Steve Sabol made ballet out of the rough and tumble world of professional football.

With powerful music and even more powerful footage, he made it a symphony and made it a lifestyle for millions of NFL fans.

Working alongside his father, who started NFL Films, Sabol made the sport of football human, capturing its folly, its fanfare and fandom. He captured the raw intensity of game time, his crews filming the sideline rants of coaches and the poetry of motion in a hard fought catch or bruising run.

Sabol left us Tuesday after a long battle with brain cancer but he gave us a valuable gift. He made an impact through cinematography that became the way we view the game, whether it was through madcap blunders on the field or Walter Payton making the delicate moves of a figure skater on his way to a touchdown.

It wasn’t just through the films and music, it was through the narration that NFL Films made football a literate game, the honey-dripped voice of John Facenda often providing the symphony of words to accompany the flawless video that can be watched again and again.

Sabol and his father, Ed, at least in our opinion, were what helped make football the national pastime and how many of us learned to enjoy the game.

When we learned of his death, we automatically went to YouTube to play the jazzy Ramblin’ Man from Gramblin’, one of the iconic pieces composed by Sam Spence, yet another testament to the great team the Sabols assembled to make football human, football great and football a veritable symphony on a rough and tumble field — Editor