Aged 72.
Great player, great guy. You will be missed.
Just saw the sad news. I was never a big fan, but he definitely left his mark on football announcing.
Ironically, a former co-worker of mine with an identical name, died about a month ago.
Moved this to The Game Room from MPSIMS so the sports fans can see it.
Turn out the lights, the party’s over. RIP Dandy Don.
Monday Night Football was at its absolute best in the Dandy Don and Howard Cosell years.
A line Don Meredth once said about Tom landry:
“He’s such a perfectionist, if he was married to Dolly parton, he’d expect her to cook.”
So long, Dandy Don–and thanks for the memories!
I actually remember him better for his recurring roles on Police Story than for anything else. He was very good as an actor.
Never heard that but it’s too funny!
I found it interesting how suddenly and permanently Meredith dropped out of public view. Really, before the announcement of his death, when was the last time you read anything about him, let alone saw him on TV?
He wasn’t a recluse, he just made enough money to live comfortably, and was tired of celebrity.
One of the last things I remember reading about him was that he himself always regarded “Dandy Don” as a character he played, not as a real person. He said (I’m quoting from memory, so I may be off just a bit) “Dandy Don wasn’t me, he was somebody else. He wasn’t a bad guy, I suppose, but I haven’t seen him in years, and I don’t miss him.”
I was a kid living in Australia when the Doris Day Show (very popular variety show in the 70’s) came down under to record a show. It was a very big deal in Australia for a top-rated American TV show to come to OZ, and the media anticipation was huge. Inexplicably, the show brought along Dandy Don as one of the featured guests.
Australians had no idea who this guy was, and his schtick was completely unknown to Australian audiences. It’s as if a popular Indian show recorded in New York City for an American audience and brought along the goofy host of Saturday Night Field Hockey as a prominent guest.
Many Australians were offended that Doris Day would find this guy amusing to Australian audiences. A drunk, bad singer who told jokes about American football players which went whooshing over the audiences heads because they had no idea who the people were. It was one of the worst examples of cultural awareness fail I have ever witnessed.
So am I the only who thought “Hank Hill shed a single tear today”?
Probably, since Hank is a cartoon character on a long-dead show.
If the bit didn’t work, it didn’t work. But sometimes, quirky Australian celebs find an appreciative audience in the US and vice versa. If Americans (briefly) found “Jacko” (the old Aussie football player) funny, is it so hard to imagine Aussies might have found Don amusing?
The obits concentrated on MNF, but let us also remember Meredith as the (barely) losing quarterback in two of the most heart-stopping NFL title games of all time, 1966 and 1967. Turn around a handful of plays and Dandy Don might have been the quarterback of the first two Super Bowl winners, and the Lombardi Trophy would be the Landry Trophy.