“Turn out the lights…”

I was at work today when I heard that "Dandy" Don Meredith died today in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 72.

I’m old enough to fully remember Monday Night Football’s first night, back in 1970, when Keith Jackson did the play-by-play for the Jets and Cleveland, and ABC had an idea to put 3 guys in the booth for a game. It was a radical idea 40 years ago, and MNF soon became many other things for millions of Americans that watched in enormous numbers back then. When Frank Gifford replaced Jackson, he teamed with Meredith and Howard Cosell to become one of the biggest TV nights in the country – much bigger than now. The advent of MNF more than anything else, shot the NFL on its way to the overwhelming media dominance it has had for a long time now.

Back then there was no Cable, so no Internet. I lived just outside of NYC at the time, and came to understand how lucky I was to have six TV stations to watch, even if they all went off the air by 2:00 A.M. or so, every night but a few. I spent many mornings trying to grab scores off the radio, or praying the NY Daily News would have a score. No 24/7 news cycle, no ESPN for about 10 more years.

The games were occasions, and even if Gifford proved to be a poor play-by-play guy he did call a play one Monday night in which he shouted that a QB had a receiver "wide open!"

What Gifford failed to identify before he spoke was that it wasn’t really a receiver, but an opposing cornerback.

"He’s open, all right!" joked Meredith, "he’s w-i-d-e open!"

By the mid-1970’s, I was living in Tucson, and frequented a bar that had what turned out to be a popular off night attraction for a lot of bars across the country on Monday nights that one fall. Customers would draw a ticket, and the winner got to throw a brick into a live TV set while Howard Cosell was speaking. Folks in Arizona didn’t have much love for Texans, but they despised Howie.

Hey, it was a simpler time, what can I say?

I liked Cosell at times, mostly for the half-time highlights, and Gifford too, even if he was bad. I always liked Meredith, even when I knew he was bored and finally left MNF to do other things, before making a comeback a few years later. He was funny, and a good old boy in the truest sense, and he was nobody’s fool, least of all Howard’s.

Thanks for the memories Dandy Don, "…all good things must end."