Schmahl?s Passion Changed College Football Video

Schmahl Celebration of Life Service Saturday, Aug. 8

Randy York’s N-Sider

Official Blog of Husker Athletics

In a timely twist, a trinity of upscale college football video production pioneers worked together at Lincoln’s KOLN-KGIN TV before all three eventually re-converged at the University of Nebraska’s Department of Athletics.

Shot Kleen was the engineer collaboratively immersed in the first big screens in college football. Jeff Schmahl, who died of pancreatic cancer July 14 in New York City at age 58, was the producer of Nebraska’s trend-setting video technology delivery inside Memorial Stadium. Kirk Hartman was the director who sat next to Schmahl for every football game that became the instant standard by which college football video programs are still measured.

Dave Finn, Nebraska’s video administrator who oversaw the bid process specifications and installations for Memorial Stadium’s first big screens, also helped bring then Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Byrne’s bold vision to life.

Kleen became the strategic sidekick who worked directly with Hartman, the heart of every live Husker football video production since that ground-breaking September Saturday in 1994. That’s when Nebraska unveiled the incomparable Tunnel Walk, the grandest entry in college football and the iconic linchpin that enabled HuskerVision to build an innovative model like no one else had or even envisioned at the time.

Top from left: Mike Hodges, Kirk Hartman, Dave Finn; Bottom from left: Rick Schwieger, Shot Kleen, Jeff Schmahl.

Schmahl Hiring Perfect Puzzle Piece for Checkmate

If football can be metaphorically compared to chess, Byrne’s brilliant hire of Schmahl was the perfect puzzle piece for Nebraska to claim checkmate before the vast majority of college football programs even knew video production was a competitive match.

The timing was masterful and showcased three Nebraska national championship football seasons in HuskerVision’s first four years as a public entity. The Huskers did not lose a home game in that remarkable stretch and dropped only two contests overall.

Still, at the outset of that amazing run, Nebraska’s television trio – turned video production wizards – did not realize the scope of its maiden voyage into a fresh technological frontier until a public pep rally the night before the Huskers hosted UCLA.

“We underestimated the power of newspaper ads and articles on the sports pages for a pep rally and the unveiling of the biggest screens in college football,” Kleen said. “When we walked out on the field and saw 40,000 people that Friday night, we started to understand what we’d gotten into.”

Keith Jackson, the No.1 voice in college football, was sitting in the network production booth on the sixth floor of Nebraska’s press box when Big Red fans flocked to Memorial Stadium to check out the big screens. “Keith Jackson was amazed and in awe of what was happening,” Kleen said.

More than two decades later, Husker fans and opposing visitors are still amazed and in awe of the Tunnel Walk, plus the creative videos produced, packaged and played inside Memorial Stadium to reinforce that grand entrance.

HuskerVision So Much More than the Tunnel Walk

HuskerVision is so much more than the Tunnel Walk, the celebrated launch of every Game Day. On any given Saturday, HuskerVision can be a rock band, an orchestra, a sitcom and a historical salute all rolled into one. Let the record also show that Kleen and Hartman really can “feel it” every Saturday, deep down, knowing that Schmahl’s team-oriented roots were and still are woven into the very fabric of the Game Day experience.

On Saturday, August 8th, Nebraska will honor the past with a "Celebration of Jeff Schmahl's Life" at 2 p.m. The memorial service on West Memorial Stadium’s Club Level 3 will honor Schmahl’s legacy and his enormous contributions to Nebraska’s vibrant football history and rich tradition.

The service will bring together video production leaders, specialists and practitioners from across the country. “Jeff always had the most pride in seeing what our students did after HuskerVision,” Hartman said. “He was so proud of them when they went on to run their own video departments at other colleges and universities and professional sports franchises. Some ended up working in network news and some in the film industry.”  

Their collective experience and formidable impact reflect the HuskerVision culture that’s similar to a sorority or fraternity where young people want to come to work and have fun every day, but also strive to work hard, so they can be proudly tied together as crucial products of HuskerVision’s overall growth and creativity.

Passion for Production Reflected Passion for Life

“Jeff preached about having a passion for video production,” Hartman said. “If you don’t have that passion for what you do, you will never be a success in this industry or any other career, and that was always key with him. Everyone around Jeff fed off his passion, especially our students, and I think that’s what made so many success stories from our HuskerVision alumni.

