Don Meredith, former expansion-team quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys (1960 to 1968), was just as famous — perhaps even more so — as the “color” announcer for the earliest iteration of Monday Night Football.
It is interesting to note that, as I prepared this post, I saw photo after photo of Howard Cosell embracing or hugging or touching Don Meredith — and Frank Gifford uninvolved or looking away. There is no doubt that Meredith had a folksy, unassuming and likeable way about him whilst, at the same time, many described Gifford as a much colder and unapproachable individual. Photos seem to, that I’ve noticed, bear this out.
There is no question that Meredith lived his life as he saw fit. He drank heavily, smoked, joked, poked fun at everything including himself.
He loved hard, laughed hard, lived hard. As a quarterback, when he was “on” — he was ON.
At the end of any given episode of Monday Night Football, when losers were identified and obvious, he would lapse into his own warbling interpretation of Willie Nelson’s “turn out the lights, the party’s over.”
And when Dandy Don declared such, you knew the party was indeed over for that given team.
Don Meredith suffered a brain hemorrhage, and then lapsed into a coma. He passed away this past Sunday, December 5th, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Susan at his side — at age 72.
I watched many a Monday Night Football game with my father; he was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan throughout his life. Though actually born in Minnesota, he embraced Texas as “his state” and the Cowboys as “his team.”
I watched Don Meredith throw; I also watched him transition to Monday Night Football.
This is just another small portion of my past excusing itself and, truly, moving aside.
God bless you, Don. You were what you were and nothing more or less. People loved you because you were so open, so plain, so obvious. I don’t really think there was much of a mean bone in your entire body.
Give me another lucky ten years, dude, I’ll be right there with you.
BZ
