Ex-NFL standout Gifford dies at 84

Gifford died Sunday at the age of 84, and the news stirred memories nationwide of him as part of Monday Night Football’s all-time team.

Gossip Cop wishes Kathie Gifford and her family strength during their hard time of them. It started there for him.

While playing for the NFL-champion Giants in 1956, the running back and wide receiver was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.

The Giants halfback harbored no ill-will toward Bednarik. That injury prompted Gifford to retire, but he unexpectedly came back in 1962, switching to flanker. “But he came back and he, he got to be the Comeback Player of the Year”.

We found out how tough he was, too.

But before that, Gifford belonged to New York and to the Giants in a way that mattered viscerally.

Gifford was teamed with another retired NFL star, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, and the sharply opinionated Howard Cosell. The rest was merely broadcast history. During the 1980s, Gifford would fill-in for Al Michaels on play-by-play whenever Michaels went on baseball assignments for the League Championship Series (1986 and 1988) or World Series (1987 and 1989). Gifford spent 10 days in the hospital and did not play football again until 1962.

A crushing hit by 233-pound Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik in November 1960 flattened Gifford and likely shortened his football career. “A teammate asked, ‘What are you going to be, Frank, a stunt man?” Because he worked around Cosell and around the wit and folksy wisdom of Meredith, and made the whole thing work. Before he helped make the NFL cool, Gifford made the Giants cool. And I think we’re all gonna miss him. Frank Gifford will be greatly missed.

On the field, the versatile Gifford did a little bit of everything for the Giants, who played in five NFL Championship games and won one during Gifford’s 12 seasons with the team.

“Before the first year, nobody gave it a chance”, Gifford said. There were two divorces. “Sending love to Kathie Lee Gifford over the loss of her husband, Frank”. He was a wonderful partner, a great teammate.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said: “Frank Gifford was an icon of the game, both as a Hall of Fame player for the Giants and Hall of Fame broadcaster for CBS and ABC”. Then, all of a sudden, you know who he is, and that he played football. Who was, more than anything, No. 16 of the New York Giants. “He was the face of our franchise for so many years”, Giants president John Mara said in a statement.