UN HOMMAGE UNIQUE
Aux Les Trois Bons et Honnêtes
Gentilshommes
Dans le Monde du Sport
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Howard and Frank and Don
We saw when the TV was on.
It's been many a year
Since we saw them appear.
Now their time and era are gone.
Don and Howard and Frank
Are the ones that we have to thank.
Don gave us the color.
Howard's the scholar.
The play-by-play was by Frank.
Frank and Don and then Howard
Above all the others would tower.
Curt Gowdy was great.
Chris Shenkel top rate.
But the Big Three were the power.
Meredith and Gifford and Cosell
Called more games than we like to tell.
They were the best
And when it came to the test
Monday Night's Trio excelled.
But Cosell and Meredith and Gifford
In opinions they sometimes would differ.
But through any dispute
Their talk was astute
Like King Henry's and Rosamond Clifford's.1
Gifford and Cosell and Meredith
Were broadcasting's towering monolith.
Like unlimited treasure
Their value was measured
As great as a Kimberlite xenolith.2
Though their days have fallen from sight
There's one thing we know and it's right.
If your set was turned on
But no Frank, Howard, and Don
It just couldn't be Monday Night!
As the 20th Century recedes into ever vanishing memories, there are literally millions and millions of people who are fully adult who were not yet born when the Titanic Triumvirate of Monday Nights vanished from the airwaves. But upon a time the Institution of Televised Football was practically synonymous with Howard, Frank, and Don.
Of course, we mean Cosell, Gifford, and Meredith. They, though, were not the inaugural booth members of the now iconic Monday Night Football which was the brainchild of ABC executive Roone Arledge. At a time when there might be only one or at most two anchors before the microphones, Roone decided on a format with three moderators.
For the first broadcast on September 21, 1970, Roone picked Howard, Don, and Keith Jackson to man the microphones. He also deliberately chose a game he knew would draw the fans - the Cleveland Browns contending against the New York Jets with its flamboyant and even controversial quarterback Joe Willie Namath. New York lost 31-21.
Joe Willie Namath
However, in the second season Frank replaced Keith. Frank had actually been on Roone's short list for the play-by-play announcer, but he had still had a year to go with a contract on CBS. Keith was also better known as a college announcer and Frank had been a star halfback for the New York Giants. However, Keith later reteamed with Howard and Don at the 1979 World Series. That, though, was another Don - former Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale. Keith called the play-by-play and Howard and Don added color.
Don Drysdale
The Other Don
Howard, Frank, and Don soon became the epitome of televised sports analysis. For all appearances the Tremendous Trio bantered affably - Frank specializing in play-by-play, Don providing the color commentary, and Howard adding intellectual augmentation.
But despite their outward congeniality, things didn't always run smoothly. Howard would refer to Meredith as "Dandy Don" (to Don's increasing irritation) and Howard thought he was put on a bit by the other twain who, it must be admitted had more hands-on experience with football. Later Howard would speak rather disparagingly about former players who become commentators.
Howard liked to tweak Don's nose in other ways. Once he asked Don if he knew which professional quarterback had the most fumbles in a game. Don didn't know until Howard told him it was Don Meredith.
However, it seems even Howard could make mistakes. Despite the fact that he mentioned Don's butter fingers, reference works that list most-fumbles-per-game don't mention Don at all. Perhaps Howard meant the most fumbles in a single season. In 1964 Don fumbled sixteen times which at that time was a record. But that year the most turnovers in a game for Dallas (not necessarily just fumbles and not necessarily just by Don) was five on November 8 when Dallas played New York in Giant's Stadium.
It was a bit of surprise that the trio who practically defined modern sports broadcasting evaporated so quickly. By 1973 Don had left the show to become color commentator with Curt Gowdy on NBC. Howard's reaction to Don's exodus was not particularly gracious. "He couldn't stand being second banana to me," Howard snorted. "Dandy Don doesn't want to be Dandy Don any more. Doesn't want to be what he is." Although Don did return in 1977, he left in 1984.
Howard was also rather dismissive about Frank. Frank, he said, wasn't the best play-by-play man. Instead that was Curt Gowdy. And yes, Curt had also been one of Roone's top choices for Monday Night play-by-play as had been Chris Schenkel. Chris was certainly one of the most versatile broadcasters of the 20th Century, and during the Golden Age of Television Sports it was almost de rigueur to turn on the tube to watch Chris announcing competitions as varied as football, baseball, boxing, horse racing, tennis, golf, all with their thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Less known is that among Chris's favorite sports and one he announced for over 40 years was bowling.
