There are more than just a couple of generations that knew the low, rumbling voice that would call NFL games for more than 40 years.

Pat Summerall, who worked for CBS, Fox and ESPN through his career, died on Tuesday. He was 81.

If you watched games, including 13 Super Bowls, you heard Summerall make the play-by-play with a number of different analysts in the press box. His longest serving partner was former Raiders coach John Madden.

"Pat Summerall was a hero to me.  I treasured the gift of friendship that I had with him.  I was his understudy for 10 years," CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz said. "He could not have been more generous or kind to a young broadcaster.  He was a giant and one of the iconic figures in the history of the CBS Television Network."

The former placekicker in the better part of the 1950s scored more than 500 points in his career. It was that experience and his ability to understand the game that made him great in the broadcast booth.

"Pat was a friend of nearly 40 years.  He was a master of restraint in his commentary, an example for all of us.  He was also one of the great storytellers who ever spoke into a microphone," said Verne Lundquist of CBS.  

If you played football video games, there was nothing better than the Madden line of NFL games made by EA Sports. Summerall’s voice accompanied the best of Madden’s "rumbling, stumbling, fumbling" phrases as the best action between you and your buddies calling the plays with your favorite teams and players.

"We never had one argument, and that was because of Pat. He was a great broadcaster and a great man. He always had a joke. Pat never complained, and we never had an unhappy moment. He was something very special," Madden said. "Pat Summerall is the voice of football and always will be."

Summerall retired in 2004, however he didn’t leave the  broadcast booth altogether. While recovering from a liver transplant he filled in for Mike Patrick at ESPN when Patrick had been sidelined with open-hear surgery.

"I was so lucky I got to work with Pat," Madden said. "He was so easy to work with. He knew how to use words. For a guy like myself who rambles on and on, and doesn’t always make sense, he was sent from heaven."

While working for CBS, Summerall didn’t only lead football broadcasts. He called 26 Masters and was behind the microphone for 21 U.S. Open Tennis Championships.

"In 1976 I was a junior in college and Chuck Will put me in the 18th tower as a spotter for Pat Summerall.  He told me, ‘You’re not going to meet a finer man in this business than Pat Summerall.’ And to this day, I never have.  He was kind to everyone," said longtime CBS producer Lance Barrow.

"When you were around him you never knew that he was the number one broadcaster.  He taught me so much, not only about this business, but how to treat people.  I’m sad on this day, but also smiling because I know he will be with his good buddy Tom Brookshier."