significant moments in NFL postseason play from the 1970s might yet be out there waiting to be unearthed, perhaps from a newscast. If it's in black-and-white and has a time-stamp on it, that's fine. Just the ability to relive the moment as it actually appeared on TV would make it worthwhile.

NBC did the AFC games back then. Maybe that highlight package you saw was from the NFC championship game.