Launching the first big screens in college football was an experiment. “Jeff was so involved in video content,” Hartman said. “He believed that any stadium can have a big screen but what matters most is the content on that screen. The game itself is the most important content as far as bringing the replays to our fans. Jeff believed in delivering a quality product, not just fluff during timeouts and between quarters. That’s what he did from day one.”

Hartman worked with Schmahl at 10/11 for several years and began directing football at HuskerVision during the first game after the big screens were installed. “I will always remember sitting next to Jeff for every football game. We were essentially one foot apart during every home game,” Hartman said.

Schmahl was on the producer side and Hartman on the director side. “We’d take cues from each other and really become one together, orchestrating a live football game,” Hartman said. “I really enjoyed the overall approach, even when things would go wrong, which happens when you produce a four-hour live production. We worked in sync to smooth out those rough patches. I knew what Jeff was thinking and he knew what I was thinking. At the end of a long 16-hour day, he would reflect only on the good, and it made our entire crew feel a great sense of accomplishment and pride.”

Faith, Family Supersede Football for Schmahl

After his colleagues learned that Schmahl had the Big C, Jeff’s only term for cancer, a sizable group learned even more about his pervasive presence and remarkable perseverance. “His outlook was just amazing,” Hartman said. “He was always positive because of his faith and his love of family.”

The proof is in the blogs he wrote. “Read them and you see how every day counted,” Hartman said. “Even with the Big C, he enjoyed life so much, and he continued to live with such passion. There are so many fond memories Jeff and I had together. He was a great friend and a great mentor. He shared and influenced all of our pride for Nebraska Athletics. I’m going to miss him big time.”

Kleen feels the same deep sense of loss. He was sitting at Schmahl’s old desk when his longtime friend called to tell him about his stage 4 cancer. Kleen was at that same desk when the email arrived informing him that Schmahl had died. “The doctor told Jeff he had six months to a year to live with stage four pancreatic cancer,” Kleen said.

Through his faith and resolve, Schmahl willed himself to live 15 productive months. “He made every day of that count,” Kleen said. “He did all kinds of incredible stuff that he always wanted to do.”

Blogging about His Wife, Son and NYC Cookies

Schmahl told Kleen he was “going to live this out, and I’m going to fight it and enjoy my remaining time whatever that is.” Both broke down on the telephone. “Jeff was on one end of the telephone crying, and I was on the other end crying,” Kleen said. “I gave him my sympathy, and that was the last time we ever cried together.”

Kleen cherishes how eager Schmahl was to blog about his experience, so others could understand what he was going through and how he was going to fight it to the end. “When he decided to blog, it was interesting because Jeff was never a social media type of guy,” Kleen said. “He was an old media broadcaster who liked to write. He wasn’t into short social media-type of writing.”

Schmahl’s blogs about his wife Maria, son Zachary and making some of the most popular cookies in New York City’s Times Square are poignant, priceless, moving experiences. They lift you up like they lifted Jeff and his family up during his incredible journey on what he called "The Last Train".

Friends Go Incognito in Tunnel Walk They Created

Schmahl and Kleen reminisced about last year’s 20-year reunion for the 1994 national championship team, which celebrated the feat and how Schmahl found a unique way to relive the Tunnel Walk he jointly originated. Schmahl joined Rick Schweiger, a former HuskerVision colleague and close friend who continues to play a lead role with NASCAR, to participate in the 20-year reunion Tunnel Walk. They did it incognito, clustered in the middle of the mass. “They were two of the happiest fellas out there,” said Kleen, who describes Schmahl as a brilliant guy with a great vision.

“He knew what his plan was and hired great people around him to help carry out that vision,” Kleen said. “He trusted people to do their part, and he celebrated his success with everybody else’s.”

Make no mistake. Producing HuskerVision on the big screen is a high-pressure, high-stress experience on Game Day. “Jeff was a man with great faith and morals,” Kleen said. “He’s one guy who never swore or took the Lord’s name in vain. His strongest theatric was always ‘dog-gone it’ much like Tom Osborne’s ‘dad-gum it.’"

Nebraska was impressed with Miami’s smoke-filled entrance onto the Hurricanes’ Orange Bowl field in 1993. “We wanted to do something bigger and better,” Kleen said. “We had the wherewithal to put cameras down on the field, and that was the key – the TV cameras right there when we came out of the tunnel. Nobody had gone down inside the locker room until we did. It really was the classic chess move to differentiate Nebraska from any other entrance onto the field.”

