USD Football 1992

GIFF-TED

had not yet dawned, so Robenson had rea– son to scratch his leather helmet in 1949 when Cravath ordered him to hold for a field-goal attempt by neophyte Gifford in a game against rival California in Berkeley. "Kick a field goal?" Robertson said. "I said, 'What' s that? Geez, that's a trick play. We never did that before.' No one kicked fi eld goals, and here's this kid, a sophomore, and I'm holding the ball ... and he didn' t even look at the bal l going through the uprights. He said, ·Anyone can do that.'" Gifford spent his initial college football season on defense, kicking field goals and returning kickoffs I05 yards for touchdowns, which he also did in that game at Cal. The Trojans finished 5-3-1, but they lost their regular-season finale to cross-country nemesis Notre Dame, 32-0. Total chaos arrived a year later, in 1950, when the Trojans opened at home with a 20- 14 loss to Iowa; Cravath grew unhappy with Robertson's performance, three starting offensive linemen were lost in the first three weeks and Gifford was turned into a quarter– back 10 pump some life into the offense. A week after Gifford brought USC back to tie Washington State, 20-20. the half– back was turned into the starting quarter– back against California.

Frank Gifford's rare unsuccessful endeav– ors involved a craft in which the player must play someone else. He studied drama at USC and had bit parts in another movie ("Up Periscope") and TV pilot ("Public Enemy"), even signing a contract for a TV series ("Turnpike"). But losing a lead role in the mov ie ··Battle C ry" to Tab Hunter assured Gifford that he wouldn't be stepping in wet concrete in front of Grouman's Chinese Theater anytime soon. "It was a joke with me, something to do in the off-season," Gifford said. "I could also see down the line, though. Being involved in what I'm involved in now, that helped my composure early." Well-represented in both the pro and col– legiate halls of fame for the talents he dis– played for USC and the New York Giants from 1949 10 1962, Gifford has proved the true breadth of his talents for 22 years as one of the most successful athletes-turned– broadcasters as ABC' s Monday Night Football host and analyst. It all started unceremoniously in 1946, when Gifford, a third-string junior quar– terback at Bakersfield High School, was forced to start after the regular was kilied in an auto accident and the second– stringer stalled.

One of three children of an oil-field roughneck who took his family through West Texas and along the California coast, Gifford sparkled as a senior. After a year at Bakersfield College, Gifford realized his dream of playing football for coach Jeff Cravath at USC. "Cravath liked Frank a lot," Robertson said. "He was Jeff's kind of football player because he hit hard. (Cravath) liked guys who bled and didn't run off the field, and his theory was; don't come off the field unless your leg is broken, and then you better crawl off. I used to call (Gifford) 'Fearless Frank.' " Upon Gifford 's arrival at USC, Robertson's soon-to-be first wife Nancy had enough trouble just teaching Gifford how to put a verb next to a subject. "His idea of a sentence was, 'Where's it at, anyhow?' " Robertson said. An English major, Nancy constantly cor– rected Gifford's speech. "Frank, you don't finish a sentence with a preposition," Nancy said. "What's a preposition?" Frank replied. What Gifford lacked in syntax, though, he atoned for in heart. In the late 1940s, field goals were as common in the game as face masks and chin-straps. The era of the specialty player

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