Game Over 
Gary Cartwright
Endless Summerall
The problem with the NFL today isn’t thugs like Michael Vick. It’s broadcast booth buffoons who can’t quit yapping. Bring back Pat!
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He learned to prepare but not make preparation his master. “Schenkel told me, if you need to talk for five minutes, prepare for half an hour. That paid off big-time, more than once.” The day before the famous Ice Bowl game in Green Bay, CBS producers deputized Summerall to approach the tyrannical, fire-belching Lombardi and beg him to allow three Packers players to fill an eighteen-minute segment during the game. After much groveling on Summerall’s part, Lombardi agreed. But on game day, with no warning, he abruptly changed his mind, leaving Summerall and CBS shivering in the 13-below ice of Lambeau Field. “I was standing on the field, watching my life pass before me, when I heard over my earpiece the voice of the producer, telling me, ‘Patrick, think of everything you know and say it now.’ It was the longest eighteen minutes of my life, but I got through it.”
His pairing with Madden was one of those happy accidents that come to seem preordained. Summerall had worked for years with Tom Brookshier. They had called a game on Thanksgiving Day, and Brookshier begged off the following Sunday, forcing CBS to move the untried Madden into the box with Summerall. “He was wearing a suit and tie and sweating so bad I thought, ‘Boy, this guy’s gonna have a heart attack,’” Summerall told me. “What I didn’t know was that the height of the announcers’ booth is what made him nervous. Once the game started, he was okay.”
The chemistry was instant. Each knew when to speak and when to can it. And it was a good thing: CBS’s decision to break up the team of Brookshier and Summerall probably saved both of their lives. In the sixties and seventies, boozing and pill popping went with the territory trod by the nomadic writers and broadcasters who followed the pro football circuit. A bucket of amphetamines hung just outside the Cowboys training room, a temptation for all who passed by. Powerful painkillers were always accessible. Every press box and press conference had an open bar, and there were platoons of PR types to pick up bar tabs everywhere you went.
All of us drank, smoked, chased women, and stayed up all night, but Summerall and Brookshier did it with an enthusiasm that people still talk about years later. “I loved traveling with Brookie,” Summerall acknowledged. “We’d meet up on Thursday and not get home until Tuesday. We had a good time on the air and off the air and stayed up late and enjoyed life.” Their nocturnal escapades furnished copy for countless newspapers. According to the Dallas Morning News, Brookshier once snatched the wig off the piano player at a New York nightclub and used it as a football in “an impromptu scrimmage with other customers.” Referring to another incident, the Montreal Gazette simply said, “The story of the horse and the Plaza Hotel is classic.” A list of the bars and restaurants that asked them to leave and never return would probably fill a small volume.
By December 1990, the alcohol had caught up with Summerall, and he nearly died from a bleeding ulcer and damaged liver. For a few months he stopped drinking, but, as is often the case with athletes and other die-hard competitors, he was able to convince himself that he had mastered the situation, at which point he began hitting the bottle again. It soon became obvious that Summerall was no longer capable of helping himself, especially to his family and his old drinking buddy, Brookshier. They arranged an intervention at a hotel. When he arrived, Summerall was ambushed by fifteen family members and friends, among them the commissioner of the NFL, the commissioner of the PGA tour, and the president of CBS. They had each written letters, which they read aloud, telling Summerall how much they loved him and how desperately they wanted him to get help. “I was so angry at first I wasn’t listening,” Summerall told me. “I kept thinking that some of the people here need help more than me. Then someone read a letter from my daughter, who said I made her ashamed of the name Summerall. That’s when I started listening.”
Brookshier went last. When he was finished, he told Summerall that a Learjet owned by Tampa Bay Buccaneers president Hugh Culverhouse was waiting to fly him to the recovery center in Rancho Mirage, California.
“Brookie said, ‘C’mon, I’ll go with you,’” Summerall told me, his famous baritone strained with emotion. “I guess that subconsciously I knew I needed help, but when Brookie said he’d go along, I said, yeah, let’s go.” Though the jet was well stocked with liquor, neither of those old rounders touched a drop. At the time, treatment at Betty Ford usually lasted 28 days, but Summerall was so angry that they kept him an extra 5. He hasn’t touched a drop since and assured me the craving long ago disappeared.
Before sitting down to talk with Summerall, I had read that during his recovery he had become a born-again Christian. I was dreading this part of the interview. Religion is a deeply personal affair, and when it isn’t a central part of the story, I hate to press for details. But Summerall didn’t seem to mind. He explained that back then there were only two books available at Betty Ford, the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book and the Bible. He read both. “The whole atmosphere was religious,” he said. “Twelve steps. Higher power. Who is helping me? Why am I so fortunate? The higher power for me is Jesus Christ.” In a voice so understated he might have been giving me his name and phone number, he told me that he now attends Bible study two times a week and that every morning he and Cheri read a chapter from the Bible and daily devotionals from Billy Graham and other religious thinkers. I sat there waiting for him to say something else, but there was nothing else to say. I suppose I was waiting for that familiar cue. John?
Driving back to the airport later, I realized that I’d been wrong. Religion is a central part of this story. Summerall just had the good sense to let me discover it for myself.
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