It’s more than a little ironic that we lost “Dandy Don” Meredith this week.
The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback was part of the trimuvirate that brought Monday Night Football into our homes and turned a football game into a cultural icon.
And it was 30 years ago today that the world learned, while watching a football game, of the loss of another icon.
It was left to Meredith’s color commentary partner, Howard Cosell, to tell the world that former Beatle John Lennon had been assassinated in New York City.
Suddenly a football game didn’t seem so important.
Lennon was gunned down as he entered his Manhattan apartment building, the Dakota, just before 11 p.m. An obsessed fan, Mark David Chapman, who had been stalking Lennon, was arrested at the scene after pumping four gunshots into Lennon’s back.
The man who urged the world to “Give Peace a Chance” was gone, the victim of a madman with a gun.
Two police officers literally picked Lennon up off the Manhattan street, put him in their squad car, and rushed him to Roosevelt Hospital.
There was nothing doctors could do.
As I look back, the story interests me for two reasons. Sure, I was a big Beatles fan. I grew up in the ‘60s, what did you expect? But I really liked their early music, and I can admit that I harbored a little resentment toward Lennon, and in particular Yoko Ono, for breaking up the band.
On the other hand I look back in marvel at the way this story “broke.”
There was no Internet. No Twitter. No Facebook. ABC News had confirmed the story and then faced the decision of whether or not to break the news to a national audience tuned into a fairly important Monday Night Football game.
As I rode into work this morning, I heard a radio report and some tape that I had never heard in the last three decades. It was about some of the off-air discussions by Cosell and others in the booth as to what they wanted to do. Cosell actually seemed to be asking his fellow broadcasters what they thought they should do. He clearly had reservations about breaking the news during the broadcast.
It was Meredith who spoke up, saying they absolutely needed to deliver the news.
The rest is well-known. It further enhanced Cosell’s already huge reputation.
But until this day I never realized Meredith’s role in how it came about.
Today there would have been “tweets” minutes after Lennon was shot. Back then, the news was "breaking" just as the nightly news ended. It was left for newspapers to deliver the news the next morning. What a quaint idea.
Lennon said it best, and it applies to a lot of things that have happened - and maybe just as importantly the things that have not happened - over the last 30 eyars.
Imagine.
The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback was part of the trimuvirate that brought Monday Night Football into our homes and turned a football game into a cultural icon.
And it was 30 years ago today that the world learned, while watching a football game, of the loss of another icon.
It was left to Meredith’s color commentary partner, Howard Cosell, to tell the world that former Beatle John Lennon had been assassinated in New York City.
Suddenly a football game didn’t seem so important.
Lennon was gunned down as he entered his Manhattan apartment building, the Dakota, just before 11 p.m. An obsessed fan, Mark David Chapman, who had been stalking Lennon, was arrested at the scene after pumping four gunshots into Lennon’s back.
The man who urged the world to “Give Peace a Chance” was gone, the victim of a madman with a gun.
Two police officers literally picked Lennon up off the Manhattan street, put him in their squad car, and rushed him to Roosevelt Hospital.
There was nothing doctors could do.
As I look back, the story interests me for two reasons. Sure, I was a big Beatles fan. I grew up in the ‘60s, what did you expect? But I really liked their early music, and I can admit that I harbored a little resentment toward Lennon, and in particular Yoko Ono, for breaking up the band.
On the other hand I look back in marvel at the way this story “broke.”
There was no Internet. No Twitter. No Facebook. ABC News had confirmed the story and then faced the decision of whether or not to break the news to a national audience tuned into a fairly important Monday Night Football game.
As I rode into work this morning, I heard a radio report and some tape that I had never heard in the last three decades. It was about some of the off-air discussions by Cosell and others in the booth as to what they wanted to do. Cosell actually seemed to be asking his fellow broadcasters what they thought they should do. He clearly had reservations about breaking the news during the broadcast.
It was Meredith who spoke up, saying they absolutely needed to deliver the news.
The rest is well-known. It further enhanced Cosell’s already huge reputation.
But until this day I never realized Meredith’s role in how it came about.
Today there would have been “tweets” minutes after Lennon was shot. Back then, the news was "breaking" just as the nightly news ended. It was left for newspapers to deliver the news the next morning. What a quaint idea.
Lennon said it best, and it applies to a lot of things that have happened - and maybe just as importantly the things that have not happened - over the last 30 eyars.
Imagine.
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