DALLAS — One Monday night in Denver, Don Meredith greeted the nation watching ABC-TV with: “Welcome to Mile High Stadium — and I really am.”
Meredith was the happiest, most fun-loving guy wherever he went, whether crooning country tunes in the huddle as quarterback of the Cowboys or jawing with Howard Cosell in the broadcast booth as analyst on the groundbreaking “Monday Night Football.” His irreverent personality made him one of the most beloved figures in sports and entertainment in the 1970s and 1980s, helping turn the show into a national sensation.
“Dandy Don” died Sunday after suffering a brain hemorrhage and lapsing into a coma in Santa Fe, where he lived out of the limelight with his wife, Susan, for the last 25 years. He was 72.
A folksy foil to Cosell’s tell-it-like-it-is pomposity, Meredith was at his best with unscripted one-liners — often aimed at his broadcast partners. His trademark, though, came when one team had the game locked up. Meredith would warble, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” — from a song by his pal Willie Nelson.
Meredith played for the Cowboys from 1960-68, taking them from winless expansion team to the brink of a championship. He was only 31 when he retired before training camp in 1969, and a year later wound up alongside Cosell in the broadcast booth for the oddity of a prime-time, weeknight NFL game.
The league pitched the idea to ABC, the lowest-rated network, after CBS and NBC tried occasional games on Monday nights and didn’t think it would click. It became a hit largely because of how much viewers enjoyed the contrast of Meredith’s Texas flair and Cosell’s East Coast braggadocio.
“Watching him on TV was like being in the huddle with Don again,” former teammate and Broncos coach Dan Reeves said. “He just made the game fun.”
Meredith showed up for the 1966 title game against the Packers with his face covered in stitches. He told everyone he’d been shopping with his wife, got tripped and went through a plate-glass window. He couldn’t play.
“You could’ve heard a pin drop,” Reeves said. “Then coach (Tom) Landry walked in and he peeled it off. It looked so real! He had a makeup artist put it on. We all wanted to choke him to death for scaring us like that. But we all just cracked up.”
Footnotes.
With Derek Anderson (concussion) and Max Hall (shoulder) nursing injuries, the Cardinals might turn to rookie John Skelton as the starting quarterback for Sunday’s game the Broncos.
• Cowboys rookie receiver Dez Bryant had surgery to repair broken bones and ligament damage to his right ankle and will need up to four months of rehabilitation.
• Rams outside linebacker Na’il Diggs is out for the rest of the season because of a torn pectoral muscle.
