The Timeline | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary |
Created by | NFL Films NFL Network |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 3 |
No. of episodes | 21 |
Original release | |
Network | NFL Network |
Release | December 3, 2015 – February 2, 2018 |
The Timeline is a documentary series developed by NFL Films and airs on NFL Network that documents select events of the National Football League. [1]
No. | Title | Event(s) | Narrator | Original air date |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Favre Returns | Brett Favre retiring as a Green Bay Packer in March 2008, only to un-retire a few months later to join the New York Jets, and then join the Packers' rival, the Minnesota Vikings, in 2009. | Tim McGraw | December 3, 2015 [2] |
2 | Jersey Guys | The New York Giants, after suffering losing seasons in the 1960s and early 1970s, move from New York City to East Rutherford, New Jersey in 1976 and become a winning team in the 1980s. | Bon Jovi | December 8, 2015 [3] |
3 | A Tale of Two Cities: Part 1 | The 49ers–Cowboys rivalry during the 1970s and 1980s. During this period each team had period of decline with the crossroads being the 1981 NFC Championship Game. | Sam Elliott & Jeremy Renner | December 15, 2015 [4] |
4 | A Tale of Two Cities: Part 2 | The 49ers–Cowboys rivalry during the 1990s, when San Francisco and Dallas faced each other in the NFC Championship Game three consecutive times. | Sam Elliott & Jeremy Renner | December 19, 2015 [5] |
5 | The Merger | The war between the NFL and the American Football League, and the subsequent merger between the two rival leagues in 1970. | Rich Eisen & James Brown | December 24, 2015 [6] |
6 | America's Game and the Iran Hostage Crisis | The NFL during the Iran hostage crisis. Includes the story of Alex Paen, a Los Angeles-based reporter stationed in Tehran, who made an audio recording of Super Bowl XIV for the hostages to listen to. | George Clooney | December 26, 2015 [7] |
No. | Title | Event(s) | Narrator | Original air date |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | September 11 | The NFL during and after the September 11 attacks. | Mary McDonald-Lewis | September 9, 2016 |
2 | Last Day in LA | The last regular season games of the Los Angeles Raiders and the Los Angeles Rams before they relocated to Oakland and St. Louis, respectively, after the 1994 season. | William Fichtner | September 14, 2016 |
3 | Rebirth in New Orleans | The New Orleans Saints and the city of New Orleans, from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the re-opening of the Louisiana Superdome more than a year later. | Clarke Peters | September 21, 2016 |
4 | Night of the Living Steelers | The 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, as re-told by horror filmmaker and former Pittsburgh resident George A. Romero. | George A. Romero | October 5, 2016 |
5 | Peyton Manning's Summer School | Quarterback Peyton Manning's off-season workout routine, and how it prepared him and the 2013 Denver Broncos to set several offensive records. | Ed O'Neill | October 12, 2016 August 28, 2016 (First aired on NBC) |
6 | 0-26 Bucs | The Tampa Bay Buccaneers losing their first ever 26 games. | None | November 23, 2016 |
7 | There's Only One America's Team | The Dallas Cowboys getting the nickname "America's Team". | Josh Holloway | November 30, 2016 |
8 | 1984 – The Season That Saved Football | The 1984 NFL season, which began at a time when the league was facing declining ratings, the lingering effects of the 1982 NFL strike, and the upstart United States Football League, among others. | Rob Lowe | December 7, 2016 |
9 | Lombardi's Redskins | The 1969 Washington Redskins, the only season that Vince Lombardi coached for that team before he died of cancer just prior to the 1970 season. | Dan Rather | December 14, 2016 |
10 | The Fog Bowl | The Fog Bowl, the December 31, 1988 playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Bears, including the rivalry between Bears head coach Mike Ditka, and Eagles head coach and former Bears defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan. | John Cusack | December 21, 2016 |
No. | Title | Event(s) | Narrator | Original air date |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | The Greatest Show on Turf | The St. Louis Rams of 1999-2001, nicknamed "The Greatest Show on Turf", became the first team to score 500 points in a season three straight years, while making the Super Bowl twice and winning Super Bowl XXXIV during that span. | Michael Ironside | September 21, 2017 |
