The Game: The Giants running back fumbled twice, but caught a 15-yard touchdown pass that gave the Giants a 17-14 lead. His most critical carry came with less than three minutes left in the fourth quarter, a third and four play from the Giants 40 yard-line. The Giants were still up by three points, and a first down would have pretty much sealed the game. Gifford ran to the outside, and was tackled; Colts lineman Gino Marchetti broke his ankle on the play. After the chaos that followed, referee Ron Gibbs spotted the ball short of the first down marker, and the Giants were forced to punt, giving the Colts a chance to tie, and ultimately win, the game. "I'll say it again for the last time," Gifford wrote in a new book, The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever. "I still feel to this day, and will always feel, that I got the first down that would have let us run out the clock. And given us the title."
Post-Game: Spent 36 years as a Monday Night Football commentator, teaming with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith to form football's all-time free-wheeling, controversy-causing broadcast team. Married television personality Kathy Lee, though his late-1990s affair with an airline stewardess somewhat sullied his image. As for that first down play, Gifford says that Gibbs' son wrote him a note saying that before Gibbs died, the ref admitted he just might have blown that call.