Steve sabol on the jets

[JETMAN]

SABOL ON THE JETS AND HARD KNOCKS,I CANT ****ING WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That important show has now been married up with an important season filled with high expectations for Ryan and this team that, dare we say, he seems to have been meant to coach ever since his days as a ballboy for his dad, Buddy, an assistant coach on Weeb Ewbank's Super-to-be 1968 Jets.

"The Jets, this is a team that's developing an entire new personality, an entire new identity — and a very theatrical identity," Sabol said. "They've got some young, charismatic stars in Sanchez and Revis, a probable Hall of Famer in Tomlinson. They've got a very bold and adventurous head coach. And even the front office is feisty and competitive.

"So you've got the personalities there, and then the access in talking with Mike and Coach Ryan that we've been given is all-encompassing, no-limitations, all-inclusive access to meetings, training rooms, personnel meetings, on the field, wiring players for games. And that's the core of what Hard Knocks is. It's that reality."

You know all that, about the Jets' 2009 finish and their 2010 expectations. What you may not know about is how NFL Films turns a team a year into an hour of football drama every week for five summer weeks.

NFL Films has more than 200 people involved in the production, filming, postproduction, editing, music and graphics for each episode. The cameras produce 25 hours of high-definition film every day for six weeks. That raw video is turned over to producer Kenny Rodgers and his staff of 15, who then in a matter of days "tame and shape this raw vision into a coherent TV show" that first airs on Wednesday nights during August and early September.

"We do over 1,000 hours of programming for the cable networks, for broadcast television. But these five hours with the Jets will be the most watched, the most publicized, the most scrutinized, the most expensively produced and the most creatively challenging of all the programs we'll do all year," Sabol said.

"In a way, this is our Super Bowl as filmmakers. It's strange that it starts in the beginning of the season. But as Paul Brown once said, 'In what other business in six weeks will you discover whether you're good enough to make it?' This show is about that discovery process."

And how NFL Films fares in its big game depends on the stories it uncovers each week. The crew operates without a net as it explores all possible storylines.

"What's so challenging from a filmmaker's perspective," Sabol said, "is that we come into this with no treatment, no format, no preconceived ideas. It's like building an airplane in flight. We're just taking off. We don't know who we're going to follow yet."