Definitely make some time to read this story by Emily Kaplan of MMQB about Steve Sabol’s office at NFL Films. Feels good to know that everything remains untouched nearly two years after his death.

From the story:

The door to Steve Sabol’s office remains open, as always. The lights are on and the computer is plugged in, even though the man who worked behind the large mahogany desk, with a nameplate that reads “King of Football Movies,” died nearly two years ago, at 69, of a tumor on the left side of his brain. Despite his absence, his life’s work pulsates inside these four tan walls, filling the 21-by-22-foot room with a creative energy that spills into the hallways of NFL Films.

Here, in a hideaway corner on the second floor, is where Sabol reviewed highlight films, edited scripts, read as many as five books a week, snipped passages from poems and hosted 5 o’clock cocktails on Fridays. It is where the visionary helped mythologize football, and where the man’s legacy lives on.

A few days after Sabol’s passing, a janitor locked the office. When the staff returned to work the next morning, the building didn’t seem right. NFL Films COO Howard Katz had an assistant unlock the oak door, and it hasn’t been shut since. The space has become a sanctuary for protégés to brainstorm, and a gathering place for an occasional Ketel One on the rocks. Everything in the office remains exactly as Sabol left it, down to the lunch order he scribbled on a white post-it note in September 2012: a wrap and a smoothie.

“Every time I walk by, I say, ‘Hi boss,’ ” says Ken Rodgers, a senior supervising producer. “Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe I sound crazy. But I still feel his presence here, like he is still sitting at that desk. It is as if he never left.”

Later, Kaplan writes:

Yet there are also large patches of exposed corkboard, a reminder that Sabol left us too soon. On the board to the right he usually posted items about the current season: articles he liked, trends he noticed. Save for a printout of a Washington Post article and a 2012 calendar—turned to the month of September, when he passed—there are few markers of time.

One notecard offers a clue. It is a note Sabol posted while he was undergoing treatment after aphasia began to take his voice.

“Listening to me is like a blocked punt,” it reads. “Life is a process of reinvention… moving on.”