Rare Super Bowl I, Kramer footage to air tonight

SANDPOINT — It was a special fall football season, highlighted by a return visit from former Sandpoint, University of Idaho and Green Bay Packer legend Jerry Kramer, who was on hand to present Sandpoint High School with a gold NFL football as part of the NFL’s celebration of Super Bowl 50.

The balls were given to the high school of every player or coach to ever take part in a Super Bowl, and the return sparked a wave of nostalgia for Kramer, who said returning to Barlow Stadium topped even his opening day halftime celebration at Lambeau Field earlier in the season.

Kramer is one of a select few Packer legends to play in the first two Super Bowls, and fans of Kramer won’t want to miss a special presentation of Super Bowl I tonight at 5 p.m. on the NFL Network (Direct TV channel 212, Dish channel 154).

No one has an accessible copy of the full Super Bowl I television broadcast. The game, played in January 1967 between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, was shown on both NBC and CBS, yet the broadcast appears to be a lost artifact from a time when television shows weren’t regularly recorded for posterity.

But NFL Films was there and was able to splice together a version of the game — all 145 plays — from the footage it shot with the five or six cameras it had on hand (it will have up to 35 cameras at Super Bowl 50).

Kramer, a starting guard and one of the pullers on the signature Packer Sweep, carried Packers coach Vince Lombardi off the field after Super Bowl II. The three-hour production features the NBC Sports radio play-by-play from Jim Simpson and George Ratterman layered over the broadcast, plus pregame, halftime and postgame segments, modern broadcast graphics and a group of commentators who will discuss the game as it’s shown.

“You can’t just throw the footage up on the air and expect it to be a good viewing experience,” said Ronit Larone, a senior coordinating producer for the NFL Network. “If you watched without the enhancements you wouldn’t understand what’s going on.”

There are reports that one man has a nearly complete copy of the CBS broadcast — his father taped it at a television station in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — and is trying to sell it to the NFL.

So the NFL Network’s broadcast Friday night is as good a glimpse as we’re going to get into a seminal moment in sports broadcasting history.