For 45 years, Pat Summerall's voice and face spelled football. He anchored CBS and FOX's NFL telecasts (often alongside John Madden) and broadcast 16 Super Bowls (and served as a CBS Radio analyst or pregame reporter for 10 more). This is the part of Pat Summerall's story that most people know. In the Christian sports magazine Sports Spectrum, reporter Art Stricklin tells the rest of Pat's story:

Pat was an only child whose parents divorced before he was born, leaving him feeling empty and alone. He became an alcoholic, living from drink to drink as his body broke down. During the 1994 Masters tournament—[Summerall also did voiceover work for high-profile golf tournaments]—he faced up: "I'd been getting sick a lot, throwing up blood—and I got sick again at 4 a.m. I looked in the mirror, saw what a terrible sight I was, and said to myself, This isn't how I want to live."

Pat spent 33 days in the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California. This helped alleviate his alcohol problems but didn't address his spiritual vacuum. Then he bumped into [Tom Landry, his old football coach from his days as a star kicker]. [Landry] explained about [Pat's] spiritual need and connected him with Dallas Cowboy's chaplain John Weber. Pat's life was transformed, and he was baptized at age 69.

Art Stricklin closes his article with a few words chaplain John Weber offered to sum up Summerall's journey: "[Pat] was once the life of every party with a drink in his hand. Now he gets his power from another source."