RIP Pat Summerall

Dallas Morning News is reporting he has died.

 

Linkage:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/dallas-cowboys/headlines/20130416-nfl-broadcaster-local-icon-pat-summerall-dies-at-age-82.ece

He'd been in poor health for years, and obviously did himself no favors with years of drinking. But wow, what a voice.

 

R.I.P to a man who, at the top of his game, was a sports broadcasting icon. But he should have hung it up at least a decade ago. His work in the Cotton Bowl between Arkansas and Missouri was about the worst play-by-play job in a major football event.

 

Announcers who were best described as "laconic" in their prime do not do well in their later years.

But Sundays growing up wouldn't have been the same without him. RIP.

 

His wake will be coming up next, except on the west coast where it will be seen at its regularly-scheduled time.

 

Well, damn it.

RIP

 

I wonder how many people today know him mainly as the "other guy" on the early editions of Madden football.

"Uh oh, there's a man down ..."

 

One of the great pleasures of my career as a sportswriter was talking to Pat for a story about a player from the '50s and listening to him tell stories about the old days. He had a million of 'em and no one ever told them better.

The guy was a treasure. He set the standard for football play-by-play.

 

Brad Sham is the radio voice of the Cowboys, but on the TV side, it was Pat and John by default, since they were the A team and always got the Dallas game back during the glory days.

 

Yeah, it really did seem like they were doing the Dallas game almost every weekend back in the 1990s.

RIP.

 

RIP. Watching football as a kid wouldn't have been the same without his voice.

 

DAMN!

Another link to my adolescence gone...... Charlie Jones, Jim McKay, Merlin Olsen, Al McGuire, Summerall. I guess we all have to go sometime.