The date is June 6, 1975.

While many of his fellow Northwestern classmates were walking across a stage collecting their diplomas, Bob Angelo was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Angelo is about to make the most consequential decision of his life.

He looks down at his watch. The time was 1:35 p.m. Angelo remembers that day like it was yesterday. That exact moment is when Angelo learned he would join Ed Sabol and his son, Steve, at NFL Films.

As Ed Sabol, the founder of NFL Films, told Angelo how much he would make working for the company, the 22-year-old had no clue that he would spend the rest of his professional career producing, directing, writing, editing, interviewing pro football personalities and shooting more than 850 NFL games.

“I wanted to remember that exact moment because I realized this job was for me, and I might be here for a long time,” Angelo said about that momentous day. “I didn’t realize I’d spend my entire career at NFL Films.”

During his 43 years at NFL Films, Angelo helped bring the league and its personalities into living rooms across the world.

He worked alongside some of the best TV commentators in the business, including Irv Cross and Jack Whitaker. He brought CBS’s “The NFL Today” and NBC’s “GrandStand” to life on Sundays. He even helped pioneer a new behind-the-scenes look at the NFL with “Hard Knocks.”

As his work took him across the country each week, it led to 21 Emmy Awards.

Angelo was born and raised just a few miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh on Neville Island.

His passion for sports and football was apparent from a young age when he bought his first book: “The Pro Football Almanac.”

“I bought it because I wanted to have proper numbers on my electric football team,” he said. “I was the Pittsburgh Steelers, and I wanted to know every player in my electric football game. I was a little obsessive about it. I made clay cameras that I mounted on the side of my field to televise my games, and then I would announce them. As you can see, I was destined to work for the NFL.”

Angelo attended the former Neville High School, where he played football for the Rivermen in the now-defunct Ohio Valley Conference.

Just like many Pittsburgh towns in the 20th century, Neville Island was built on its local blue-collar industries, including steel. His father, Paul, was a steelworker, who would get up early every morning to carry his lunch bucket to work while wearing his steel-toed boots.

“My dad got up and went to work no matter what,” Angelo said. “I don’t think the entire time I knew him, he missed more than two or three days. That served as a role model for me.”

While Angelo grew up in a town built on hard work, he began to slip with his grades during his freshman and sophomore years in high school. It finally took a fellow classmate — one of 29 in his graduating class — deciding to make a change and start applying himself for Angelo to make the same choice.

“I studied, got all my homework done on time. I learned how to learn,” Angelo said. “I’ve been on that course since my junior year of high school of not settling for anything less than my best. I applied that to everything I did in college and in my career.”

With that new mindset, Angelo went on to Penn State for his first four years of college, earning degrees in newspaper journalism and existential philosophy.

After his undergraduate schooling, Angelo transitioned to Northwestern for his graduate degree.

It was at Northwestern where Angelo became a polished writer. It wasn’t easy, however. One day while in a basic broadcasting class taught by Jack Williams, who worked for KDKA then moved to become a station manager in Chicago, Angelo was struggling to write a piece for the course.

“It was just writing news copy. I was having trouble writing it. Jack said, ‘Look at me. Tell me what you want to say.’ I told him what I wanted to say. He goes, ‘Now put your head down and type that.’ It was an old-fashioned typewriter back then. That was my first lesson in write to be heard as opposed of write to be read.”

Not too long after, Angelo was working with the Sabols at NFL Films writing scripts.

Angelo’s work took him to many pro football stadiums and practice fields. He encountered some of the legends of the game and even formed relationships with many.

That includes members of the Pittsburgh Steelers, his favorite team as a youth.

In one of his earlier years with NFL Films, Angelo had his first interaction with legendary Steelers coach Chuck Noll.

“The first time I met Chuck Noll, he walked down the hill at Saint Vincent. I was 26 years old. I still had zits. Here comes Chuck Noll,” he said. “I have him one-on-one for as long as I want him. He sat there, and he was answering the way Chuck answered, clear and precise and thoughtful. I’m thinking, I have to earn his respect somehow.

“I asked him if he had ever heard of Sarge Wilkins. He shook his head. I said, ‘Sarge played with Marion Motley at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. They played for Paul Brown there during the War years. I know you played for Paul Brown your rookie season.’ I threw all that at him. He asked me how old I was. I said I was 26. He said, ‘How do you know that stuff?’ I said, ‘It’s my body of knowledge I have to know for this job.’ From that moment on, we were friends.

“He was allergic to cameras, but he would tolerate certain guys, and I was one of those guys he would tolerate. Chuck was not about himself. He was about coaching and getting the best out of his football teams. Nobody did it better than he did when he got four championships in six seasons, and I promise you that will never happen again.”

Angelo worked on several films during the Steelers dynasty of the 1970s, including a speech from Noll before the 1974 AFC Championship game against the Oakland Raiders.

