The telecast of Super Bowl I, a broadcasting artifact, will be unveiled for the first time since its original airing thanks to the NFL Network.
The network will broadcast “Super Bowl I: The Lost Game,” a restitching of the inaugural Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. It will air January 15, weeks before Super Bowl 50 will be played.
A tape of the game, which was televised by both NBC and CBS in 1967, has become a relic with tapes becoming either lost or erased.
According to the NFL, this reassembled version represents the “only known video footage of the entire action from Super Bowl 1.”
“In an exhaustive process that took months to complete, NFL Films searched its enormous archives of footage and were able to locate all 145 plays from Super Bowl I from more than a couple dozen disparate sources,” the league said in a statement. “Once all the plays were located, NFL Films was able to put the plays in order and stitch them together while fully restoring, re-mastering, and color correcting the footage.”
The nearly 50-year-old game will have a bit of a new age feel to it with it getting modern broadcast graphics and even social media interaction.
In addition to the game, NFL will include features such as sound from legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi and discussion on how the broadcast of Super Bowl I was lost and ultimately re-assembled.
It will also include analysis from NFL Network’s Chris Rose, Steve Mariucci, and Terrell Davis, as well former Packer stars from the era like Jerry Kramer and Dave Robinson, who both played in the game.
There is another tape that has game footage from Super Bowl I, but it is locked in a vault at the Paley Center for Media. That version was found in an attic by a man in Pennsylvania in 2005.
Steve Harwood, an attorney for the man who found the tape and wishes to stay anonymous, said that the NFL, which holds the copyright on the game and the man who made the discovery couldn’t come to terms over compensation for the tape.
The timing of the NFL Network re-airing is noteworthy seeing that the NFL is celebrating and holding Super Bowl 50 next month.
That first Super Bowl, which was played in Los Angeles, was won by the Packers 35-10.
