Super Bowl One videotape found...NFL sez "no thanks"

[spuwho]

Super Bowl 1 was broadcast on not 1, but 2 major networks, yet no one saved the videotapes.  Today it can only be seen through crafty editing of NFL Films and a radio announcer.

However, one guy got an inheritance, the only videotape of the first Super Bowl, and the NFL doesn't want it. (why?)

Per NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/sports/football/super-bowl-i-recording-broadcast-nfl-troy-haupt.html?_r=0

Out of a Rare Super Bowl I Recording, a Clash With the N.F.L. Unspools



MANTEO, N.C. — Troy Haupt is a 47-year-old nurse anesthetist here in North Carolina's Outer Banks. He has a secret to reveal about Super Bowl I: He owns the only known recording of its broadcast.

CBS and NBC, which televised the game, did not preserve any tapes. But the copy that Haupt owns — of a broadcast that launched the Super Bowl as an enormous shared spectacle that attracts more than 100 million viewers — might never be seen on any network. The N.F.L. does not want to buy the tapes and has warned Haupt not to sell them to outside parties or else the league will pursue legal action.

Unless the league and Haupt make a deal to resolve the financial differences that have privately divided them since 2005, the tapes will stay in storage in a former mine in upstate New York.

"This year had to be the year, with all the hype of Super Bowl 50," Haupt said.

The tapes are a bizarre heirloom that, for decades, sat largely ignored in the attic of his family's three-bedroom house in Shamokin, Pa., deteriorating from shifting temperatures.

Haupt's father, Martin, taped the game. Haupt never knew him. Haupt and his mother, Beth Rebuck, say they have no idea what he did for a living back then. They also don't know why he went to work on Jan. 15, 1967, with a pair of two-inch Scotch tapes, slipped one, and then the other, into a Quadruplex taping machine and recorded the Green Bay Packers' 35-10 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. He told his family nothing about his day's activity.

It would take another eight years for Martin Haupt to tell his wife what he had done. By then, they had divorced and both had remarried.

He was sick with cancer and handed her the tapes.

"He said maybe they could help pay for the kids' education," she said. And she put them in the attic, where they accumulated dust and intrigue.

Martin Haupt died soon after, leaving behind the odd inheritance of a Super Bowl I recording, made on a professional two-inch machine in the era before the videocassette recorder industry exploded and networks and leagues began to cherish their archives of old games.

Fortuitous Phone Call

The story might have ended with those two tapes deteriorating in Shamokin if not for a phone call from Troy Haupt's childhood friend, Clint Hepner. In 2005, he read that Sports Illustrated had described a tape of Super Bowl I as a "lost treasure" because CBS and NBC had not saved copies of their broadcasts. The magazine estimated that a tape, if found, would be worth $1 million.

"He said, 'Remember when we were 10 and in your mom's attic playing board games and saw this box with metal cases in it that said Super Bowl I?'" Haupt said. "I had no idea what he was talking about and he said, 'Talk to your mom,' and Mom said, 'Yeah, they're up in the attic.'" She added: "I remarried. The kids grew up and we talked about the tapes once in a while. But my husband was skeptical about what was on them."

Haupt and his mother unspooled the saga in the sunroom of his house here on the Outer Banks that was built by its original owner to resemble a Coast Guard station. He was born the year after Super Bowl I and grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan in Philadelphia Eagles territory. He refers to his late stepfather, Charles, as his father, and Martin Haupt as his biological father.

With Super Bowl 50 between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos approaching Sunday, he felt it was time to come forward as the owner of the tapes. For the past five years, he let his lawyer speak about an unidentified client who had the recording, who had made a deal with the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan to restore it and who was trying to sell the tapes to the N.F.L.

But the league does not seem to agree with him that the tapes are a significant enough part of its legacy that it should pay him what he wants. It countered his initial request for $1 million with a $30,000 offer. It never raised its price and is not interested anymore in paying anything at all.

"It's awesome to have the tapes, but it's frustrating that we can't do anything with them," Haupt said. "It's like you've won the golden ticket but you can't get into the chocolate factory."

Set to Tell His Story

Last month, the league countered in another way, showing that it did not need the tapes. NFL Network showed a reconstruction of Super Bowl I drawn from the archives of NFL Films.

And last week, Haupt was angry about another turn in the dispute. CBS backed out of a plan to interview him for a Super Bowl pregame segment that would have used a few minutes from the game. It had agreed to pay him $25,000 and give him two tickets to the Super Bowl. A producer was preparing to watch a restored, digital copy of the game at the Paley Center. A crew was ready to go to Manteo. He was going to tell his story, and perhaps the league would listen.

"It was my right to tell my story, and they were paying me for it," Haupt said.

But according to his lawyer, Steve Harwood, the deal collapsed when he was told that the N.F.L. had ordered CBS not to pay him.

"They said they'd still put Troy on but couldn't pay," Harwood said. "After dealing with the N.F.L. all these years, and with CBS, which screwed up, Troy said he wouldn't do it for free."

Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, denied that the N.F.L. was involved.

"We didn't tell them not to do it," he said. "We didn't talk to CBS about the payment."

A CBS Sports spokeswoman said only that it chose not to do the feature "because we couldn't get the appropriate clearances."

