Summerall spent ten years as a professional football player in the National Football League, primarily as a placekicker. The Detroit Lions drafted Summerall as a fourth-round draft choice in the 1952 NFL Draft.  Summerall played the pre-season with the Lions before breaking his arm, which ended the year for him. After that season, he was traded and went on to play for the Chicago Cardinals from 1953 to 1957 and the New York Giants from 1958 to 1961, during which he was a part of The Greatest  Game Ever Played. His best professional year statistically was 1959, when Summerall scored 90 points on 30-for-30 (100%) extra-point kicking and 20-for-29 (69%) field goal kicking.

Summerall’s most memorable professional moment may well have been at the very end of the Sunday, December 14, 1958 regular season finale between his Giants and the Cleveland Browns at Yankee Stadium. Going into the game, the Browns were in first place in the Eastern Conference, holding a one-game lead over the second-place Giants. In that era, there was no overtime during regular season games, standings ties were broken by a playoff, and there were no wild-card teams. This meant that only the Eastern Conference champion would qualify for the NFL Championship Game to be held two weeks later, and it meant that the Giants had to win just to force a tiebreaker playoff game. The Browns, on the other hand, needed only a tie to clinch the Eastern championship. As time was running out, the Giants and Browns were tied, 10-10, a situation that, as indicated, favored the Browns. The Giants got barely into Cleveland territory, and then sent out Summerall to try for a tiebreaking 49-yard field goal. To add to the drama, there were swirling winds and snow. Summerall, a straight-ahead kicker, made the field goal with just two minutes to play, keeping the Giants alive for another week, they defeated Cleveland a week later, 10-0, in the Eastern Conference tiebreaker.

Summerall’s last professional game was the December 31, 1961 NFL Championship Game held at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated Summerall’s Giants, 37-0, holding New York to just six first downs. Summerall was not a factor in that game.

After retiring from football, Summerall was hired by CBS Sports in 1962 to work as a color commentated on the network’s NFL coverage. CBS initially paired Summerall with Chris Schenkel on Giants games; three years later he shifted to working with Jim Gibbons on Washington Redskins games. In 1968, after CBS abandoned the practice of assigning dedicated announcing crews to particular NFL teams, Summerall ascended to the network’s lead national crew, pairing with Jack Buck and then Ray Scott.

Summerall also covered other events such as ABA basketball for CBS during this period, and through 1966 hosted a morning drive-time music/talk program for WCBS-AM radio in New York. In 1969, Summerall took part in NBC’s coverage of Super Bowl III. He also co-hosted the syndicated NFL Films series This Week in Pro Football in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

Midway through the 1974 NFL season, CBS shifted Summerall from color to play-by-play. The network’s #1 NFL crew now consisted of Summerall and analyst Tom Brookshier (with whom he had previously worked on This Week in Pro Football), and the colorful Summerall-Brookshier duo worked three Super Bowls (X, XII, and XIV) together. Summerall, Brookshier, NFL on CBS producer Bob Wussler, and Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie appeared as themselves during the 1977 film Black Sunday, which was filmed on location at the Orange Bowl in Miami during Super Bowl X.

In 1981, Summerall was teamed with former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden, a pairing that would last for 22 seasons on two networks and become one of the most well-known partnerships in TV sportscasting history. Summerall and Madden were first teamed on a November 25, 1079 broadcast of a Minnesota Vikings–Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. While the two were paired on CBS, they called Super Bowls XVI, XVIII, XXI, XXIV, and XXVI together.

Summerall also broadcast PGA Tour matches on CBS, including The Masters Tournament, as well as the US Open of tennis, during his tenure at CBS, and he was the play-by-play announcer for the 1974 NBA Finals, CBS’ first season broadcasting the NBA on CBS.

Pat Summerall, “The Greatest Sports Voice In History”,  died on April 16, 2013 of cardiac arrest Zale Lipshy University Hospital in Dallas, at the age of 82.

THE MYBOYSAY NATION SPORTS ENTHUSIASTS WOULD LIKE TO SAY, THANK YOU TO PAT SUMMERALL FOR ALL OF THE GREAT PLAY BY PLAY DIRECTIVES THAT WERE GIVEN TO THE WORLD OF SPORTS DURING HIS GREAT CAREER.