Don Meredith, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and a founding father of the "Monday Night Football" franchise as the folksy, good-natured presence in the announcing booth with Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford, has died. He was 72.
"Dandy Don," as he was known throughout his NFL career and beyond, died Sunday from a brain hemorrhage with his wife and daughter at his side in Santa Fe, N.M.
After unexpectedly retiring from football at age 31, Meredith joined the fledgling Monday Night Football broadcast in 1970 as a color analyst.
His wit and charm were a great foil to Cosell's droll delivery and Gifford's straight-man schtick — though he did manage to tweak network executives by singing "Turn out the lights, the party's over …" whenever he thought the game was out of hand — driving viewers away from the telecast.