“It was one my favorite things I ever did. It was basically the Steelers telling the story about how Chuck walked into a meeting on a Monday morning after the Raiders had beaten the Dolphins. Chuck said, ‘Those Raiders just think they won the Super Bowl, and they think they’re the best team in football. Well I got news for you: The best damn team in football is sitting right here in this room.’ Every Steeler I interviewed told the story the same way.”

The film that Angelo put together was well-received by the Steelers.

“I sent it to Chuck, and he loved it. I sent it to Joe Greene. My phone rang one day. ‘Hello, is this Bob Angelo? It’s Joe Greene. I just wanted to tell you, that’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen.’ I said, ‘Thank you, Joe. You guys told the story. All I did was collect it.’ ”

As Angelo traveled across the country to shoot and interview players and coaches, he knew he was doing something special with his life.

“I had never been on an airplane before NFL Films,” he said. “I thought of it as a mark of success like, ‘Hey, look people are paying me to get on an airplane, interview somebody, bring the material back and make a segment out of it.’ ”

One of those trips took Angelo to the Baltimore Ravens training camp in the summer of 2001. Over the next few months, Angelo and his crew would go behind the scenes with the reigning Super Bowl Champions as they prepared to defend their title.

The show at the time was one-of-a-kind, and Angelo was pioneering one of the first sports reality television shows: “Hard Knocks.”

“After three weeks of that show, I remember hearing about an article in the LA Times. I never saw it, but I heard about it where a writer said, ‘This was a seminal moment in sports television history.’ I thought, holy (crap), a seminal moment in sports television history. We’re on to something here.’ ”

It certainly took some time for veterans such as Shannon Sharpe, Ray Lewis and Rod Woodson to get used to having a production crew following them around 24/7. One player who wasn’t afraid to be in front of the lens was Pitt product Tony Siragusa, and the other veterans took some exception to that.

“After the first show aired, Shannon, Ray Lewis and Rod Woodson were down at one end of the practice field where they hung out to do calisthenics together, and I heard, ‘Yo Bob! Bob Angelo! Get the hell down here.’ It was Shannon hollering. I walked down there and said what’s up. He goes, ‘You have Tony Siragusa this, Tony that.’ I said, ‘You guys act like I have player repellent on the front of my lens.’ That changed things around. From that moment on, I got cooperation.”

Spending training camp with a pro football team provided a unique experience for Angelo to capture and showcase to the viewers.

“When you take grown men away from their families, away from their loved ones, away from their communities and lock them in a camp and make them do football 24 hours a day, you’re going to get some (stuff). The Ravens didn’t hide any of it. They were defending Super Bowl champions, and they put it right out there. Here it is. Tell the story the way you want to tell the story.”

The original “Hard Knocks” is Angelo’s most prized and enduring project as it still exists today. However, it was one that did not earn him an Emmy Award, which he felt it should have.

Sharing the stories of different players and individuals within pro football has been Angelo’s life.

After his retirement from the NFL Films in 2018, Angelo taught briefly at Delaware and Penn State. During that time, he started to jot down memories and stories from covering the NFL all those years.

Those stories were something he planned on keeping in his back pocket, but with some inspiration from his wife, he dedicated the last few years to writing his book, “The NFL Off-Camera.”

“The memoirs of an NFL Films producer sounded pompous. I wouldn’t buy it,” Angelo said. “When covid interrupted my spring term at Penn State and the whole thing fell apart, I decided to finish writing the book. My wife, who never really liked anything I wrote, including screenplays, said, ‘These are good. You got something here.’ ”

From there, Angelo compiled stories about 55 hall of famers, 45 super bowl champions and “a whole bunch of other people who are interesting in their own rights.”

Even though Angelo encountered thousands of players, he included only people with which he had extended personal experiences. There was only one story that didn’t fit those criteria.

“The only exception I made was for Tom Brady, and the editor said that was one of the better stories in the book,” Angelo said.

“I was shooting the Falcons sideline during the Super Bowl where they had a 25-point lead and blew it. I watched fights breakout in front of me on the Falcons sideline between the D-line, the linebackers and the secondary. Dan Quinn had to come back and break up these fights. I could hear their minds working.

“They kept looking back up at the big scoreboard and they were doing the math in their heads, ‘OK, the lead is down to 16. They get a touchdown and a 2-point conversion, it’s down to eight and one score.’ I looked at them and thought, ‘You guys are toast. He’s 75 yards away, sitting over there and he’s in your heads. He’s going to beat you.’ And sure enough.”

The Pittsburgh native now resides in Mount Laurel, N.J., just a few miles from the NFL Films studios.

Angelo’s lifetime of work brought him face-to-face with some of the most notable personalities in pro football. For 40-plus years, he stood behind the camera, archiving every conversation. Now, he shares some of the untold stories in his book.

“You can’t find these things online,” he said. “The things I write in these stories are only things I know about.”

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