Don Meredith Passes At 72
Somewhere, Don Meredith is singing that tune right now. The one that he sang on countless Monday nights, when he concluded that the game he was calling with Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell no longer was in dispute, to the certain dismay of ABC executives who would have preferred that the audience didnt receive a musical invitation to change to one of the two other channels that were available at the time.
Then again, who changed the channel? Monday Night Football was appointment viewing, with Merediths goofy, good-ol-boy shtick balancing out Cosells biting vocabulary and staccato delivery. Directing traffic and/or staying out of the way was Frank Gifford, who handled the play-by-play action and otherwise refrained from clunking their heads together or throwing either or both of them out of the window of the broadcast booth.
According to Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News, Meredith has died at 72 of emphysema, six years after suffering a stroke. He played quarterback for the Cowboys well enough to join the teams Ring of Honor, but he remains best known for providing comic relief via his squabbles with Cosell, back when MNF was truly magical.
Meredith retired from football at only 31, opening the door for Roger Staubach to author a Hall of Fame career. As Townsend points out, Meredith retired the same day Staubach left the navy.