John Madden Was Glad he Passed on the Coach Ernie Pantusso Role in "Cheers"
by Ryan Parker
December 28, 2021


John Madden was offered one of the lead roles in "Cheers", but he turned it down — because he worried equally the show would fail and succeed.

Madden made a memorable appearance in the 1994 film Little Giants, in which he played a version of himself helping out Rick Moranis’ rag-tag youth football team. In an episode at the time, Entertainment Tonight dropped by the set and caught with the cast, including Madden, who admitted he did not love the hurry-up and wait of film-making.

“The more I am around, the more I realize why I like live television,” he told ET then. “Live television, they say they’re going to kick the ball off at 1 p.m., boom they kick it off at 1 p.m., and then you’re all done.”




In the same interview, Madden mentioned that he passed on the role of Coach Ernie Pantusso on "Cheers", which apparently was written with him in mind. The late Nicholas Colasanto went on to play the role from the 1982 pilot until his death in 1985.

“When Cheers first started, they wrote me in as the bartender, Coach,” Madden said. “So, I talked about it. If the thing fails, you’re a failure, and I didn’t want to lose. And if the thing won, which obviously it did, then I would have had to quit what I was doing, what I loved. So, I couldn’t figure out why I should do it.”


The iconic NFL coach and broadcast legend died Tuesday at age 85.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/john-madden-cheers-coach-role-1235067996/

It kind of makes sense to see John Madden as Coach since Sam Malone was originally envisioned to be an ex-pro football player (he in all likelihood, would've been played by Fred Dryer had they not ultimately gone with Ted Danson) instead of an ex-baseball player.

Merlin Olsen and Bob Uecker are the only sportscasters that I can immediately think of who were regulars on scripted TV series while maintaining their "day-jobs". I think that Merlin Olsen was doing Little House on the Prairie and Father Murphy while at the same time, serving as NBC's lead NFL color commentator. And Bob Uecker was working on Mr. Belvedere, while at the same time maintaining his other job as the radio broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers. Don Meredith also had a semi-regular role on Police Story when he was working NFL games for NBC during the 1970s (sandwiched in-between his stints on ABC's Monday Night Football).

Former baseball great and current New York Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez had a memorable guest appearance on “Seinfeld.”

NFL Hall of Fame defensive tackle Alex Karras was also a football announcer and had a prolific career as an actor in films and television. Who could ever forget his performance as “Mongo” in the great Mel Brooks film, “Blazing Saddles”?

And, legendary NFL running back O.J. Simpson found success as a football commentator, commercial spokesperson and actor. O.J. Simpson probably achieved his greatest acting triumph for his memorable portrayal of Detective Fred Norberg in the unfailingly amusing “Naked Gun” film series. O.J. probably looked even more athletic and Fred Astaire-like, repeatedly falling down a flight of stairs or being run over by a car than when he was breaking tackles and rushing for 80-yard-touchdowns as the preeminent NFL halfback of all time.

I wonder whatever happened to the one-and-only Orenthal James Simpson?