Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I've long heard that when it comes to NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl V, all that has survived is the second quarter, plus footage of Jim O'Brien's game-winning kick. Now I hear that not only do those parts of the game exist, but the pregame show, first quarter and third quarter as well.

Does anyone here know if this is indeed the case? If so, it would be a tremendous find, and mean that Super Bowl V is no longer the earliest Super Bowl to have most of its telecast missing. That dubious honor would go to Super Bowl II, which I believe has no surviving broadcast coverage.

Then again, if this rumor about Super Bowl V is true, perhaps there's still a chance some of CBS' coverage of Super Bowl II has survived. One can certainly hope that's the case.

Supposedly the telecast is nearly complete, and part of the fourth quarter is still missing although it has the ending.

Back in the 1970s they held two California Jam rock concerts. Turns out for one of them either the footage or audio was never kept (can't remember which), but as it turned out a guy recorded the telecast and it is now the only record of the event. Came out years later.

Point is, who knows what exists in peoples' attics? Maybe down the road more telecasts will surface.

Veeshik_ya wrote:Back in the 1970s they held two California Jam rock concerts. Turns out for one of them either the footage or audio was never kept (can't remember which), but as it turned out a guy recorded the telecast and it is now the only record of the event. Came out years later.

Point is, who knows what exists in peoples' attics? Maybe down the road more telecasts will surface.

I think I speak for the PFRA when I say we're still waiting for the NFL to man up and pay the guy whatever he wants for the Super Bowl I partial TV broadcast that he found in his attic. The NFL offered 30 grand but it's probably worth ten times that.

Rupert Patrick » Sun Feb 22, 2015 12:30 pm
"I think I speak for the PFRA when I say we're still waiting for the NFL to man up and pay the guy whatever he wants for the Super Bowl I partial TV broadcast that he found in his attic. The NFL offered 30 grand but it's probably worth ten times that."

$300,000.00 is a lot of money for an item of questionable quality and content?
But then, someone paid $200,000.00 for Jack Ruby's .38 so anything is possible.

The NFL would louse it up and price the thing out of the reach of the common man.
Hmmm... check that: the "common" man would not be interested so they would have to price it even higher.

A better buyer might be a Mark Cuban or Ted Turner type.
Cuban supposedly tweaked the Trumpster saying he could write a bigger check and not even know it was missing?
Anyway, a person or entity of that ilk would market it more in tune with the desire and ability of the general public.

Has the guy ever stated what his selling price would be? He could always go to auction with a minimum starting bid.

This opinion: the quality and content is not there...

So what ARE the only Super Bowls in which the entire telecast is not available? I can't believe that the networks wouldn't consider saving the entire telecast as early as SBI. Allowing something like the first 6 seasons of 'All My Children' to be 'wiped'...a bit more understandable (no offense to any soap opera fans). Being that it was at the time considered a bit of an anti-climatic event (not even called 'the Super Bowl' yet; the 'real' championship game being the NFL Championship), there had to have been someone or some people in the network brass to predict that even 'The First World Championship Game - AFL vs NFL' had to have some importance in the future.

74_75_78_79_ wrote:So what ARE the only Super Bowls in which the entire telecast is not available? I can't believe that the networks wouldn't consider saving the entire telecast as early as SBI. Allowing something like the first 6 seasons of 'All My Children' to be 'wiped'...a bit more understandable (no offense to any soap opera fans). Being that it was at the time considered a bit of an anti-climatic event (not even called 'the Super Bowl' yet; the 'real' championship game being the NFL Championship), there had to have been someone or some people in the network brass to predict that even 'The First World Championship Game - AFL vs NFL' had to have some importance in the future.

The TV broadcasts of Super Bowls I and II and V are not available in their entirety, although most of V and at least half of I exists. The first two Super Bowls have been reconstructed by means of merging game film along with the radio broadcasts of the games; somebody obviously spent a lot of time putting them together and they are nicely done.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

74_75_78_79_ wrote:So what ARE the only Super Bowls in which the entire telecast is not available? I can't believe that the networks wouldn't consider saving the entire telecast as early as SBI. Allowing something like the first 6 seasons of 'All My Children' to be 'wiped'...a bit more understandable (no offense to any soap opera fans). Being that it was at the time considered a bit of an anti-climatic event (not even called 'the Super Bowl' yet; the 'real' championship game being the NFL Championship), there had to have been someone or some people in the network brass to predict that even 'The First World Championship Game - AFL vs NFL' had to have some importance in the future.

