Frank Gifford played generations before Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms and Eli Manning and Michael Strahan, but he was the still the enduring face of the Giants more than a half-century after his playing career was over.
He was so popular, he transcended the game. Gifford was the NFL’s first glamour boy: He was the league MVP in 1956, the Giants last championship team before Simms and LT won Big Blue’s first Super Bowl 30 years later.
His handsome face landed him on magazine covers, and he fit right in on the big screen in Hollywood, on television in New York doing local sports on WCBS while he was still playing, and then he hit it big in a phenomenal 27-year run in the Monday Night Football booth, first doing play-by play sitting beside Howard Cosell and Dandy Don Meredith and then as an analyst with Al Michaels handling the play-by-play.