'The perfect fit': Glory days of 'Monday Night Football' with Cosell, Meredith and Gifford

David Steele

'The perfect fit': Glory days of 'Monday Night Football' with Cosell, Meredith and Gifford image

Howard Cosell called "Monday Night Football" games for ABC for 14 years, from its 1970 inception until 1983. He teamed with Frank Gifford and "Dandy" Don Meredith — just that trio, without another partner — for, surprisingly, only five of those years. In that span, Cosell was on the mic for just one Sugar Bowl, in 1973.

That one assignment, though, displayed the essence of Cosell, recalled longtime ABC Sports producer and executive Jim Spence. Specifically, it was when he and Cosell had dinner plans at the famous Antoine’s, and they decided to walk from their hotel.

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"Hundreds of people followed us," Spence remembered. "He was like a pied piper. He turned to me and said, 'Jim, do you believe that?'" Spence chuckled. "I've never seen him happier."

Cosell loved the spotlight, and back then, even with his connection to Muhammad Ali's life in and out of the ring, that spotlight came primarily from "Monday Night Football."

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There is no small number of legendary, unforgettable broadcasting teams from every sport — but none grew bigger than the games themselves, with viewers and onsite fans focusing on Cosell, Gifford and Meredith at least as much as the teams playing ... often more.

It seems unimaginable in the world of sports these days, including in the NFL, which dominated that world then as it does now. But obviously, national, regularly scheduled prime-time sports on one of the then-three over-air networks was unprecedented. "Monday Night Football" was going to be a spectacle in its own right regardless.

That trio, though, still managed to become exactly the celebrities and personalities the groundbreaking idea needed. Cosell both blended perfectly with Gifford and Meredith and stood out beyond them, a rare feat in the 1970s, just as it is nearly five decades later.

"People ask, 'What was Howard like off the air?'" said Spence, who turns 82 next month and teaches a television and sports course at the College of William & Mary. "What you see on the air is what you see off the air."

Spence cited a famous poll conducted by TV Guide in 1978, and added, "He was the most popular and least popular sportscaster in America. He was a unique figure, and a real pioneer."

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The TV Guide poll is one of many stories about Cosell and "Monday Night Football" that was not actually an urban myth. Another is the contest at a Denver sports bar in which a fan was chosen to throw a brick at a TV when Cosell's face appeared.

Still another is the time at a Houston Oilers game in the old Astrodome, where a fan was caught on camera flashing the finger, and Meredith quickly reacted with, "They're No. 1 in the nation." (Speaking of urban myths, Meredith's line has been described plenty of other ways, but that's what he actually said.)

The moment that has stuck with viewers, football and non-football fans, for decades, more than nearly any other, seems impossible to believe in the current climate of 24-hour news and instantly accessible information. But much of the nation and the world did, in fact, first hear in 1980 that John Lennon had been murdered in front of his Manhattan apartment building not from a breaking-news alert from one of the three networks, but from Cosell in the middle of a Monday night Patriots-Dolphins game.

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Left to right: Don Meredith, Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford (ESPN Images)

A few other tales from the old days were, at best, partly true. Unfathomable as it seems now, the highlights from Sunday's games shown at halftime on Monday was the only such package on TV at the time, even before the likes of George Michael's "Sports Machine" years later. Cosell narrated, and thus became an object of even greater scorn by fans who felt he intentionally left their teams out.

The truth: He was not the one who chose the highlights. He did, however, rattle off his narration of them without pre-written notes.

Also untrue is that Gifford, Meredith and Cosell, while the signature faces, were its only faces the entire time. It isn't forgotten, but certainly is routinely overlooked, that Keith Jackson was the play-by-play man for the initial 1970 season of MNF. He was not only excellent, but a good match for the other two.

As Spence — then ABC Sports' vice president of program planning — tells it, ABC Sports president Roone Arledge originally just wanted to hire Gifford away from CBS, where he was one of the voices of the NFL broadcasts. Gifford insisted that he would only jump networks for the Monday night gig.

"I was opposed to it," Spence said, acknowledging that no one in the business was better than Jackson, certainly not Gifford. "But, since Roone was the president, he had more votes than I did."

Jackson’s landing spot was pretty good: college football and the NBA. Gifford, meanwhile, "fit that mix better than Keith did ... He was the perfect fit for that."

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Left to right: Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford (ESPN Images)

That "perfect fit" lasted from 1971 to ’73. Then Meredith left for NBC for three seasons (with Fred "The Hammer" Williamson badly flunking a preseason audition, then with Alex Karras stepping in for a while). Meredith also began expanding into acting, becoming a regular on made-for-TV movies and commercials, capitalizing on the persona and fame that began at ABC, which itself had begun just a year after he had retired from his stellar career with the Cowboys.

Meredith returned to bring the band back together for '77 and '78. The next five years featured a lot of juggling in the booth, part of it because Cosell was in demand on other assignments for ABC; in and out went Fran Tarkenton and (yes) O.J. Simpson.

The magic of the threesome was knocked off balance, if not wiped out for good. Cosell exited for good after a contentious 1983 season that had begun with his notorious "little monkey" remark about Washington's Alvin Garrett. Meredith left the next year. 

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Getting America used to a completely different look and sound to "Monday Night Football" was not easy. It's just as hard to imagine a trio of announcers with the cultural impact they did, especially with the landscape so different even by the mid-1980s, never mind today.

Spence suggested the college basketball crew of Dick Enberg, Billy Packer and Al McGuire at NBC — ironically, together for a deceptively short time as well, from 1977 to '81.

Said Spence: “Al had some of the same traits as Meredith, and ..."

He quickly stopped himself, then added, "Well, nobody was like Cosell."

David Steele

David Steele Photo

David Steele writes about the NFL for Sporting News, which he joined in 2011 as a columnist. He has previously written for AOL FanHouse, the Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday. He co-authored Olympic champion Tommie Smith's autobiography, Silent Gesture.