Don Meredith, 1938–2010

As color commentator on ABC’s Monday Night Football, Don Meredith had a slow drawl and a meandering country charm. But there was nothing slow about his wit. During one game in which the Oakland Raiders were crushing the Houston Oilers, the camera focused on a dejected Oilers fan who promptly flashed an upraised middle finger. Said Meredith, “He thinks they’re No. 1 in the nation!”

Born in Mount Vernon, Texas, Meredith played high school, collegiate, and professional football within 100 miles of Dallas, said the Associated Press. A star high school quarterback, he became a three-time All-American at Southern Methodist University. Drafted in 1960 by the Chicago Bears, he was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in the preseason of their inaugural year in the National Football League. “Dandy Don,” as he was nicknamed, landed the starting-quarterback job in 1965; the following year, he led the Cowboys to their first winning season (10-3-1). Along the way, he acquired a reputation for toughness. “Broken noses and collarbones and ribs, everything you can think of, Don had it,” said former teammate Lee Roy Jordan.

Retiring at the end of the 1968 season, Meredith was out of the public eye for a year, said CNN.com. In 1970, he joined Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell in the broadcast booth for the first season of Monday Night Football (Frank Gifford would replace Jackson the next year). Skeptics carped that “women who controlled the TV set at night would not want to watch football.” But alongside the voluble and opinionated Cosell, the folksy Meredith “provided commentary and entertainment that attracted football and non-football fans alike.” His trademark was bursting into song—Willie Nelson’s “The Party’s Over” (“Turn out the lights, the party’s over”)—when a game’s outcome seemed decided.

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Meredith also appeared in a recurring role on the TV crime drama Police Story and as a pitchman for Lipton Tea, said DallasNews.com. “One of the first celebrity athletes,” Meredith “helped pave the way for the generations of athlete-celebrities who followed him.”