That the author is a Neville Island native and a former quarterback at Neville High School (now Cornell) who went on to win 21 Emmy Awards while working for NFL Films is reason enough to be intrigued by “The NFL Off-Camera: An A-Z Guide to the League’s Most Memorable Players and Personalities.”

But what truly makes Bob Angelo’s work compelling, in the author’s estimation, is the personal touch.

“It’s not stuff you can read if you do a Google search or look up on Wikipedia,” Angelo maintained.

“Every one of my stories is a personal experience.”

A personal experience gleaned from working at NFL Films as a producer, director, writer, editor and cameraman from 1975-2018.

How Angelo got to NFL Films in the first place is a story all its own.

He grew up, as many western Pennsylvanians have, a football fanatic. The first book Angelo ever bought with his own money was the 1963 Pro Football Almanac (he wanted to know who the Steelers were on his electric football game).

He also fashioned cameras out of clay to surround his electric football game and announced the games he played.

Upon hearing the legendary tones of John Facenda, the Voice-of-God narrator for NFL Films, Angelo decided NFL Films was where he eventually wanted to work.

His first letter to Steve Sabol, who had founded NFL Films along with his father, Ed, was sent when Angelo was a senior at Penn State.

The initial reply was, “Even if Federico Fellini wanted to work at NFL Films, we just don’t have an opening.”

Angelo kept sending letters through his graduate school days at Northwestern.

The one that finally got him an interview on June 6, 1975 played on the proximity of NFL Films, based in Mount Laurel Township, N.J., to Philadelphia.

“Certain things are inevitable. Bernie Parent will make kick saves to win Stanley Cups, Mike Schmidt will hit tape-measure shots on his way to the Hall of Fame and someday I will work at NFL Films,” Angelo wrote.

He got not just the interview, but the job.

“I wish all of my writers could express themselves so concisely and so precisely,” Angelo recalled Sabol saying. “I was hired at 1:35 p.m.

“I remember looking down at my watch thinking ‘this is life-changing,’ and it was.”

Angelo went on to collect stories from personal interactions while working 850 NFL games and 40 Super Bowls.

Part of his lasting legacy in the game is the HBO series “Hard Knocks.”

It wasn’t Angelo’s idea to chronicle an NFL team during training camp, but Sabol deemed Angelo the man to take the project and run with it.

The first subject was the Baltimore Ravens in the summer of 2001, fresh off having won Super Bowl XXXV.

The protocol at the time was for a screening to be held on a Wednesday morning for head coach Brian Billick, General Manager Ozzie Newsome, owner Art Modell and a few others from the organization before the broadcasting of the show that night. The initial show was very well received on the Ravens’ end, Angelo said, but Sabol wanted to make one change.

He told the editors to eliminate the profanity.

They did so for the second episode, to which Billick responded, ‘Great show but we need to get a few more gratuitous (expletives) in there, don’t you think?” Angelo remembered.

“From there we let the profanity fly. It’s what a football camp sounds like.”

The rest is NFL history, as Bob Angelo experienced it.

His book is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.