After 43 Super Bowls, NFL Films' Steve Sabol has no shortage of stories

The 44th Super Bowl is at hand, and NFL Films has been there for every one of them, documenting not just what happens on the field, but also lots of things that even the most ardent fans wouldn't see otherwise. NFL Films' Steve Sabol, son of founder Ed Sabol, recently sat down with NFL reporter Sam Farmer and told some of his many behind-the-scenes Super Bowl stories. Here's some of the stuff from the cutting-room floor:

The tie that binds

Everybody always said Packers coach Vince Lombardi was so confident before the first Super Bowl. That wasn't the case at all. It's not that he was unsure about his team, but he realized if he lost, everything he stood for - the legacy of the Packers and all those championships - would be diminished because he lost to this upstart league.

That whole week, he had been getting calls from NFL owners telling him that the prestige of the league was on his shoulders. It was an enormous amount of pressure.

Coaches wore a coat and tie in those days, and Lombardi was so tense before the game that he tied his Windsor knot as small as a marble. It was one of those things a cameraman notices.

The Packers won the game, and we followed Lombardi off the field as he headed for the locker room. When he got there, before he talked to reporters, he tried to get undressed. He tried to loosen his tie, but he couldn't get it off.

The trainer, Dad Brashier, came over with a tape cutter and said, "Coach, just a minute …" He just cut the tie off. Nobody thought much of it at the time.

We went back to Green Bay about a month later to show Lombardi the film. He had a game room and a bar in his basement, and he set up the projector and movie screen down there. It was one of those old threaded projectors, and he liked to thread it and fiddle with the focus. At the end of the film, you could see he was struggling with his tie. We didn't show the trainer cutting it off.

When the film was over, we could hear it slapping on the reel. Usually, Lombardi would stop it, but the slapping kept going. There was a discussion going on about the tie.

It was Lombardi's wife, Marie, she had had a lot to drink and she was angry. She had given him that tie as a Christmas present. Apparently, it was very expensive. She couldn't believe he had the audacity to have someone cut that tie.

"How could you do that!" she screamed. "How could you be so stupid! You should have left it on! That tie was silk! Do you know that cost $40!"

The whole evening just went downhill after that. Lombardi was sort of subdued, and Marie was in a bad mood.

Who could have guessed Super Bowl I would have ended with a tie?

(New Orleans) Saint Elsewhere

Our most memorable story of nine Super Bowls in New Orleans came before Super Bowl IX, when the Steelers played the Vikings in 1975. We were staying at a place called the Bienville House. It's still there, on Decatur Street. We had a group of about 40 people and a lot of equipment.

When we went to check in, my father told the concierge we needed more than the 20 rooms he said we had booked. We needed storage for our equipment, and we really had booked more than 20.

The concierge said: "We had to re-sell your rooms. There's a dry cleaners convention here, and they're paying more money."

We had 10 people who had no place to stay. Everything in town was booked. Luckily, one of our assistant cameramen - actually, he was an amateur photographer and he knew how to load the cameras - was a doctor at a local hospital. He said he could arrange a place for us to stay - the hospital where he worked.

So we drew straws, and 10 guys went to the hospital, where they were admitted under the designation "unconfining observation." That meant they could come and go as they pleased.

Our head cameraman was Moe Kellman, and he got one of the hospital rooms. He didn't have a private room, though; he shared it with a guy who hooked up to some kind of defibrillator, with tubes coming out of him and everything. This guy was legitimately sick.

The next night we had a meeting, and Moe comes in looking sick. He was our oldest cameraman, in his 60s, and he was white as a sheet.

He comes in and says, "The guy next to me died last night. I was talking to him and went to bed. The next thing I know, that machine showed a flat line and was buzzing. … I don't know if I can work today. I'm really upset."

So we had to switch our main guy to an isolation camera because he was so emotionally overwrought.

He said: "I've never been next to a man who died in the middle of the night. Plus, I knew his name. He was a World War II veteran. We had talked about our children."

That was a strange trip.

Mr. Microphone

Kansas City's Hank Stram was the first coach to wear a microphone in the Super Bowl. Getting him to do it wasn't easy.

It was January 1970, when the Chiefs were playing the Vikings in Super Bowl IV at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.