Part of a bygone era....
"Frank Gifford, at 84; NFL star and ‘Monday Night Football’ broadcaster" by Laurence Arnold Bloomberg News August 10, 2015
WASHINGTON — Frank Gifford, the versatile and telegenic football player who scored on the field with the New York Giants and off as a longtime broadcaster of “Monday Night Football,” died Sunday. He was 84.
In a statement released by NBC News, his family said that Mr. Gifford died suddenly at his Connecticut home of natural causes.
A star on offense and defense at the University of Southern California before turning professional, Mr. Gifford spent 27 years in the booth for ABC’s Monday football telecasts, sharing microphone time with Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, O.J. Simpson, and Al Michaels. His third marriage, to television personality Kathie Lee Gifford, kept him in a public spotlight that traced to 1953, when he appeared in the film “The All American” with actor Tony Curtis.
Mr. Gifford, a first-round draft pick of the Giants in 1952, led the team to a National Football League championship in 1956 while gaining notice for his smarts and breadth of interests.
Gay Talese, writing in the New York Times in 1956, called him “a blithely audacious athlete of 26 with a quality of mind that makes him an anomaly among football players,” one “who reads poetry, visits art shows, writes a sports column, appears on television, builds apartment houses, and even has played in Hollywood movies.”
Mr. Gifford joined CBS as a game analyst following his playing days. When his contract expired in 1971, Roone Arledge brought him to ABC to replace Keith Jackson in the second year of “Monday Night Football,” joining Meredith and Cosell in the booth.
Mr. Gifford handled play-by-play duties, then color commentary before shifting to pregame host in 1998, his final year. “Monday Night Football” moved from ABC to ESPN in 2006.
The outspoken Cosell didn’t hide his disdain for Mr. Gifford, whom he considered one of the “ex-jocks” undeservedly given broadcasting jobs. He called Mr. Gifford too nice for the job, too respectful to the players and coaches, too gaffe-prone.
“I knew what was eating” Cosell about Mr. Gifford, Arledge wrote in his memoir. “It wasn’t Frank’s stumbles, it was Frank himself: his ease and self-assurance, his status and connections, his appearance and grace. Everything Howard was not.”
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Mr. Gifford retired before the 1961 season, then returned in 1962 in the pass-receiving role of flanker.
His temporary retirement came after he received one of football’s unforgettable hits, a tackle by Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 20, 1960. (Bednarik died in March.)
Knocked unconscious, Mr. Gifford was carried off the field on a stretcher and hospitalized for several days with what was called a “deep brain concussion.” Mr. Gifford told The New York Times in 2010 that many years later he learned from an X-ray that he also had suffered a fractured neck vertebra.
Mr. Gifford made the Pro Bowl, football’s all-star game, at three positions — defensive back, offensive halfback, and flanker....
Mr. Gifford was married three times, divorced twice, and his family life made news, for better and for worse....
In 1986, Mr. Gifford married the once-divorced Kathie Lee Epstein Johnson, cohost of the local ABC morning show in New York City that was nationally syndicated as “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.” They had a son, Cody, and a daughter, Cassidy. Kathie Lee Gifford regularly touted their happy union and family life on TV, famously calling Mr. Gifford a ‘‘human love machine’’ and ‘‘lamb-chop’’ to her millions of viewers.
In 1997 a supermarket tabloid, the Globe, used hidden cameras to expose Mr. Gifford’s extramarital dalliance with a married flight attendant. The Gifford marriage survived....
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Related:
"Graduated in 1979 (so my decade was the 70’s), when a boy could still carry a pocket knife in his pocket, go out to the smoking area to sneak a cigarette, and could enjoy school without worry of some gang-banging group of “polar bear” hunters raising havoc and expecting no recompense for it. A time when stabbing or shooting your opponent in a fight was a sign of weakness, not strength.
It was the time of the very best rock and roll music the world has witnessed, when there was no voice modifiers and guitar players were awesome. Even pop music was awesome compared to the shit today. For that matter, soul music was better than the garbage we are forced to listen to today (why do you think classic rock and oldies are still big time?). A time before rap music and calls of death from blacks towards cops and white people in general. A time before Jews’ influence in the industry tainted it to the point that it is unbearable now. As with music, TV was hokey, but enjoyable without the skanks and sickening gay agenda permeating every show and when commercials were representative of reality in racial construct (today every commercial seems to show more minorities than majority and so much race mixing that one might be brainwashed into thinking it is normal).
When cars had muscles but could still be worked on by normal folks without a computer. When they were somewhat affordable. when we didn’t give a rat’s ass about gas prices, until we were manipulated by embargoes and the petro dollar scheme. It was the time of riding the loop in town… no cellphones, so you had to hook up in person. A time when people lived outdoors, not frightened by fake bogeymen or relentless black violence and knock-out games.
A time when women were voluptuous, relatively uninhibited, but didn’t HAVE to be a skank. A time of short shorts, miniskirts and halter tops. Sexiness was in, but whoring was a black thing. Women were more in line with standard relationships and lesbianism was freakish. When a gay person was shunned for being weird and the thought of a guy sucking a dick outraged you, religious or not (not to mention sticking one up a guy’s hairy ass). Where men respected women when they were women and not the social justice abortion worshiping hags many are now. When burning a bra was funny as opposed to the SJW’s assaults directly on men today. Men were (by and large) masculine, not the pussies we endure today.
A time before STD’s would rot off your weenie or put you in a grave because antibiotics still worked. A time before AIDS was a dreamed up affliction to wipe out as many people as possible. A time before vaccines were forced on people and most laughed off chicken pox and other DREADED childhood diseases that scare the shit out of people today.
A time when the arts were still supported in high school and we weren’t forced to worship the athlete. A time when worshiping the military made you look like a fool, or shaving your head was only done by the crazy jocks as an initiation ritual. Body building was not yet influenced by steroid heads, so you knew those that were buff worked for it and didn’t necessarily flip out over every little circumstance. When it was awesome to see a six pack because you knew that person earned it.
It was a time when professional sports were enjoyable, before the extravagantly huge salaries made it impossible to actually go see a game in person. A time when boxing was real and not so much a show. A time when flying a rebel flag at an Ole Miss game was done by everyone, including the black folk that attended. A time of real rivalries and decades long inspiring dedication to your team.
Back then, we didn’t freak out over racial constructs. we knew who we were and celebrated it (especially down here in the south). We (whites) didn’t give a damn about black power or La Raza or anyone celebrating their race, as long as you didn’t fuck with us. We didn’t kowtow to political correctness or insist that we support white genocidal programs.
It was a time that cops protected and served, not beat the shit out of anybody just because they can. Before the militarization of the cops and society, in general, where every holiday now praises the fake war effort and the numbskulls that join the police forces and military over the lies perpetuated ad nauseum. It was a time before you had to worry about being shot over a bag of plant material and you even bragged about how much weed you smoked the night before (this is finally coming back). Even when it was illegal, it was no big deal, except to the Drug Warriors. Now they make $BILLIONS from its illegality and they are slow to relinquish that win fall no matter how much proof of its medical efficacy (that all us stoners knew way back then).
Mostly, we were not subservient to Jewish manipulation and control over every aspect of our lives: education, media, government, social aspects. We weren’t afraid to stand up and fight for our rights, instead of letting them pay off the government cronies for their directives.
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I also grew up in the '70s, and MNF was a big part of it.
