Turn Out The Lights

If you were born in the early ’60s and grew up essentially in the ’70s, then you probably were like TigerBlog, whose parents let him stay up to watch at first the opening kickoff of "Monday Night Football" and then the first quarter and eventually the halftime highlights.

If all you know about "Monday Night Football" is what you've seen in the last two decades or so, then you have no idea what it was all about when it - and TigerBlog - was young.

Back then, you actually had to change the channel on the television set by walking over to the TV and turning a dial clockwise or counter-clockwise. Instead of having hundreds of viewing options at any one time, there were just a handful of channels.

NFL coverage back then consisted of watching the local teams and one national game per Sunday, at either 1 or 4. There were no primetime games, no cable outlets, no internet sites, no NFL Network, nothing. It was just a 30-minute pregame show and the games themselves.

In 1970, ABC bought into the football television world that to that point belonged solely to NBC (the AFL/AFC games) and CBS (the NFL/NFC games) and decided to move its game to Monday nights.

The result was a landmark moment in television, American sport and popular culture, all of which converged for really the first time.

Up until then, announcers were like Curt Gowdy or Jim Simpson or any number of men who were always secondary to the game and especially to the players, who were exalted. Until MNF came along, sport was sport and entertainment was entertainment, and they didn't overlap.

Until, that is, a New York lawyer and a real Cowboy from Dallas came together in the broadcast booth every Monday at 9 Eastern time.

Howard Cosell was a graduate of NYU undergrad and law school. Don Meredith grew up in the Texas town of Mount Vernon and then played for SMU and the Cowboys, having never played a home game outside of the Dallas area.

Cosell was a blowhard with an opinion on everything, which at that time wasn't what color commentators were supposed to have. His mantra was to "tell it like it is," and he was the first to have a defining moment of showing highlights of the previous day's games during halftime of MNF.

With his "nasal twang" as Oscar Madison once called it on an episode of "The Odd Couple," Cosell every year would win the poll in TV Guide that asked readers who their favorite sportscaster was. Oh, he'd also win the other one, asking who their least favorite was.

As for Meredith, he was a down-home folksy ex-Cowboys quarterback who was as much a comedian as he was an analyst and who was the basis for the quarterback character in the classic sports book "North Dallas 40." His signature call was to sing the Willie Nelson song "Turn Out The Lights" at the point of the game where it was obvious one team had won.

And so, if you are in TB's age bracket or older, you had to be sad yesterday to hear that Meredith had passed away, at the age of 72.

If you never saw Cosell and Meredith, know this: Every single thing that sports television/radio has become today started with those two. And the fact that it is now impossible to separate sports and entertainment on TV goes back to their broadcast booth.

Take for instance the Heisman Trophy presentation. It used to be announced during the day with no fanfare. Now, like everything else that TV has touched, it has become an extravaganza to be hyped, hyped, hyped.

As an aside, TB was watching one of the football shows the other day and heard a discussion of whether or not Auburn's Cam Newton is the greatest college football player of all-time. For some reason, the people on the panel actually found this a reasonable point and two even agreed. Just to clarify, Newton is not in the top, oh, 50 best college players of all time.

The Ivy League's decision to announce its Bushnell Cup winner in a Heisman-style way, with four finalists, was new this year.

In the past, the league announced the Player of the Year for football as it does with all other sports, at the same time the all-league team was announced. This time, there were four finalists: Harvard running back Gino Gordon, Dartmouth running back Nick Schwieger, Penn quarterback Billy Ragone and Princeton receiver Trey Peacock.

The winners were announced yesterday in New York at the National Football Foundation event, and Gordon and Schwieger shared the honor.

TigerBlog is on record as having said, quite impartially, that Peacock was the best player in the league this year and that his numbers would have been ridiculous had starting quarterback Tommy Wornham not gotten hurt in Week 5.

And TB would like to put up a disclaimer for the rest of this and say that it is pure conjecture, but it is also interesting to think about.

Since Gordon and Schwieger tied, they had to have had an even number of coaches who voted for them. If it was 4-4, then why would there have been two other finalists (and not just whoever was the distant third)? If it was 3-3, then that left two votes.

Penn's Ragone had a great year, but Penn won as a team, not because it had a star quarterback. In fact, if you had to write down the best players on Penn's team in order, would Ragone have made the top five? That's not a knock on him; it's just that the Quakers were so good in spots that don't usually generate Player of the Year votes, such as along both lines and all throughout the interior defense.

TB's point is that perhaps Peacock came within one coaches' vote of winning.

And as for the way the Ivy League handled it, TB is fine with it. The new method generated some interest on the league's fan poll and definitely on the various Ivy League blogs and such, and that can only be good for the league.

And, of course, it's how sports works these days. Why announce the winner when you can use it as part of a larger event?

Hey, it might seem small in the case of the Bushnell Cup, but like everything else these days, its roots go all the way back to a broadcast booth in the 1970s and two guys, one who died awhile ago and another who died yesterday.