The TV broadcasts of Super Bowls I and II and V are not available in their entirety, although most of V and at least half of I exists. The first two Super Bowls have been reconstructed by means of merging game film along with the radio broadcasts of the games; somebody obviously spent a lot of time putting them together and they are nicely done.

I'd really like to see SBV in its entirety. Some of you, and I think you too Rupert, said that V was actually not an 'ugly' game after all but more-so a hard-hitting game which is why all those turnovers took place in the first place. Multiple lead-changes in that one; it was the first competitive SB. Seeing Dallas in that rare-form of theirs in those blue jerseys (the best blue jerseys they ever had; I believe the same style worn 10 years later at the Vet in the '80 NFCC). As for aesthetics, and while we're on the subject of early SBs, wasn't it Steve Sabol that raved about the 'look' of SBII? Angle of the sun, palm trees in the distance, the color contrast of Green Bay & Oakland's unis, etc (perhaps Raiders in menacing black giving an illusion that they actually were the more 'superior' team to 'even' things).

74_75_78_79_ wrote:

Rupert Patrick wrote:

74_75_78_79_ wrote:So what ARE the only Super Bowls in which the entire telecast is not available? I can't believe that the networks wouldn't consider saving the entire telecast as early as SBI. Allowing something like the first 6 seasons of 'All My Children' to be 'wiped'...a bit more understandable (no offense to any soap opera fans). Being that it was at the time considered a bit of an anti-climatic event (not even called 'the Super Bowl' yet; the 'real' championship game being the NFL Championship), there had to have been someone or some people in the network brass to predict that even 'The First World Championship Game - AFL vs NFL' had to have some importance in the future.

The TV broadcasts of Super Bowls I and II and V are not available in their entirety, although most of V and at least half of I exists. The first two Super Bowls have been reconstructed by means of merging game film along with the radio broadcasts of the games; somebody obviously spent a lot of time putting them together and they are nicely done.

I'd really like to see SBV in its entirety. Some of you, and I think you too Rupert, said that V was actually not an 'ugly' game after all but more-so a hard-hitting game which is why all those turnovers took place in the first place. Multiple lead-changes in that one; it was the first competitive SB. Seeing Dallas in that rare-form of theirs in those blue jerseys (the best blue jerseys they ever had; I believe the same style worn 10 years later at the Vet in the '80 NFCC). As for aesthetics, and while we're on the subject of early SBs, wasn't it Steve Sabol that raved about the 'look' of SBII? Angle of the sun, palm trees in the distance, the color contrast of Green Bay & Oakland's unis, etc (perhaps Raiders in menacing black giving an illusion that they actually were the more 'superior' team to 'even' things).

I think Super Bowl V was a hard-hitting game, with it's share of fluky plays, such as the tipped TD pass to Mackey and the ball rolling out the back of the end zone. I have written a couple thousand words on it in my manuscript, where among the most interesting games of 1970 I have it only behind the Week 1 Jets vs. Browns MNF debut. I too would love to see Super Bowl V in it's entirety, and I do have the radio broadcast of the game which helped me fill in the blanks of the missing video.

What I would like to see happen is for the NFL to partner with NFL Films and the Paley Center and make an effort to fully reconstruct all early Super Bowl broadcasts whose videotape footage is either incomplete, or, apparently in the case of Super Bowl II, nonexistent. The news that the Super Bowl V telecast is apparently nearly complete, save for some of the fourth quarter, will make this task much easier. Super Bowl III is also missing some fourth-quarter footage, but apparently just part of one drive by the Colts. Hopefully NFL Films has it.

Speaking of early Super Bowls, does anyone know if CBS has a full-color copy of Super Bowl IV, or did the first three quarters only survive in black and white? CBS showed the opening of the broadcast in color as part of a montage of their previous Super Bowl telecasts when it aired Super Bowl XLVII. Special thanks to the CBC for saving its footage of those quarters.

Lastly, is it true there's no complete broadcast of Super Bowl XII? If so, that would be a travesty. By January 1978 the Super Bowl had already established itself as the premier sporting event in the U.S. and worth archiving, even if the game was a blowout. If CBS doesn't have a copy, perhaps some viewers taped it at home. VCRs were just starting to make their way into people's homes then.

Sorry for all the questions, but as is often the case with the television history of the Super Bowl, it's hard to get definitive answers about what's survived and what hasn't.