R.I.P.: Frank Gifford, age 84

R.I.P.: Frank Gifford, age 84

You probably know that Giff was a great player and a legendary broadcaster, but I'll bet not many of you realize that he is also a central character in one of the greatest "first novels" ever written: A Fan's Notes, by Fred Exley, which is now a staple of many courses in the modern American novel. Exley and Gifford attended USC at the same time, and the latter became the former's sports idol, as well as his obsession. Exley's novel is about, among other things, the common man's failure to live up to his own youthful expectations. Giff, more like a classical God than a common man, seemed to be immune from this failing. Gifford seemed to be able to do everything in life correctly, and with effortless ease, and thus became Exley's lifelong obsession, in both fiction and real life. As Wikipedia recounts it, "Exley's introspective 'fictional memoir,' a tragicomic indictment of 1950s American culture, examines in lucid prose themes of celebrity, masculinity, self-absorption, and addiction, morbidly charting his failures in life against the electrifying successes of his football hero and former classmate."

Reader's comment: I mostly remember the tape of him begging the stewardess for anal sex.