Clues: It's not anybody with lots of TV commercials, talk show appearances or his own sitcom — but he's also one of the men, along with Madden and Frank Gifford, who are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as well as its broadcasting wing.

The answer is Dan Dierdorf, who says you don't get official notification of that sort of thing. In thumbing through listings of NFL TV analysts this fall, he says "it just dawned on me."

Dierdorf, 60, wasn't born to broadcasting — "my father worked his entire life at the Hoover vacuum cleaner company in Canton, Ohio" — but as a 13-year NFL offensive lineman "he'd be down in warm-ups looking up at CBS banner on the booth and think, 'I'd love to that.' "

So he worked radio in St. Louis, where he still lives, for years before retiring and joining CBS in 1985. He did play-by-play his first season — subbing for an announcer who'd passed away. He jumped to CBS' No. 2 team the next season then vaulted to ABC'sMonday Night Football the next year. He was dropped after 12 seasons but now says it was just business.

"ESPN had taken over ABC. (Then-ESPN head) Steve Bornstein wanted to make his mark," he says. "It is what it is."

Dierdorf, working Saturday's Ravens-Colts game on CBS (8 p.m. ET), suggests would-be game analysts should be fatalistic about their prospects because "you can either use language to make your point quickly, or you can't. I've never been at a loss for words. … But you have to make your point in 15 seconds, wrap it up and put a bow on it and slide it under the tree."

And he's not antsy over how those deliveries are received: "I'm not worried about anything anybody says or writes about me. I'm comfortable."