Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Don Meredith, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys from 1960 to 1968, passed away on December 5, according to the Dallas Morning News. Meredith led the Cowboys to two NFL Championship games, in 1966 and 1967, both of which they lost to the Green Bay Packers. (The 1967 NFL Championship game is better known as the Ice Bowl.) After retiring as a player, Meredith was an NFL broadcaster for fifteen seasons, twelve of them with Monday Night Football. He was inducted into the Cowboys Ring of Honor in 1976.

The card pictured here is Meredith’s rookie card, a 1961 Fleer. He appeared on cards every year from 1961 to 1969, the year after he retired. You can see all of Don Meredith’s football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Yesterday I put another nice batch of graded 1960′s football cards up for sale. The group includes 1964 Philadelphia cards of Don Meredith and Bart Starr, who would face off in the 1966 and 1967 NFL championship games. The 1967 championship, which was played in Green Bay in -13 degree weather, is better known as the Ice Bowl.

The Ice Bowl is actually the first football game I remember from when I was a kid. I grew up near Green Bay, and the game, because it was a home game, was blacked out on the Green Bay stations. My dad and his friends wanted to watch the game, so they drove to a bar that could pick up the Wausau TV station that carried the game. I tagged along, but I ended up going off and playing with the bar owner’s kid instead of watching.