They've lost their sparkle, just like the Monday-night games, all smothered under the decade's avalanche of on-air football.

But once upon a time, Thanksgiving action was a can't-miss deal, and from 1974 to '80 Tom Brookshier looked down on the action in his camel turtleneck and network blazer and added his brand of seasoned commentary into the CBS telecasts. In those days, the No. 1 November team wasn't in Detroit or Dallas or St. Louie — it was Summerall/Brookshier.

"I'd say the greatest call I ever heard Pat Summerall make came on our first Thanksgiving game, the Redskin-Cowboys thing in '74" says Brookshier, "and it was nothing more than complete silence. The Redskins jumped out to an early lead, then [Redskins LB] Dave Robinson rung Staubach's bell and knocked him out of the game. Dallas clawed its way back behind some no-name quarterback named Clint Longley, but was still trailing with about 30 seconds to play. Then Longley throws this deep pass to Drew Pearson, and while it was taking place we didn't say a single thing — all natural sound. It was the damndest throw I'd ever seen, and Dallas won the game."

Summerall and Brookie went mum as Longley hit from 50 and Landry's boys bounced around and the ticketholders went dingy and the 'Skins began their stunned slouch off the field.

"We just let all the excitement and fervor in the stadium take over," says Brookshier, now 77. "The audience knew Dallas had won the game, they knew this Longley fellow had just worked a miracle. Everything was right there — what more could we have added? Our only comment was that [Redskins coach] George Allen must have been shocked.

"Afterward we heard that Allen, as that last pass was flying through the air, looked at his bench and said, 'What is a Clint Longley?'"

Their '75 game was Rams vs. Lions and a glossy new spacestation called the Pontiac Silverdome, the first Thanksgiving scrum played indoors. It was a 20-0 sleeper in which the officials spent all day picking up the litter of flags they'd thrown around.

Those were the Chuck Knox Rams, grinder ball, with Fred Dryer and Jack Youngblood and Tom Mack and Larry McCutcheon, who'd sledge you to pieces their old line style but could never cap it all off once they felt the high level playoff tension.

"To me the reason was simple," says Brookshier, who retired from CBS in 1987. "We used to always look at teams' parking lots on Sundays to see which guys were driving pickups and station wagons and four-wheel drives, and who was driving the Porsches and Ferraris. We always felt the Rams were Brentwood, while Pittsburgh was the Bessemer furnace. It wasn't necessarily indicative of the truth, but maybe there was something to it.

"The Rams were very good, but I think other teams of that era — Dallas, Pittsburgh, Oakland — were tougher. Mentally tougher."

The pair then worked a string of Thursdays in Detroit and Dallas over the following seasons, and by then Brookshier had chewed on so much Cowboy action that he was able to draw a few distinctions between the crowds in the two cities.

"Dallas fans never feel the Cowboys have lost a game," Brookshier said years later. "It's always that the referees screwed them or the Good Lord looked the other way or something. It's the toughest place to broadcast a game. Sagebrush, USA. The fans don't know football. They just know something's wrong if the Cowboys don't win by two TDs.

"A few years ago the highlight film was called 'Like a Mighty River.' Boy, that's Texas all right. And John Wayne is the quarterback. You do a game in Detroit, say. The people there have seen a little football. You can't BS them. But try to tell the truth in Dallas and you'll find some frozen hemlock in your nachos."

That's kind of tell-all is what gave the duo their fan appeal, says former CBS sports director Charles Milton III — Summerall the straight man, Brookshier the talky guy who'd crack things up in a crowded elevator.

"Brookie was just clever, likeable on camera," says Milton. "A quick thinker. There'd be a big hit and he'd say something like, 'Boy, he really put mustard and onions on that one.' Being a former player [Eagles 1955-61], he was very protective of the game but he refused to sugarcoat it.

"We got into it one time in Dallas," Milton remembers. "It was earlier in the season and oppressively hot inside Texas Stadium. By the second half they began to cart players off the field for heat exhaustion. Brookshier kept dwelling on the conditions, saying things like 'Guys are dying out there,' or 'They're dying on the field.'

"Finally I cut to interrupt and barked in his ear — 'Stop with the guys are dying out there! It's too depressing! We're going to start losing viewers.'

"He snapped back at me — 'Well, dammit, they are dying out there!' "

Brookshier insists the key to his on-air connection with Summerall is that they were both former NFL-ers, i.e., they knew the pro game from its underside, where, as Kipling says, the lath and the plaster is not smoothed off.

"Patrick was never confused about the things I'd say during a game," Brookshier insists. "He understood where I was coming from. [Former play-by-play men] Lindsey Nelson and Jack Buck sometimes wouldn't understand certain innuendos or remarks I'd make during the broadcast. For example, one of them might say to me, 'I don't understand — you would intentionally hit another player on his injury.'

"I'd respond, 'Of course! If your opponent is playing with a big arm bandage or something, you'd hit it! They would look at me with shock. On the other hand, Pat would sometimes temper the remark to make it seem not so vicious."

Bears-Eagles, 1980, Ron Jaworski is the Philly quarterback and it's a pass play and his left tackle whiffs a block. Here comes DE Mike Hartenstine, past the checkpoint on full security clearance.

"Jaworski was standing there, in an almost Heisman-like pose," remembers Brookshier. "Hartenstein just drilled him, right in the back. Luckily, Jaworski didn't see him coming, so he didn't tense up, but the hit knocked him to the ground in a fetal position. He was lying in the ground, sorta sucking his thumb. It wasn't an illegal hit, but Hartenstine was still fined $2,000 even though there was no flag.

"They carried Jaworski off the field, and then Summerall said to me in his real matter-of-fact tone, 'What do you think of that?'

"I said, 'They ought to give him a bonus. A guy waits a whole season for a shot like that.' "

PFW has launched its brand-new NFL Draft Newsletter series, with the second issue being released the first week of December. Produced by PFW's player personnel department under the direction of Nolan Nawrocki, the series consists of four information-packed issues. For more info or to subscribe — click here for PDF e-pub or here for print format.