When NFL Films director Phil Tuckett found unprocessed film from the 1964 season, he was convinced he had struck gold. He and several other employees scoured the film faults and found many other cans that hadn't been used for other productions and suggested to Steve Sabol, the company president that they use the footage to show what professional football looked like in the early 1960s, warts and all, including shots of fans, shots of pageantry, bloopers, warm-up activities and on-field heroics. What was initially intended as a single half-hour program eventually grew to 22 episodes airing over four years on the ESPN Classics network.
