After retiring as a player Gifford was an Emmy Award-winning sportscaster, known for his work on ABC's Monday Night Football, Wide World of Sports, and the Olympics.

She also said that as a young child, the family attended church every week and Gifford "asked Jesus into his heart and that remained with him for the rest of his life".

[3] Gifford was unable to gain an athletic scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC) because of his low grade point average in high school.

[6] Gifford spent his entire National Football League (NFL) career with the New York Giants, beginning in 1952, playing both offense and defense.

Gifford's best season may have been 1956, when he won the league's Most Valuable Player Award and led the Giants to the NFL title over the Chicago Bears.

During a 1960 season game against the Eagles, he was knocked out by Bednarik on a passing play, suffering a severe concussion that led him to retire from football in 1961.

[12] After his death, an autopsy on his brain revealed that he lived with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a disease closely related to repeated head trauma.

[10][15] When Monday Night Football was launched in 1970, ABC had originally planned to have Gifford in their broadcast booth, but he still had a year remaining on his contract with CBS.

[16][17][18] Gifford was providing play-by-play in the waning moments of a 1980 Monday Night Football game between the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins when he and Cosell learned of John Lennon's murder.

[21] Following his affair with airline flight attendant Suzen Johnson in 1997, Gifford was replaced in the broadcast booth by Boomer Esiason in 1998.

Gifford was also a reporter and commentator on other ABC sports programs, such as coverage of the Olympics (including the controversial men's basketball gold medal game[26] between the United States and Soviet Union at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, which Gifford called alongside Bill Russell), skiing and golf.

[27][28] Gifford also guest hosted Good Morning America on occasion, including once when he met his future wife Kathie Lee.

[30] He was given the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame In 1995 for his NFL television work.

[32] Frank Gifford appeared as Ensign Cy Mount in the 1959 World War II submarine film drama Up Periscope, starring James Garner, Edmond O'Brien, Andra Martin, and Alan Hale Jr. Gifford appeared as himself as a guest star on the NBC television series, Hazel, in the episode, "Hazel and the Halfback", which originally aired December 26, 1963.

In 1977, Gifford appeared as himself in the episode "The Shortest Yard" of the ABC sitcom The San Pedro Beach Bums.

In season one episode 4 titled "Rangeboy", Gifford and his wife Kathie Lee appeared in the February 28, 1995, episode of the ABC sitcom Coach, titled "The Day I Met Frank Gifford", in which a character on the show plots to meet the former football star who will attend an event to receive an award.

[citation needed] In 1997, the tabloid magazine Globe paid a woman named Suzen Johnson to meet, befriend, and lure Gifford into a New York City hotel room secretly equipped with videotape systems enabling the Globe to take and obtain photos of Gifford being seduced.

The family said, "After losing our beloved husband and father, Frank Gifford, we as a family made the difficult decision to have his brain studied in hopes of contributing to the advancement of medical research concerning the link between football and traumatic brain injury... We decided to disclose our loved one's condition to honor Frank's legacy of promoting player safety dating back to his involvement in the formation of the NFL Players Association in the 1950s.