Chris Schenkel
A Favorite Sport
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Monday Nights with Howard, Frank, and Don are now gone and in the ensuing years, the old television networks began crumbling to emerge as among the lesser read websites. Their place was taken, first by independently produced syndicated programs and then by specialist companies dedicated to particular content. Monday Night Football also changed with the fragmenting times and is still on the air today - but as they say "on another network".
Frank's tenure on Monday Night television was the most lengthy compared to his colleagues and he was calling the plays for 27 years. But earlier on he had shown interest in acting and in the 1950's he had uncredited roles in That's My Boy (1951) starring Jerry Lewis, The Unknown Man (1951), All American (1953), Sally and St. Anne (1951), and - get this - Bonzo Goes to College (1952). He also played himself in the adaptation of Paper Lion, a movie that doesn't really keep with the book in the letter or the spirit.3
Footnote
In the book, George Plimpton joined the training camp of the 1963 Detroit Lions. At the time George Wilson was the head coach and he permitted George to train as the third string quarterback behind Milt Plum and Earl Morrall. Outside of the practice sessions, George led four plays at a pre-season intra-squad scrimmage. Three of his plays resulted in lost yardage and the last play was an incomplete pass.
George had hoped to play in an actual preseason game against the Cleveland Browns. The team owner, William Ford, had expressed concern about the venture, particularly given how badly George had fared in the scrimmage. Ultimately, George's participation was vetoed by the NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle just before game time.
In the movie, the time frame was moved up to 1967 when Joe Schmidt - a linebacker on the 1963 squad - was head coach. George, played by Alan Alda, participated in both a scrimmage and a game. In the scrimmage he actually made a touchdown and in the game - against the St. Louis Cardinals - he ran into a goal post and was knocked out. Neither event happened in the book or in real life.
The tone of the movie was probably the greatest contrast from the book. In the book George took everything in good humor and the players treated him with amused friendliness. But in the movie, Alda plays George as sullen and morose and always seething with pent-up anger (at what is hard to tell). The players express resentment and hostility to the interloper in their camp.
In 1971, George - the real George - repeated his attempt as an amateur professional quarterback, but this time for the Baltimore Colts. He actually played in a game where he ended up gaining twenty yards. However, fifteen of the yards were from a roughing-the-passer penalty were the camera caught one of the Lions taking a swing at George.
And the opposing team?
The Detroit Lions.
Today with pro football practically controlling the national economy, it easy to forget that before the late 1950's football meant college football. Football heroes were the college players. But the professional sport was practically a non-entity, and most football fans didn't even know who the pros were.
An example of the anonymity enjoyed by the early pro-players was on December 2, 1956, when the first contestant on the popular television show What's My Line came on and signed in as "F. Newton Gifford".4 Yes, this was Frank and his "line" was - of course - "Halfback on the N. Y. Giants Football Team". That day Frank and the Giants had beaten Washington 24 to 14. The four winning touchdowns were all scored by Frank. He ran twice for a touchdown, caught a pass on another, and then - get this - Frank threw a pass for a touchdown.
Footnote
Yes, literally the contestants walked on stage, picked up a stick of chalk, and wrote their names on a blackboard. This was before the electronic era and even the winnings of the contestant were tracked by John Daly flipping over some cards.
Three of the four celebrity panelists were New Yorkers - Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Bennett Cerf (the other panelist was Stubbe Kay who although born in New York was living in California). But Arlene - who was a sports fan - only guessed Frank's "line" when she was surreptitiously tipped off by Bennett. Dorothy and Stubby had no idea their guest was one of the top pros in the game. What was notable about Frank's anonymity was he not only was one of New York's top players, he had already gone to three Pro-Bowls.
Frank wasn't the only representative of the Giants not to be recognized by sophisticated New Yorkers. The next year on April 30, 1957, Frank's boss and the head coach of the Giants, Jim Lee Howell, was one of the spurious contestants on To Tell The Truth. None of the New York panel - Martin Gabel (husband of Arlene Francis), Mary Healy, Kitty Carlisle, and newspaper columnist Hy Gardner - recognized him either. The real contestant was Robert Crowder, the head of the Texas Rangers.
However, the times were about to a-change to not quite quote a Nobel Prize Winner. Three years earlier Jim Lee had hired two men for his assistants. Virtually unknown then, Tom Landry was the defensive coach and the offense was supervised by Vince Lombardi. Within a year Jim Lee, Tom, and Vince would grab the national attention by playing in what was considered the Game of the Century when they met the Baltimore Colts. Two years earlier Baltimore had taken on a new quarterback named Johnny Unitas, and it was that game - which Baltimore won - that propelled professional football into the American collective consciousness as a major sport.
