Don Meredith died recently, and if you're of a certain age I don't need to tell you who he was or what he meant to a certain era.
This is for the rest of you: Meredith was one of the original members of the Monday Night Football broadcast team that made MNF an American institution. Before that, he was one of the original stars of the Dallas Cowboys football team, a quarterback who helped make them "America's team"
It didn't matter what he did, he did it well and easily. As a quarterback, he was an All-Pro the last three years of his career, and only a few seconds and Lombardi's Packers came between him and two world championships. As a color commentator on MNF, this is how good he was: It's been 25 years since he retired and they still haven't found his replacement, although they've certainly tried.
They've tried ex-quarterbacks (Boomer Esiason, Joe Theismann), ex-coaches (Jon Gruden), ex-running backs (O.J. Simpson), ex-linemen (Dan Dierdorf, Alex Karras), ex-receivers (Lynn Swann). They even tried, out of desperation, a newspaper columnist (Tony Kornheiser) and, in a complete lapse of judgment, a comedian (Dennis Miller).
Original characters are difficult to find, especially one who combined Meredith's warmth, wit, perspective and charm. He appealed to all audiences — men, women, children, football fans, non-football fans — and that appeal transcended sports and football. Even people who hated the Dallas Cowboys liked Meredith.
When Meredith died last week at 72, he was widely praised for many things, but the best tributes came from his wife of 38 years, Susan, and former teammate Dan Reeves.
"He was the best there was; we lost a good one," said Susan, who described her husband as kind, warm and funny.
And from Reeves: "If you don't like Don Meredith, you don't like anybody."
Who could ask anything more out of life than to be remembered like that?
The only regret was that Joe Don Meredith of tiny Mt. Vernon, Texas, didn't stick around longer. He played only nine seasons for the Cowboys before retiring at 31, his best years still ahead of him. He left the TV booth at 46. He went off to live the rest of his life in Santa Fe, where he painted, wrote novels he didn't finish, played golf and tennis and avoided fame. Then he died relatively young.
Nobody had more fun, and he made it fun for the rest of us, too, even though he tended to be paired with men who took things too seriously, namely Howard Cosell and Tom Landry. As Brad Townsend wrote in the Dallas Morning News, "Meredith was the guy who sang in huddles, read Hemingway, shot mid-70s in golf and strummed and sipped with Willie Nelson."
This was in the days before announcers were drawing Xs and Os on the TV screen and talking about "coming off the edge" after spending hours talking to coaches and watching film. Meredith just winged it whether he was on the air or on the field, and it worked beautifully.
The stories rolled after Meredith passed. When the Cowboys found themselves trailing the Packers 14-0 early in the 1966 championship game, Meredith showed up in the huddle singing, "I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels." Once, when TV cameras showed a close-up of the Vikings coach Bud Grant wearing his usual glare, Meredith broke into song again — "You are my sunshine..." On another occasion, when the hometown Oakland Raiders were being routed, a fan gave the middle-fingered salute to the camera. "He thinks his team his No. 1!" Meredith said.
Then there was the time Vice President Spiro Agnew turned up in the booth. "I didn't vote for you, but you do have a nice suit on," Meredith told him on the air.
Meredith said and did things that people only do on the movie screen.
He once said of Landry, his old Cowboys coach: "He's such a perfectionist that if he were married to Dolly Parton, he'd expect her to cook."
After being slammed to the ground by linebacker Sam Huff, Meredith discovered a red liquid oozing near his throat, leaking from a protective vest he was wearing. "Now you've done it, Sam," Meredith said. "You killed me.."
Once, in a game in which he threw five touchdown passes, he looked around the huddle and drawled, "All right, who wants the next one?"
One always suspected that this humor sprang from something deeper and gave him the kind of perspective that so often is lacking in pro football. He often kept Cosell in check — "C'mon, Howaard" — when the latter went off on one of famous rants. Meredith once told Sports Illustrated, "My deepest fear is that one day I'm going to find out that this is all there is to life."
That was the reason he retired from the TV booth and disappeared from public view. He was looking for more.
Meredith was famous for singing an old Willie Nelson tune near the end of a game when the outcome was decided — "Turn out the lights, the party's over. They say that all good things must end. Let's call it a night, the party's over..."
Now the party's over for one of America's favorite characters.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. Send e-mail to drob@desnews.com.