Post-football Career
Following his football career, Meredith became a color commentator for ABC's Monday Night Football beginning in 1970. He left for 3 seasons (1974–1976) to work with Curt Gowdy at NBC, then returned to MNF partners Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell. His approach to color commentary was light-hearted and folksy, in contrast to Cosell's detailed, intellectual analysis and Gifford's rather ponderous play-by-play technique. He was known for singing "Turn out the lights, the party's over" (a line from a Willie Nelson song, "The Party's Over") at garbage time.
Meredith's broadcasting career was also not without a few incidents of minor controversy; including referring to then-President Richard Nixon as "Tricky Dick", announcing that he was "mile-high" before a game in Denver, and turning the name of Cleveland Browns receiver Fair Hooker into a double entendre. (saying 'Fair Hooker...well, I haven't met one yet!') He retired from sportscasting after the 1984 season, a year after Cosell's retirement. His final broadcast was Super Bowl XIX with Frank Gifford and Joe Theismann, which was ABC's first Super Bowl.
Meredith also had an acting career, appearing in multiple movies and television shows, including a recurring starring role as Detective Bert Jameson on Police Story. One episode, "The Witness," features a picture of Don in his Dallas uniform hanging on a wall in Delaney's bar while Don interviews witnesses to a robbery below his picture. He was in a series of commercials in the 1980s as Lipton Tea Lover, Don Meredith, a.k.a. "Jeff and Hazel's Baby Boy". He was featured in an episode of King of the Hill, ("A Beer Can Named Desire") in which he misses a throw that would have won the main character, Hank Hill, $100,000.
In 1976, Meredith was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor at Texas Stadium along with former running back Don Perkins.
Meredith was selected as the 2007 recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. He received the award at the Enshrinee's Dinner on August 3, 2007.
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