A Coward Dies But Once

And Frank Gifford was no coward.

Frank Gifford’s latest death was this past Sunday, when natural causes caught up with him at home in Greenwich, CT at the ripe old age of 84.  For a professional football player, that’s like 187.  And to get to go out in your mid-80’s by natural causes at home in Greenwich on a sunny Sunday?  That’s a pipe-dream for most of today’s players.

Gifford, of course, was first killed in 1960.  I’m not sure you can see him in the featured image, below an apparently gloating Chuck Bednarik, but Gifford went over the middle and Bednarik laid him the fuck out.  Laid him out to such an extent that I can’t get Gifford to show up along the bottom of the image he’s so low to the ground.  Bednarik played for the Eagles, so odds are he just hit poor Frank with a sack full of D-cells.  You can watch the whole play here, courtesy of the good folks at NFL Videos.  Whom I would like to remind this is a non-profit site.  We make no money off this video.  Please do not sic your lawyers on us.  Damn their oily hides anyway.

Gifford’s career as a TV announcer was dealt a mortal wound in 1997, when the Globe set him up with an airline stewardess they had paid anywhere from $75,000 to $125,000 to seduce him.  I recall reading about this in Playboy or Penthouse, which probably says as much about me as it does about Frank.  But it happened, it’s too bad, and it’s probably the second or third thing most people thought about when the news came of Gifford’s apparently final death, and that’s a sad commentary on them far more than on him.

When not getting caught on tape, Frank Gifford was married to the former Kathie Lee Epstein.  They got married in 1986, and no matter what happens in the tabloids, 29 years is a hell of a run so good for them.

Gifford played exclusively for the Giants, appearing at halfback, flanker and defensive back from 1952-1964, although he took a vacation from some point in the 1960 season until 1962, missing the 1961 season entirely while NFL Labs reanimated his corpse from the Bednarik hit.  His 5,434 receiving yards stood as the team records until 2003, when Amani Toomer broke it.  While that’s a solid achievement, the record lasting as long as it did probably had as much to do with the Giants thinking that it was a good idea to employ Joe Pisarcik as a quarterback as it did anything else.

Gifford was a multi-time Pro Bowler, league MVP in 1956, and helped the Giants win the Super Bo NFL Championship that same year.  The Giants have retired his number, 16, from further use.  They have also retired all numbers above 8, as Jason Pierre-Paul can no longer count that high.

After retiring from pro football in 1964, probably because the bolts holding his head onto his shoulders were getting rusty–something Peyton Manning will soon be dealing with–Gifford went on to a second career with Monday Night Football.  He filled the booth as more or less the straight man (insert Aaron Rodgers joke here [heh, “insert”]) from 1971-1997, which I couldn’t believe when I saw it on Wikipedia.  That’s 26 damn years.

Gifford was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977 and that same year won an Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality.  Apparently that’s a thing.  My guess is that Peter King was more impressed with the latter than the former.  And that he will try to find a way to vote for Darren Sharper for both relatively soon.

Gifford is survived by 5 kids and probably some grandkids but I didn’t look that up because what am I, an obituary writer?  He had a full and all-too human life.  He was a man who performed to the top of two professions and apparently went out peacefully at home in his mid-80’s.  We should all do so well.