The All American Sports Show

What is it that makes sports so great? Is it the traditions that connect us with the earliest players of the game? Is it the contest between athlete, each giving their all, not just to entertain the crowd but to determine who is the better competitor? Could it be the inspiration and lessons of great coaches, the camaraderie of the great teams, or the quiet determination and sacrifice which the individual athlete needs to become great?

NBC's The All American Sports Show celebrates all of these elements through by dramatizing great moments in sport and the background which led up to them. The show profiled Tennessee football coach General Robert Neyland the week before his retirement, took a close look at the great Babe Didrikson Zaharias who was still playing championship level golf after fighting cancer (the disease would eventually take her life), explored the rise of lawn tennis a week before the U.S. Open, as well as profiling Rocky Marciano, announcer Graham McNamee and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The All American Sports Show used a studio organ which would have been at home on any soap opera, which is appropriate when you consider that sport can be more dramatic than any afternoon tear jerker.