I was watching television that night when the banner ran across the bottom of the screen with the news that Frank Gifford, the Hall of Fame flanker back for the New York Giants in the 1950s-60s, had just passed away.

I’ve been long removed from growing up in Norwalk, Conn., and what-were-to-me at the time, the glory days of New York Giants football.

They were a colorful and classy bunch. Charlie Conerly, Sam Huff, Jimmy Patton, Dick Lynch, Rosey Grier, Kyle Rote, Alan Webb, Del Shofner, Y.A. Title and, of course, Mr. Gifford. I have all of their autographs, captured on lazy summer days when I would accompany my dad to the Giants training camp at Fairfield University in mid-August.

It was such a simpler time. You would walk up to the players on their way to the practice field, hand them a piece of paper on which they would scrawl their name (it was usually indecipherable). They would look at you with a friendly sort of scowl, you would say thanks, knowing that they could crush you like a grape if they wanted, and then you would each be on your way.

I adored the Giants. If you lived within 60 miles of New York City, how could you not? And then Chuck Bednarik, an Eagles linebacker and one of the most fearsome tacklers in NFL history, leveled Gifford in a 1960s game at Yankee Stadium. We watched and waited for Gifford to get up. But he didn’t stir, and was eventually carried off the field on a stretcher.

Gifford was diagnosed with a “deep brain concussion” and many years later discovered that he had also suffered a fracture of a neck vertebra that eventually healed itself. Amazingly enough, he returned to play football in 1962 and played two more seasons before retiring at the end of the ’64 season.

He gained headlines of a different sort thereafter, but when I watched the news track along the bottom of the screen that night, I thought about those Fairfield days, the Giants, my dad, and Frank Gifford. And I think about those who say that football isn’t the same anymore and that players can’t hit the way they used to. And I say, thank goodness for that.