2 | The Tuck Rule | The Tuck Rule Game, the January 19, 2002 playoff game between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots, and its aftermath (including Raiders coach Jon Gruden being traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following season only to face his former team in Super Bowl XXXVII, the Raiders then having a 13-season postseason drought after that Super Bowl appearance, and the Patriots moving on to win five Super Bowls). | Michael Chiklis | October 5, 2017 |
3 | The '91 Falcons | The 1991 Atlanta Falcons including Deion Sanders, Andre Rison and a rookie Brett Favre, including their relationship with hip-hop – particularly their association with MC Hammer via Too Legit to Quit . | Keith David | December 7, 2017 |
4 | The Ice Bowl | The 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. Directed and narrated by filmmaker Michael Meredith, son of Dallas quarterback Don Meredith, who spent four years researching more about the game's significance 50 years after it was played. | Michael Meredith | December 29, 2017 |
5 | The Helmet Catch | New York Giants wide receiver David Tyree's "Helmet Catch" during the final minutes of Super Bowl XLII, that helped his team win the game and prevent the New England Patriots from completing a perfect season. | Morgan Spector | February 2, 2018 |
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team is headquartered in Frisco, Texas, and has played its home games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, since its opening in 2009. The stadium took its current name prior to the 2013 season, following the team's decision to sell the stadium's naming rights to telecommunications company AT&T. In January 2020, Mike McCarthy was hired as head coach of the Cowboys. He is the ninth in the team's history. McCarthy follows Jason Garrett, who coached the team from 2010 to 2019.
The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division. The Titans play their home games at Nissan Stadium and are building a new stadium in 2024. It will be completed in 2027.
ESPN is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications (20%) through the joint venture ESPN Inc. The company was founded in 1979 by Bill Rasmussen, Scott Rasmussen and Ed Eagan.
Monday Night Football is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that primarily broadcast on Monday nights. It was originally broadcast on ABC from 1970 to 2005, before moving exclusively to sister network ESPN in 2006, which remains the main channel for the broadcast. In 2020, MNF returned to ABC in select simulcasts with ESPN, and in 2022, it began featuring select exclusive ABC telecasts. In addition, ESPN2 has aired alternate telecasts of selected games since 2020 as the Manningcast, while ESPN+ has streamed MNF simulcasts in the United States since 2021.
NFL Network is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NFL RedZone. Dedicated to American football, the network features game telecasts from the NFL, as well as NFL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in the NFL Los Angeles building located next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and broadcasts its worldwide feed from Encompass Digital Media in Atlanta, Georgia. The network has secondary East Coast facilities in the NFL Films building in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.
Suzy Kolber is an American football sideline reporter, co-producer, and a former ESPN sports anchor and reporter. She was one of the original anchors of ESPN2 when it launched in 1993. Three years later, she left ESPN2 to join Fox Sports, but returned to ESPN in late 1999. In 2023, she and several other ESPN employees were terminated by the network in what was described as a cost-cutting measure.
Marcellus Vernon Wiley Sr. is an American sportscaster and former professional football player. He played as a defensive end for 10 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) with the Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys and Jacksonville Jaguars. He was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2001 with the Chargers.
The Sports Emmy Awards, or Sports Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), the Sports Emmys are presented in recognition of excellence in American sports television programming, including sports-related series, live coverage of sporting events, and best sports announcers. The awards ceremony, presenting Emmys from the previous calendar year, is usually held on a Spring Monday night, sometime in the last two weeks in April or the first week in May. The Sports Emmy Awards are all given away at one ceremony, unlike the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards, which hold a "Creative Arts" ceremony in which Emmys are given to behind-the-scenes personnel.