With one click on the computer screen in the Paley Center viewing room, Super Bowl I came back to life. The recording is a relic that shows the signs of exposure to the heat and cold in the attic in Shamokin. Colors fade in and out. The picture is grainy and skips. And it suffers somewhat from Martin Haupt's decision to stop or pause before most commercial breaks and hitting play when the break ended, which caused him to miss parts of the action when play resumed. The stops and starts give the tapes an occasional herky-jerky feel.

And more important, he did not tape halftime and about half of the third quarter.

"It's like he thought he would run out of tape," Troy Haupt said.

But it is still a viewable document, a vintage broadcast by CBS, with Ray Scott calling the first half with Frank Gifford, and Jack Whitaker taking over in the third quarter with a friendlier, wittier play call. Gifford referred regularly to Green Bay Coach Vince Lombardi as "Vinny" and kept promoting the Chiefs' great play well after they were out of the game.

A 1960s sensibility is preserved, helping to separate the tape from the NFL Films reconstruction.

Each replay is labeled "Video Tape" and each slow-motion shot is noted as "Slow Motion." The effect continues with network promos; an ad read by Whitaker (United States savings bonds that were recommended by President Johnson) and the commercials Haupt did not cut out (like the anchorman-like announcer promoting the taste and other benefits of True cigarettes).

As the game entered its final seconds, Whitaker started to count down. "Nine, eight," he said, and the game ended. A marching band ran onto the field. It played "Seventy-Six Trombones."

"The first Super Bowl was always our holy grail of lost sports programs, appearing on our most-wanted list for years," said Ron Simon, the Paley Center's television and radio curator.

A League Warning

Haupt owns the recording but not its content, which belongs to the N.F.L. If the league refuses to buy it, he cannot sell the tapes to a third party, like CBS or a collector who would like to own a piece of sports history that was believed to be lost. He would like to persuade the league to sell the tapes jointly and donate some of the proceeds to their favorite charities. His mother said that she would give some of her share of the sale to the Wounded Warrior Project.

"They're not doing anybody any good sitting in a vault," he said. "Let's help some great charities."

But that is unlikely to happen. A letter from the league to Harwood last year provided a sharp warning to Haupt. "Since you have already indicated that your client is exploring opportunities for exploitation of the N.F.L.'s Super Bowl I copyrighted footage with yet-unidentified third parties," Dolores DiBella, a league counsel, wrote, "please be aware that any resulting copyright infringement will be considered intentional, subjecting your client and those parties to injunctive relief and special damages, among other remedies."

The law favors the league, said Jodi Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

"What the league technically has is a property right in the game information and they are the only ones who can profit from that," said Balsam, a former N.F.L. lawyer.

But, she added, the league has not handled the matter as well as it should have.

"It seems they've misplayed their hand here," she said. "They've known about this tape for years, and it seems to me they should have resolved this years ago, because it's important footage."

But until the league and Haupt resolve their differences, the public will never see the game as it happened, on the winter day when Green Bay became the champion of the N.F.L. and A.F.L., and Martin Haupt took a mysterious route to recording history.

[BridgeTroll]

He should donate it to the Hall of Fame.

[fsquid]

For the lawyers here, what standing does the league have?

[Tacachale]

Pretty crazy that the NFL won't pay for what's obviously an important artifact for them. They must feel pretty secure that they can block any other sale he could make, or prevent any other party from ever using the footage if they buy it.

If I were him I'd start advertising that it's the tape for sale, it just happens to have historically important video on it. I'm sure some eccentric rich fan out there would pay at least something so they could make copies and play them (for free) at parties or whatever. "See the footage the NFL doesn't want you to see."

[Gunnar]

Checked the following info but it was a bit confusing: Would the tape be considered a sound recording and was it even aired with a copyright notice ?
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

If the broadcast was published with a notice, the copyright term should be 95 years.

[spuwho]

Many consider the NFL's copyright reach to be overbearing.

Like their rule that any showing of a game on a screen larger than 55 inches is no longer "private use". (LOL)

This story of a professor of copyright law challenging the NFL is indicative of their "bullying" when they think they can get away with it, when the law doesnt support it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/02/challenging-copyright-at-the-nfl/

[InnerCityPressure]

I would give them a one year ultimatum.  Then...

[coredumped]

Sell a can of coke that has significant sentimental value to the person who would pay the most for it, and throw in a free copy of the recording. That's how scalpers did it back in the day

[InnerCityPressure]

^Genius.  Highest bidder gets an empty box.  In it, you may take one item from my house.

[spuwho]

What it really comes down to is that NO ONE makes makes money on the NFL, except the NFL.

The second item is if they buy this tape, then every person who inherited his grandfathers 8mm home movies of NFL games of the late 40's early 50's is going to show up at their door wanting something.

I could easily see the NFL donating $1M dollars to United Way for the tape. As for the home movies, they can readily say no.

As the NY Times said, the NFL hasn't played this very well and it makes them look like the same greed ridden organization that stiffed St Louis.

[Jason]

How would this be any different than selling any other NFL collectable?

[spuwho]

How would this be any different than selling any other NFL collectable?

Because there is a difference between selling a unique item, and a unique performance.

In this case the unique item is the tape, the unique performance is contained within.

Someone can buy a dress worn by Jennifer Aniston in the show Friends, but you can't duplicate and sell copies of the show she wore it in.