Scott Graham brings ‘human’ touch to new job as NFL Films narrator

You might say that Scott Graham, as the new voice of NFL Films, has a plum assignment.

But his boss sees it as more of an olive one.

“The narrator is sort of like the olive in the martini,” said Steve Sabol, NFL Films president. “It sort of finishes off the drink the right way. It’s not the entire drink, but you need the lemon slice, the olive in the end to make it complete.”

Graham, 44, took over this season in place of his friend and former Philadelphia Phillies broadcast partner, Harry Kalas, who was the voice of NFL Films for 32 years until his death last April. Kalas succeeded the legendary John Facenda, nicknamed the “Voice of God.”

“I always used to say that if the Last Supper had had an after-dinner speaker, Facenda would have been the guy,” Sabol said.

That’s not Graham.

“My voice is not John Facenda’s, nor will it ever be, nor will anyone’s ever be,” Graham said in a phone interview. “My voice is not Harry Kalas’ voice.

“I think that what they’re looking for with a narrator now is, with so much sound that’s coming from the sidelines, so many different audibles that are going on, all of the music, the brilliant writing, they want a sort of steady baseline to what they’re doing.”

And Graham is happy to provide that, even though he never expected to be in this position.

“It’s not my dream job, and the reason for that is because I always saw this as unattainable,” he said. “I was a baseball announcer, and that was a dream job because it was something I wanted to be from the time I was a kid. But since I was a kid, I’ve held NFL Films in complete reverence.

“When I was 7 or 8, I used to sit in my room on a Saturday night -- an odd thing for a kid that young -- with my big black-and-white TV, and I would watch ‘This Weekend in Pro Football,’ followed by ‘Game of the Week.’ To me, it was the coolest thing in the world.”

Later, he took to emulating those voices, sometimes to the irritation of his pals.

“Playing football with friends in the backyard, you start narrating along with it,” he said. “In fact, every once in a while you would annoy the kids you’re playing with because you’d try to slow down your runs or throws to match the slow-motion look.”

Sabol said he has had his eye -- or maybe ear -- on Graham for years, ever since he started to do voice-over work for NFL Films in 2003. Like Graham, Facenda and Kalas were from the Philadelphia area, not too far from NFL Films headquarters in Mount Laurel, N.J.

“Scott has got the same kind of quality that Harry had,” Sabol said. “It’s distinctive, but not distracting.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com