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What: “Lost Treasures of NFL Films: Volume IX--Network Stars of the ‘70s”

Where: ESPN Classic, Friday, 7 p.m.

NFL Films takes a nostalgic look at the 1970s by focusing on features it did for “The NFL Today” on CBS, “This Week in Pro Football” with Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier and a documentary it did on Howard Cosell.

NFL Films President Steve Sabol, host of this one-hour special, says at the end, “This may be the first feature we’ve ever done without any football action.”

In 1972, NFL Films broke away from simply doing football highlights when it produced a five-minute fairy tale called “Joe and the Magic Bear” about Joe Namath. It won an Emmy, and after that the networks began hiring NFL Films to do features.

“We began to examine the inner selves of the intellectual elite of the NFL,” Sabol says. One of those early features was on former UCLA and Chicago Bear receiver George Farmer and his love of poetry.

Some of the features never made it to the air but are part of this special. One was supposed to be about the Raiders’ Tom Keating and his cooking skills. Turns out, he only washed the spinach. His chef did the cooking.

One feature that made it to the air but maybe shouldn’t have was on the Cleveland Browns’ Walter Johnson, the NFL’s strongest man, wrestling Victor the Bear at a county fair in Ohio. Sabol also wrestled the bear.

This special revisits three prominent people from that era--Phyllis George, Jayne Kennedy and Fred Dryer. George was a little rough around the edges. For instance, she wasn’t sure who owned the Rams. “Is it Carl Rosenbloom?” she asks her producer, referring to Carroll Rosenbloom. But George was a good sport back then, and is again as she talks with NFL Films.

Pertaining to the segment on the Cosell documentary, Sabol says, “Howard didn’t like what we were doing. He thought we were wasting so much time doing films on football.” No problem doing a feature on Cosell, though. Sabol’s father, Ed, the founder of NFL Films, relates how “Cosell’s face lit up” when he was told about the planned documentary.

The highlight of this special is a segment on Dryer, the former Ram defensive end. NFL Films did a feature on a tanned, long-haired Dryer who lived out of his van, a far cry from the Dryer of today.

NFL Films did several features with Dryer, and, as Sabol notes, maybe helped prepare him for the acting career that followed football.

Kennedy has possibly the best line in the special. “Thanks for calling me a lost treasure,” she says.