NFL Films' 'Super Bowl Collection' a final gift from Steve Sabol

Steve Sabol may be gone, but he's left one final present to football fans with the Holidays and Super Bowl XLVII nearing.

NFL Films and Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment this week released Super Bowl Collection I-XLVI, a compendium of football's biggest game through the years.

The 23-disc set features highlights from all 46 Super Bowls, the ones you've probably seen in marathon sessions on ESPN and NFL Network over the years. But each disc also contains league-wide highlights in each Super season from 1966 to the present — many of the NFL Films-produced Road to the Super Bowl variety, assorted highlights in the earlier years and an occasional Hard Knocks snippet in the later ones. That means not only watching Mike Ditka get carried off the field by the '85 Bears but seeing him battered as a tight end for the hapless '68 Eagles.

Reliving those memories and the exploits of many NFL stars who never played in Super Bowls with narrative friends from yesteryear such as John Facenda and Harry Kalas truly makes this collection a must-have for football fanatics. The set is presented in a nifty package that doubles as a 26-page book chronicling the big game and includes an NFL Network special ranking the top 10 Super Bowls.

The nostalgia is topped off by a foreword from late NFL Films president Sabol, who died Sept. 18 after spending his entire adult life documenting America's favorite sport. This was his last project.

"The first law in the entertainment business is that you have to know how to put on a big show. After 46 years, the Super Bowl isn't merely big, it's an enormous, excessive, preposterous extravaganza — which is what's so great about it," writes Sabol.

"This box set includes the very best material we've collected in the nearly 50 years of our history at NFL Films. Every great shot, every great sound byte, every thrilling moment of the 'Super Bowl Era' is here — and watching each film today brings me right back to where I was for the game, in that season, throughout the living history of the National Football League."

The collection will set you back $250. But if you love NFL history — and might want to streamline a collection spread across old VHS tapes and DVDs — it's a good investment.