Charles Christopher Spielman is an American former professional football player who is a special assistant to the owner and CEO for the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL). He played linebacker for the Ohio State Buckeyes, twice earning All-American honors. He played professional football for the Detroit Lions in the NFL, where he was a three-time All-Pro. He also played for the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns, and coached for the Arena Football League (AFL)'s Columbus Destroyers. He was a broadcaster for Fox Sports and ESPN from 1999 to 2020.
The Oregon State Beavers football team represents Oregon State University in NCAA Division I FBS college football. The team first fielded an organized football team in 1893 and is a member of the Pac-12 Conference.
The National Football League Kickoff Game, along with related festivities, marks the official start of the National Football League (NFL) regular season. A single game is held, preceded by a concert and other ceremonies. This first game of the season is usually scheduled for the Thursday following Labor Day. An exception was made in 2012, when the game was moved to Wednesday to prevent conflicts with the acceptance speech of the Democratic National Convention. Although the Kickoff Game is typically played on Thursday night, the league treats it separately from the Thursday Night Football games during the rest of the season.
National Football League Cheerleading or simply NFL Cheerleading, is a group of professional cheerleading organizations in the United States. 24 of the 32 NFL teams include a cheerleading squad in their franchise. In 1954, the Baltimore Colts became the first NFL team to have cheerleaders. They were part of Baltimore's Marching Colts.
Washington, D.C., has major league sports teams, popular college sports teams, and a variety of other team and individual sports. The Washington metropolitan area is also home to several major sports venues including Capital One Arena, RFK Stadium, Commanders Field, Audi Field, and Nationals Park.
From 1985–1986, the NBC Radio Network was the official, national radio provider for National Football League games. The program succeeded the CBS Radio Network's package.
As with all sports leagues, there are several significant rivalries between teams and notable players in the National Football League (NFL). Rivalries are occasionally created due to a particular event that causes bad blood between teams, players, coaches, or owners, but for the most part, they arise simply due to the frequency with which some teams play each other and sometimes exist for geographic reasons.
A Football Life is an American documentary series of 116 episodes, developed by NFL Films and aired on NFL Network that documents the lives of select National Football League (NFL) players, coaches, owners, and teams. Friends, teammates, family members and other players and coaches associated with the subjects are interviewed.
The 49ers–Cowboys rivalry is a National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys. The 49ers lead the series 20–19–1. It is one of the great inter-division rivalry games in the NFL. As the Cowboys play in NFC East and the 49ers in the NFC West, they do not play every year; instead, they play at least once every three years and at least once every six seasons at each team's home stadium due to the NFL's rotating division schedules when their respective divisions are paired up. Additionally, not only both teams could meet in the playoffs, but also if they finish in the same place in their respective divisions, they would play the ensuing season. Sports Illustrated ranked it as the eighth best rivalry while the NFL Top 10 ranked this rivalry to be the tenth best in the NFL. In 2020, CBS ranked it as the No. 1 NFL rivalry of the 1990s. The rivalry was also the subject of two 2015 episodes of NFL Network's The Timeline entitled "A Tale of Two Cities" with actors Sam Elliott (Cowboys) and Jeremy Renner (49ers) as narrators.
During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during prime time that could be viewed by a greater television audience. An early bid by the league in 1964 to play on Friday nights was soundly defeated, with critics charging that such telecasts would damage the attendance at high school football games. Undaunted, Rozelle decided to experiment with the concept of playing on Monday night, scheduling the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions for a game on September 28, 1964. While the game was not televised, it drew a sellout crowd of 59,203 spectators to Tiger Stadium, the largest crowd ever to watch a professional football game in Detroit up to that point.
The 2021–22 afternoon network television schedule for the four major English-language commercial broadcast networks in the United States covers the weekday and weekend afternoon hours from September 2021 to August 2022. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning and cancelled shows from the 2020–21 season.
When the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, all major professional and collegiate organizations responded by suspending operations indefinitely. This effect was passed down to the world of sports broadcasting, which includes live coverage of thousands of events on an annual basis through stations and network available over the air, through cable, satellite, and IPTV companies, and via streaming and over-the-top services.