Tom, Jim Lee, and Vince
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Johnny Unitas
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Much like the Paradox of the Ship - or in its modern incarnation the Paradox of the Rock Group - with Monday Night Football we have to bring up the Paradox of the Longest Running Television Show.
Is a television show the same television show just because it uses the same name?
Certainly just changing the host doesn't make it a different program, and we can accept the scholarly pronouncement that Meet the Press is the longest running television show. It first aired on November 6, 1947, and as of is still on the air. A change in moderators doesn't make it a new show.
But what about shows that started out on radio before television existed and then later added a television broadcast? Do you count the radio years? In that case, we must list The Grand Old Opry as the #1 lengthiest run on the air which began on November 28, 1925. But at first its name was the WSM Barn Dance and should we count those episodes as it didn't become the Grand Old Opry for another two years? The first television broadcast was on October 15, 1955, and it ran for less than a year. Television broadcasts were resumed at intervals but the current Opry began running on April 20, 1985, and has switched networks several times.
But as with all searches for absolute truth, trying to pinpoint the date and time of any first broadcast for any show boils down to a matter of language. There were certainly local radio broadcasts before 1920. However, the first truly commercial radio station was KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh. It began broadcasting on November 2, 1920, and on October 8, 1921, it aired the college game between the Pittsburgh Panthers and the West Virginia Mountaineers. The game was called by Harold Arlin who also was commercial radio's first full time professional announcer. Pittsburgh won - the game was at Pittsburgh - 21 to 13.
The first professional football game that was transmitted nationally was a radio broadcast on November 29, 1934. It was a Thanksgiving Day game where the Detroit Lions were matched against the Chicago Bears. Detroit lost 16-19.
But the first broadcast of a professional football game on television was on October 22, 1939, between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yes, there was a football team named the Dodgers and like their nine-man counterpart they played in Ebbets Field. Photos show the attendance was a rather sparse and given that virtually no households had television sets, the ratings were pretty much nil.5
Footnote
Even in England, where the BBC began regular television broadcasting in 1936, three years later less than 0.2% of the households had a television set.
And Monday Night Football?
Well, there were football games broadcast on Monday nights since 1966 but as they were not part of a regularly scheduled program we really can't call them Monday Night Football. Through the Swinging Sixties the National Football League - the NFL - and it's competitor the American Football League (AFL) - both played occasional games on Monday nights.
So we have to accept that the beginning of Monday Night Football was September 21, 1970 and it is still going on well over half a century later. So we see that even if MNF (as the cognoscenti say) isn't the longest running television show, it has - to use football lingo - made a great effort.
References
"The Story of the First-Ever Monday Night Football Game", Sports History Network, August 30, 2021.
"New York Jets", Pro Football References.
"Cleveland Browns", Pro Football References.
"Pitt Football Firsts", University of Pittsburgh.
"1921 Pitt Panthers Schedule and Results", Sports Reference.
"Don Meredith", Pro-Football Reference.
"Frank Gifford", Pro-Football Reference.
Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports", Mark Ribowsky, W. W. Norton and Company, 2012.
"Howard Cosell", American Sports: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, 4 Volumes, Murry Nelson (Editor), ABC-CLIO, 2013.
I Never Played the Game, Howard Cosell with Peter Bonventre, William Morrow and Company, 1985.
"Remembering Howard Cosell: Why Did He Become So Disillusioned With Sports?", Ryan Glasspiegel, The Big Lead/NFL, April 14, 2015.
"Frank Gifford", TV Guide.
George Plimpton: The Great Quarterback Sneak, George Plimpton (presenter and narrator, writer), William Kronick (writer and director), Wolper Productions, ABC, November 26, 1971.
"What's My Line", John Daly (moderator), Frank Gifford (contestant), Dorothy Kilgallen (panelist), Stubby Kaye (panelist), Arlene Francis (panelist), Milton Berle (mystery guest), Mark Goodson (producer), Bill Todman (producer), CBS, December 2, 1956.
"To Tell the Truth", Bud Collyer (host and presenter), Robert Crowder (contestant), Jim Lee Howell (spurious contestant), Mary Healy (panelist), Hy Gardner (panelist), Martin Gabel (panelist), Kitty Carlisle (panelist), Mark Goodson (producer), Bill Todman (producer), CBS, April 30, 1957.
"Dec. 2, 1956: Frank Gifford on 'What’s My Line?'", Profootball Daly.