But the force field Madden created around himself was the product of a staggering comic imagination. How many people on sports TV can you say that about?ĭid Madden enhance his on-air huggability? Sure. “You could argue people watched Cosell because they hated him.” You could also put it like this: Nobody watched John Madden because they hated him. “People watched Madden because they loved him,” a former CBS executive told me. (“When you got steam coming out of your head and your mouth, now you’re talking football.”) His bus was a bit. Steam wafting off Nate Newton’s head was a bit. The cockpit of the Goodyear Blimp was a bit. During the Giants-Broncos Super Bowl blowout in 1987, Madden did a bit where he imagined the buckets of Gatorade the Giants were about to pour on coach Bill Parcells as a mother, father, and baby. After a decent first Super Bowl between the 49ers and Bengals in 1982, Madden’s next two big games had a combined margin of victory of 48 points. He understood it was his job not just to call big games but to hold the audience’s attention if the football was crappy. (“Like a 50-pound laundry bag carrying 60 pounds of clothes,” one writer observed.) Madden was effervescent Summerall’s best skill, outside spare narration, was the wicked counterpunch.Ĭalling Madden a funny announcer seems like an insult. Summerall was slender Madden stood 6-foot-4 and weighed 270 pounds. Madden had been paired with Summerall because CBS found Vin Scully too talky. Something about the Madden–Pat Summerall partnership was inherently funny. “Because that’s where every businessman sat his ass,” he said. “It’s like they got halfway to milk and quit.” As he traveled from city to city on his bus-a work-around for the claustrophobia that kept him off planes-Madden advised friends to never sleep on the side of a hotel bed that was near the phone. “I don’t get it with dark chocolate,” Madden once said. We remember Maddenisms like “one knee equals two feet.” But he uttered many, many more. The Great NFL Heist: How Fox Paid for and Changed Football Forever It was like Charles Barkley embracing analytics, or Cris Collinsworth establishing himself in stand-up comedy. Madden was as good as, or better than, anyone at the two crucial skills of sports announcing. He was the funniest announcer on TV-or at least in a photo finish with Bob Uecker-and one of the funniest people on TV, period. I list Madden’s teaching abilities first because time has created a hazy memory that Madden was merely the “funny” announcer. Was that bit about the zone defense too much for you? Don’t worry. But the education was careful and subtle, as if Madden, clad in his CBS blazer, was gazing out of the television set and studying our faces in our dens. They had to teach the viewer about football. He once told a director: “You ever show me a replay with just a guy running with the ball in his hand, you can expect silence.” When a running back broke free for a long touchdown, Madden demanded viewers watch a replay of a key block so they could understand how the back got loose. The CBS Chalkboard (a precursor to the Telestrator) was developed so Madden could draw a play on the screen, just as he had at Berkeley. Madden was teaching America while teaching the staff of CBS, reprogramming network camera shots and replay angles so they’d work in concert with his mind. A public still grazing on newspaper sports pages knew little about how football worked. TV just hadn’t found the right teacher to explain it. Madden thought the 4-3 defense was great drama. “It would have been impossible to create an institution on the level of Monday Night Football with a lot of insipid drivel about the 4-3 defense,” Cosell wrote. Cosell and Madden had completely different ideas about how a football game ought to be announced.Ĭosell believed Monday Night was best when it focused on big story lines and big personalities and glossed over the subtleties of the game. They talked differently: Cosell showed off his word power while Madden brought the discourse back to the level of the sports bar. At the time, the reigning heavyweight of TV analysts was Howard Cosell of ABC’s Monday Night Football. “I guess there are only so many shots you can take in your emotional locker,” he said. Madden was a great Raiders coach-he won a Super Bowl and 103 games in 10 seasons. It made Madden’s classroom feel like a safe place, where you’d get a little smarter and the professor would never act like he was smarter than you. Those booms, that unbuttoned aura of regular guy-dom-all of that was an invitation. Madden’s genius was how he taught football. John Madden was the greatest teacher of football of the 20th century and probably of this one, too. When Madden died Tuesday morning at age 85, obits mentioned his three great careers: football coach, broadcaster, video game czar.
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