NFL Films: J’aime beaucoup le Skycam

I recently got my hands on two wonderful boxsets from NFL Films:

Click here for another view

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5 of the Minnesota Vikings’ greatest games

and 10 of the Philadelphia Eagles’ greatest games.

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Each disc contained in these boxsets is an entire broadcast game, spanning at least two decades.  I watched about an hour’s worth of the Eagles’ games.  Specifically:

NFC Championship Eagles vs. Cowboys January 11, 1981 (18 days before my last non-breath in utero).

Eagles vs. Redskins November 12, 1990 (a  Monday Night Football game and originally televised on ABC).

NFC Championship Eagles vs. Falcons January 23, 2005 (6 days before my twenty-fourth birthday).

I shall return with more in-depth thoughts after I’ve watched some of the Vikings games as well, but I’d like to mention now that the NFC Championship of the 2004-2005 season occurred one year before I started watching televised football.  In just comparing and contrasting the aesthetics (screen graphics) from the early 80s to the early 90s and to the 21st century, what a difference the Skycam makes.   Score graphics from yesteryear (before and after the Cold War ended) certainly betray the datedness of the broadcasts, but the introduction of the Skycam added a dynamic visual dimension that I had taken for granted in the few years since I first started watching football on the television (playoffs of 2006).

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Click here, here, and here for more pictures of me holding the boxsets.