Football: What Made Andy Griffith Famous

America mourned Andy Griffith on Tuesday after his death at the age of 86.

He was known to most of us for his portrayal of Mayberry Sheriff Andy Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show,” one of our most iconic staples of American pop culture. For those of us living in the Springfield Retirement Castle, he was known for his role as Matlock in his later years.

But what a lot of us don’t realize is Griffith first made it big for a comedy routine he did about college football. We’ve included a video link to a pretty good re-creation of Griffith’s 1953 monologue about a country rube who accidentally wanders into a football game without knowing what he’s witnessing — “What It Was, Was Football.”

As you can see, it’s a solid start to a legendary career of entertaining the masses.