Pat Summerall, Star Kicker With Giants and a Calm Voice on TV, Dies at 82
Michael Conroy/Associated Press
Pat Summerall, left, worked with John Madden for 21 years as the lead N.F.L. broadcast team for CBS and then Fox. "John looks at it from a coach's angle; I bring a player's point of view," he said.
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: April 16, 2013
Pat Summerall, the Giants’ outstanding place-kicker who went on to team with John Madden for 21 seasons in network television’s most prominent N.F.L. broadcast twosome, died on Tuesday in Dallas. He was 82.
Associated Press
Summerall's 49-yard field goal for the Giants forced a playoff game against Cleveland in 1958.
A family spokeswoman, Valerie Bell, said Summerall had been at Zale Lipshy University Hospital since Thursday, when he broke a hip in a fall at his home in Southlake, Tex., in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She said he was undergoing rehabilitation at the hospital when he experienced sudden cardiac arrest.
On a December afternoon in 1958, Summerall kicked a 49-yard field goal in a snowstorm at Yankee Stadium to give the Giants a 13-10 victory over the Cleveland Browns and send the teams to a playoff for the Eastern Conference title. The Giants beat the Browns again the next Sunday, then played in the first of three National Football League championship games in Summerall’s years with them.
That field goal provided one of the more thrilling moments in Giants history. But when Summerall took up broadcasting, he shunned the dramatic turn, preferring an understated and spare style in doing the play-by-play. He largely let the action on the screen speak for itself, meshing splendidly with Madden, a former coach, who eagerly explained the strategy.
“When you listen to Pat, it’s comfortable, it’s a big game, you’re bringing a gentleman into your house,” Madden once said.
Summerall spent more than 40 years in broadcasting with CBS and Fox. Although best remembered for his football work, he was also the voice of the Masters golf tournament and the United States Open tennis tournament.
But for much of his time at the microphone, Summerall had an addiction that afflicted his professional and his personal life, and cost him his health. He was an alcoholic.
In 1992, he was confronted by family members, friends and associates in an intervention and persuaded to enter the Betty Ford substance-abuse clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He emerged sober, remained so, and became a born-again Christian, speaking often of his newfound faith and the insights he had gleaned into his self-destructive conduct. But his liver had sustained irreparable damage. In 2004, he underwent a transplant, receiving the liver of a 13-year-old boy who had died of a brain aneurysm.
In his memoir “Summerall: On and Off the Air” (Thomas Nelson, 2006), he told of how his time at the Betty Ford Clinic “was full of revelations.”
“As the years and the parties passed,” he said, “I became more erratic in my judgment and less patient as I drank more frequently and recovered more slowly. In addition, I had lowered my standards along the way — professionally, personally and physically. To my shame, I had become a practiced liar and a seasoned cover-up man. I was spending more and more time on the road just to be around the party scene, always to the detriment of my family. I had walked away from my marriage and alienated my three kids. They didn’t deserve that treatment.”
George Allen Summerall, nicknamed Pat as a youngster, was born in Lake City, Fla., where he endured a traumatic childhood.
He was born with a right leg twisted backward. A doctor, trying a novel procedure, fractured the leg, turned it around and then reset it when he was an infant. The doctor thought the child might always walk with a limp and doubted he could play sports.
Summerall’s parents had separated before he was born. When he was 3, his mother no longer wished to care for him, and he was raised by an aunt, an uncle and a grandmother, who inspired him to pursue sports.
Though his right leg was shorter than the left, he became a place-kicker and played end for the University of Arkansas, and then was drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1952. He spent one season with Detroit and five with the Chicago Cardinals before joining the Giants in 1958.
Summerall sometimes played at defensive or tight end, but he was primarily a kicker in his 10 N.F.L. seasons, and no kick was more memorable than that 1958 field goal against the Browns in the snow.
As he told it in his memoir: “I made the mistake of looking toward the distant goal shrouded in a heavy curtain of falling snow. The wind was howling. My breath was a vapor cloud hovering in front of my face. It was a good snap and a good hold. As soon as I kicked it, I knew it was going to be far enough, but the ball was on a very unpromising trajectory, knuckleballing like a missile gone awry. Yet somewhere it stayed on course and cleared the uprights by so much it would have been good from 65 yards out.”
After beating the Browns a second time in the playoff game, the Giants lost to the Baltimore Colts in sudden-death overtime in the 1958 championship game, which buoyed pro football’s emerging popularity and came to be called “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” The Giants went to the title game again in 1959 and ’61, losing each time.
Summerall retired after the 1961 season with 563 career points, all coming on field goals and extra points except for one interception return for a touchdown.
He began his broadcasting career doing sports shows for CBS Radio while playing for the Giants, then worked as an analyst on Giants’ TV broadcasts, teaming with Chris Schenkel. He teamed with the former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Tom Brookshier during the 1970s, then began working with Madden during the 1981 season. They remained together on CBS through 1993, then worked as a pair for Fox from 1994 through the 2001 season. Summerall remained with Fox for another year after that, then worked Dallas Cowboys games on the radio.
In 1994, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gave him a lifetime achievement award, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame honored him with its Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.
He is survived by his wife, Cheri; his sons, Kyle and Jay; and a daughter, Susan Wiles, from his marriage to his first wife, Kathy.
Summerall relished his collaboration with Madden, but liked to point out the contrast in their approaches.
“John looks at it from a coach’s angle; I bring a player’s point of view,” Summerall told The San Diego Union-Tribune when he and Madden prepared for the 2002 Super Bowl, their last one together. “What he doesn’t see, I see, and vice versa. But I always remember a bit of great advice from a producer doing golf for CBS. He told me that TV is a visual medium, and you don’t have to tell people what they already can see. His last words were, ‘If I ever hear you say that he made the putt, you’re fired.’ ”
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