American Football (1957)

A coachs whole career depends upon winning this football game the US Air Force Academy against the University of Colorado The film was an early experiment by Drew and his Associates to capture real life happening in front of the cameras They had not yet developed the new equipment that would allow portable syncsound filming so they improvised Drew who was still a correspondent for LIFE Magazine at the time was trying to make films that would promote LIFE stories on television This idea was how Drew had convinced TimeLife to bankroll his fledgling film unit Although the football story never became a LIFE magazine cover story it served as a kind of dryrun for a film about another football game covered by Drew and his Associates four years later That film Mooney vs Fowle led by filmmaker James Lipscomb became an awardwinning groundbreaking documentary