Athletic Directors Understood Investment's Value 

Fortunately, “throughout our existence – from Bill Byrne to Steve Pederson to Tom Osborne to Shawn Eichorst – they trusted us enough that if we said we needed something to be the best, they considered it and then decided that we should have it. In this business, it isn’t cheap. But all four athletic directors understood the value of what it meant to our players, coaches and fans.”

Kleen respects and appreciates that wide-ranging support. “To paraphrase Ronald Regan, there are no limits to how far you can go if you don’t care who gets the credit,” he said. “That’s kind of the way I look at things, and all four of those ADs realized the value of it.”

Video is an arm’s race. “It’s not about having a screen two inches bigger than the previous biggest,” Kleen said. “What you put on that screen is the motto we live by.”

Nebraska’s experiment in video and big screens was a blockbuster success. Once the first college football stadium in America made the investment and proved the inherent power, others followed. “When everybody started to do the same thing,” Kleen said, “it opened up a whole new round of job opportunities for students who worked here.”

The list is so long and the depth so wide, it almost seems inappropriate to name names, especially when many will return to Lincoln Saturday to pay Jeff Schmahl their deepest respect for creating a path to live, love, laugh and enjoy their jobs like he did.

Letterman Schmahl Embraced Academics, Life Skills

Keith Zimmer, Nebraska’s longtime associate athletic director for Life Skills, worked extensively with Schmahl on a number of major video projects.

“I’ve admired Jeff’s creativity, interpersonal relations and his ability to interview and capture not only the electricity of intercollegiate athletics but the genuine emotion of those he interviewed,” Zimmer said. “Jeff was the proud pioneer and innovator of HuskerVision. He nurtured and mentored countless professionals who have made a significant contribution to collegiate and other sports and video-related careers.

“I also credit Jeff for shining the spotlight bright on student-athlete success in the classroom and in the community,” Zimmer said. “As a tennis letterwinner alumni (above, far right), it was important for Jeff to make sure the fans and public gained an appreciation for the many talents and contributions attained by so many Husker student-athletes. Jeff ensured that our Academic and Life Skills programs were covered much like a sport celebrating the true essence of our great Husker program…Success in Athletics, Academics and Life!”

Send a comment to ryork@huskers.com (Please include city, state)

Follow Randy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RandyYorkNsider

Randy’s N-Sider Column Archive

Editor’s note: A year ago in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Information Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) inducted Jeff Schmahl, former production head of the University of Nebraska and Texas A&M, into the IDEA Hall of Fame. A formal induction ceremony was scheduled for the 2015 IDEA Conference in Seattle in July, during the same timeframe when Schmahl died of pancreatic cancer after a courageous 15-month battle against the disease.

Schmahl helped to establish the University of Nebraska’s HuskerVision production department in the early 1990s, building it into the model for collegiate in-stadium and broadcast programming. He achieved the same milestone for Texas A&M during its campus-wide installation in the mid-2000s. Schmahl also served as a consultant on the installation of the Dallas Cowboys giant video display at AT&T Stadium. One of the industry’s true visionary minds and a multiple IDEA GMA Award-winner, Schmahl’s “entertain-inform-inspire” mantra towards programming big screens has had a tremendous impact on those lucky enough to work with and for him. 

Thanks to his tutelage, numerous former students/employees have advanced to enjoy careers in game presentation/production at a variety of organizations, including Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas Rangers, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Arkansas, Illinois, Auburn, V2 Content and the U.S. Olympic Committee, among others. Schmahl served as IDEA President from 1998-2000 and helped to solidify the organization’s administrative and financial footing for the future. He also served as an Executive Board member for six years. “To be named to the IDEA Hall of Fame is one of the greatest honors of my life,” Schmahl said. “IDEA has had a tremendous impact in the world of sports entertainment and that’s because it’s made up of so many talented, passionate, and giving people. To be recognized as someone who has contributed to the growth and success of this great industry is humbling and gratifying.”

At the 2014 Conference in Dallas, IDEA announced the creation of the Inspire the Passion Award, honoring the influence of former IDEA President Jeff Schmahl. Jeff's dedication to nurturing young talent throughout his career was the inspiration for this Award. Each year, the Inspire the Passion Award is granted to two deserving students or interns in the sports video production/game entertainment industry. The winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the IDEA Conference, including airfare, hotel accommodations, and conference fees. As conference attendees, they have the opportunity to participate in classes, seminars, and networking excursions.

 

 

 

 

.