The music of NFL Primetime.

The Game Room
1

I’m a big fan of the Chris Berman / Tom Jackson duo from the old NFL Primetime (and now from “The Blitz” segments on SportsCenter), and a big part of that is the music they play over the highlights. It’s perfect: up-tempo but dramatic, and *just *cheesy enough to be fun. On election night, I always wind up wishing that the networks would use these songs as they show the returns – wouldn’t that be awesome?

Anyway, which are your favorites among the NFL Primetime songs? Personally, I’m a big fan of Song 9, especially the horn section from about 0:33 to 0:40. The worst one has to be Song 11; I only included it because Song 12 is pretty good and I didn’t want there to be a gap.

(I’m not including Songs 13-16, partly to avoid clutter, and partly because they’re pretty terrible; you can find them quite easily on YouTube, however. Also, I have no idea why only a few of the songs listed have names. For those of you who are just clicking on the link for Song 1 and then following the chain of links through Song 12 on YouTube, be advised that the links below for Songs 3, 8, and 9 go to separate videos that use the songs, which you may or may not find interesting.)

Song 1.
Song 2.
Song 3.
Song 4.
Song 5.
Song 6.
Song 7.
Song 8, “International Statement”.
Song 9, “Power Surge”.
Song 10.
Song 11, “Gridlock”.
Song 12. “The Event”.

2

What about 13, 14 15 and 16?

3

I just listened to a few seconds of each.#4 sounded the best.

4

My favorite is #8 – to me, this is the quintessential music from this show. I like #2 and #5 a lot, as well.

5

Good God, they’re all horrible! What happened to the days when the NFLhadkickassmusic?

6

Fixed post so the separate links were more visible…

7

Ah, song 10, ESPN uses that one all over the place, not just on NFL coverage. Years ago, it was filler music on Real Audio streamed ESPN Radio programming in place of commercials. I was hoping I’d finally get to know its title. My favorite is probably Song 9, which sounds the closest to classic NFL Films music.

8

The first three of those four are from NFL Films – I really like a lot of their original pieces. My favorite is Heroes of War, by David Robidoux, though it doesn’t get used as often as the Sam Spence pieces you mention.

All of those are still used on NFL Films material (as well as making a lot of appearances in commercials, lately)…and you can also find them on the Madden video game (though you need to manually switch them on).

9

I like those classic ones too - in fact I already had some of them downloaded. So I choose number 8 of the ones in the OP, because it sounds a bit like them.

10

I do like the classics, but as soon I heard #5 the memories came:

I really miss the old Prime Time show.

11

Or better yet, just buy this.

12

The old Sam Spence tunes are great, of course – in college I used to annoy the hell out of my roommates by playing them on a loop when the regular season started – but they’re paired to a different genre. If you’re not a fan of the old NFL Primetime show, then I could see how the links in the OP would just seem like noise. Given the context they were created for, however, I think they’re just about perfect.