Error in ESPN documentary on Max McGee TD in Super Bowl 1

ESPN aired an impressive documentary last night which spotlighted the four photographers who have worked each Super Bowl to date. The program Keepers of the Streak provided great stories from photographers John Biever, Walter Iooss, Mickey Palmer, and Tony Tomsic on their experiences in covering this event and the massive changes they have seen in media coverage, access, and logistics since the early years and how technology has changed their profession.

Surprisingly, this otherwise excellent episode contained a blunder regarding the first Super Bowl. Around the 9 minute mark, the show covers the halftime scene from Super Bowl 1. After that, the discussion turns to how the Packers began to pull away from the Chiefs in the second half on a 37 yard touchdown pass to Max McGee. This segment which is accompanied by NFL Films footage of that TD leads into the story of how an end zone photo taken by Iooss from that play become the cover image for the next edition of Sports Illustrated.

One problem: The McGee 37 yard TD which was the subject of the SI cover photo occurred in the first quarter of that game putting Green Bay up 7-0, not in the second half. McGee did score another TD of 13 yards late in the third, but the video footage on the documentary during the narration of this alleged third quarter sequence was definitely from the first quarter TD pass.

I highly recommend this documentary for the great storytelling and iconic photos. If you missed the show, ABC will replay it at noon ET on Sat 1/24 while ESPN2 has a scheduled re-airing at 7 pm ET on Thu 1/29.

Review of the recent Al Michaels book

I highly recommend the recent Al Michaels book You Can't Make This Up written with L. Jon Wortheim.

Michaels covers it all from his days calling minor league baseball in Hawaii (where he also did remote re-creations of road games) to his work on national networks. He discusses the impact of listening to Red Barber and Vin Scully calling Dodgers games when Al was a youth in Brooklyn. He provides fascinating insight on Howard Cosell and takes you behind the scenes on his Olympic hockey telecasts. Michaels also lends great perspective on his role in covering the 1989 Bay Area earthquake and his relationship with OJ Simpson.

A few nuggets about Michaels from the book:

• he attended Super Bowl 1 as a fan
• one of his first jobs was working for Chuck Barris lining up potential contestants for The Dating Game
• Curt Gowdy offered to listen to a tape of a 19-year old Michaels and gave him broadcasting advice
• during filming for his guest appearance on Hawaii Five-O, he was "big timed" by lead actor Jack Lord
• as a college student he successfully pranked a Phoenix newspaper into publishing phony stories about a fictitious high school baseball player
• Al's father played a key role in the original 1960 AFL TV contract with ABC

I like the way Michaels provides honest (i.e. negative) opinions about some of his former colleagues in the TV industry. He also supplies background on his "Rascal" tendencies such as alluding to pointspreads during telecasts.

I'll also point out a few errors I spotted:

• On page 74, while discussing his stint calling UCLA basketball, Michaels talks about the 1974 UCLA-Notre Dame game. He claims that it was nationally televised by NBC and was one of the first first NBC assignments for Dick Enberg. However, Enberg called it for TVS which nationally syndicated the game. The NBC regular season national TV package with Enberg didn't begin until two seasons later.
• On page 125, he mentions calling a mid-October 1978 Washington at Stanford college football game for ABC and how much his analyst Frank Broyles raved about then-Stanford coach Bill Walsh. But, the 10/14/1978 game between those schools wasn't televised by ABC. Michaels must have meant the 9/16/1978 San Jose St at Stanford game which he and Broyles called on ABC.
• On page 111, he talks about the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team clinching a berth in the medal round with a comeback win over West Germany. In reality, a loss by Czechoslovakia earlier that day rendered the USA game against West Germany meaningless in the Olympic standings. By the time the players took the ice, Team USA was already locked into second place in their division.

Overall, the book (on one of my all-time favorite broadcasters) is quite an entertaining and informative read.