Monday, August 10, 2015

"Al Michaels remembers Frank Gifford as ‘coolest guy in the room’"

"Gifford died Sunday, a week shy of his 85th birthday, and Michaels recalled just how important he was as a legendary New York Giants player, a broadcaster and a larger-than-life presence in New York City."
“You had to live in New York in the ’50s and ’60s to truly understand what a gigantic figure Frank Gifford was,” Michaels said in a tribute during halftime of the Hall of Fame game Sunday night (watch it here). “He was right there with Mickey Mantle.”
“I’ll forever remember Frank as a man who, no matter what was going on around him, was always the coolest guy in the room.”
Gifford made the job look effortless.
“So many of us, especially in these high-pressure, high-profile businesses, there’s a tendency to have these knee-jerk responses to things,” Michaels told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. “That was never Frank. Frank was always the guy who would assess it. He would do it quietly. Then he would very often have something on the back end, when everything had calmed down, that was well thought out.
“Frank never wasted any energy flying off the handle.”

10 comments:

AllenS said...

Didn't Gifford get caught on a video surveillance camera grabbing some hottie and trying to bang her on the spot?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. You know, urges and stuff.

bagoh20 said...

I think that's what he meant by "he would very often have something on the back end"

ndspinelli said...

He's hearing Chuck Bednarek's footsteps in heaven.

Methadras said...

AllenS said...

Didn't Gifford get caught on a video surveillance camera grabbing some hottie and trying to bang her on the spot?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. You know, urges and stuff.


He ASSessed the situation, did it quietly, and often had something on the back end. you know what I'm sayin'?

ricpic said...

"Gifford made the job look effortless."

It was more than that. He was the epitome of cool. But cool in the old fashioned way. Whether he was dragging the defense across the goal line or making a difficult midfield catch, at the end of the play there was no display of self. He had just done his job. Period. Then he trotted to the sidelines or went back to the huddle for the next play. Although lack of display was the norm in that era what was striking was the disparity between the extraordinary effort he frequently put into a successful catch or run and the total lack of affect he showed immediately after the play was made.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

He had a fling with a flight attendant... but it's not like he was the president or anything. His wife forgave him, he did his penance.

William said...

No dementia. Died in his sleep. A good flight with a soft landing.....His scandal wasn't so scandalous. I think it was his wife who bragged about her religious faith and happy marriage.. I don't remember him ever bragging about his faith or happy marriage on Monday night football. . As superstar athletes and celebrities go, he was comparatively chaste. I wonder if Howard Cossell ever fooled around.

ndspinelli said...

Cosell was a complete a-hole. I read a couple bios on him. But, he was devoted to his wife, Mary.

ndspinelli said...

Cosell did harass women, but I read nothing about him fucking them, just harassing and berating them.

ndspinelli said...

You know, like Trump.