Forty-nine years to the day after the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs met in Super Bowl I, NFL Network will be the first to ever replay this historic game in a full recreation on television.
"Super Bowl I: The Lost Game" will air Friday on NFL Network. The three-hour program will include pregame, halftime and postgame segments, modern broadcast graphics and coverage, social media interaction, facts and information, with studio contributors and guests live reaction and storytelling throughout.
Super Bowl I was broadcast by both NBC -- the official broadcaster of the AFL-- and CBS -- the official broadcaster of the NFL -- and remains the only Super Bowl to have been broadcast live in the United States by two television networks. Considered to be the Holy Grail of sports broadcasts, the CBS and NBC tapes of the game were either lost or recorded over and no full video version of the game has existed -- until now.
In an exhaustive process that took months to complete, NFL Films searched its archives of footage and were able to locate all 145 plays from Super Bowl I from more than two dozen sources. Once all the plays were located, NFL Films was able to put the plays in order and stich them together while fully restoring, re-mastering, and color correcting the footage.
Audio from the NBC Sports radio broadcast featuring announcers Jim Simpson and George Ratterman was layered on top of the footage to complete the broadcast.
Friday is the 49th anniversary of Super Bowl I, which was played on Jan. 15, 1967 in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Packers won 35-10.
Host Chris Rose and Steve Mariucci anchor the broadcast and are joined by NFL Media's Terrell Davis, Daniel Jeremiah, Steve Wyche and Elliot Harrison.
Pro Football Hall of Famer and Packers defensive end great Willie Davis and former Packers wide receiver Antonio Freeman will join in-studio, while former Packers greats Jerry Kramer and Dave Robinson join the show from remote.
In addition to the broadcast of the game, "Super Bowl I: The Lost Game" includes the following features:
--Wired sound from Packers head coach Vince Lombardi.
--Footage of a postgame interview with Chiefs head coach Hank Stram and NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle being interviewed by Pat Summerall.
--In-depth discussion on how the Super Bowl I broadcast was lost and then re-assembled using NFL Films footage.
--A feature on the merger between the well-established National Football League and the upstart American Football League, giving birth to the modern-day NFL and the American spectacle called the Super Bowl.
--An interview with Super Bowl I CBS producer Bill Creasy on why the second-half kickoff was kicked twice.
