Turn Out The Lights

Don Meredith picked Monday to toss his last forward pass: into the Great Beyond. No other games scheduled. As an old-timer, it would be nice to say that I remember his playing days with the Dallas Cowboys. I don't. I remember his extremely casual presence in the broadcast booth of Monday Night Football. He was the swig of gin that accompanied the very dry vermouth that was Howard Cossell in that martini. He kept the game from becoming too serious. It was a game for Don. That's why he walked away from the Cowboys back in 1968. It wasn't fun anymore. When Howard Cossell left the broadcast team in 1983, Dandy Don only stuck around one more year. Without Howard's toupee to ridicule, there wasn't much reason to be there.
Just up the road from Santa Fe, where Don passed away, things were becoming very serious for Josh McDaniels. As wunderkind of the NFL last year, he led the Denver Broncos to six straight wins to start his first season as head coach. For a month and a half, he could do no wrong. Then all of that changed. On Monday afternoon, Josh was relieved of his duties. This came just a few days after the owner's dreaded "vote of confidence." Pat Bowlen had said that he wasn't interested in making any coaching changes until the season was over. After losing to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Broncos were eliminated from playoff contention. The season was, effectively, over. There was no reason to prolong the suffering.
And so the search for a new coach begins. One of the prime candidates for the job will no doubt be Jon Gruden. Jon is currently hanging around the broadcast booth of Monday Night Football, auditioning for a job by complaining about the way other teams are being coached. Whether he ends up in Denver or not, Josh McDaniels could save himself some anxiety by sharpening up his singing voice and prepare himself for a season or two high above the action as part of the Monday Night team. All together now: "Turn out the lights, the party's over. They say that all good things must end. Let's call it a night the party's over and tomorrow starts the same old thing again."