NFL great John Madden has passed away at the age of 85

[TMC]

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-legend-...001516310.html

Frank Schwab
Tue, December 28, 2021, 4:15 PM

NFL legend John Madden died Tuesday at the age of 85, according to the league.


How you remember John Madden is likely a direct reflection of your age. He was one of football’s biggest titans, leaving his impact on the game in a myriad of ways.

He became a Hall of Fame coach with the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s, worked as one of history’s best broadcasters for the three decades after that and today exists as the namesake of a video game franchise played by millions who never knew him as a coach or broadcaster.

John Madden’s football odyssey has humble beginnings
One of the most unique football journeys in history began on April 10, 1936, when Madden was born in Austin, Minnesota. He played college football at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 21st round of the 1958 NFL draft.

A knee injury in his first training camp ended his career before he ever appeared in a game and he quickly got into coaching at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California. and San Diego State (where he coached under future Chargers coach Don Coryell).

Madden joined the Oakland Raiders in 1967 as a linebackers coach and took the top job two seasons later. He was 32 at the time, making him one of the youngest head coaches in NFL history. He led the Raiders to a 12-1-1 season in his first year and never looked back.

Madden has historic success with Raiders
In 1976, Madden reached the pinnacle of his profession. His Raiders were 13-1 in the regular season, winning the AFC with a championship game victory over the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. They then beat the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 in Super Bowl XI and footage of Madden being carried off the field became one of the league’s most enduring images.

Madden retired in 1978 after coaching the Raiders for 10 seasons. He finished with a 103-32-7 record and his .759 winning percentage is by far the best among coaches with at least 100 games. The second-best? A guy by the name of Vince Lombardi at .738.

It says something about Madden that for many people, his life as a former NFL coach is an afterthought. And that’s because his second act in football became just as legendary as his time as a coach.

Madden one of biggest broadcasting stars ever
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Madden and Pat Summerall formed one of the most famous broadcasting teams in sports history. For two decades, nothing signified a big NFL game more than Madden and Summerall on the call. Madden’s excitable personality was perfect alongside the calm demeanor of Summerall. How many Thanksgivings in this country were soundtracked by the annual games that both men called?

The two worked at CBS before moving over to Fox when that network won the rights to NFC games. Their last game together was in 2002, when the New England Patriots upset the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.

After Summerall’s retirement, Madden joined “Monday Night Football” on ABC and was paired with Al Michaels. Madden and Michaels switched to “Sunday Night Football” on NBC in 2006. When Madden retired from broadcasting in 2009 he had a record 16 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sports Analyst/Personality. Madden and Howard Cosell stand above everyone else as the most famous broadcasters in NFL history.

If a great coaching career and a star turn in the broadcasting booth wasn’t enough, Madden’s outsized presence made him one of the most ubiquitous pitchmen in NFL history. From Ace Hardware to “tough-actin’ Tinactin,” Madden endorsed a wide variety of products as the NFL turned into the billion-dollar behemoth that it is today.

No endorsements were bigger for Madden, though, than his eponymous football video game, which was first released in 1988 for the Apple II. The first version was fairly primitive but focused more on X's and O's than any football game before it. Through the years, “Madden” became the gold standard of football games on a variety of platforms with actual NFL players getting so into the game play that they’d complain about their ratings.

Madden was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2006, but his impact on the game went far beyond the playing field. For a period of almost 50 years, you could argue there wasn’t a bigger name in the game.

[Heenan Fan]

R.I.P
To my NorCal Warrior. Raider guy by trade, Niner guy buy heart ❤️.

[D-Dey]

I heard that earlier today.

The man who introduced America to the "CBS Chalkboard," (a.k.a.; the Telestrator) for the 1981 football season.


And yet Vin Scully is still alive.

[Hawkee]

I remember John Madden best as the spokesman for Ace Hardware stores and I remember seeing him in the commercials for Ace Hardware and thought he was great and funny in them. But I first got into the Madden series of video games when I saw a Madden video game for my Gameboy Advance at Kmart on clearance and I decided to take a chance and bought it and fell in love with the gameplay and I had always dreamed of getting my Madden game autographed someday. It's really a shock that John Madden is now gone because he was a true legend of football and will be missed by the NFL and it's fans. I wonder now that John Madden is gone that EA Games will release a tribute edition of Madden 22 and they will rename the series NFL Quarterback Challenge too? Is there also Madden games for the Nintendo 3DS too?
Bestie

[Zoneboy]

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/j...dly-at-age-85/

[MrCleveland]

Sad day in American Football...I too, thought if Madden Games may have sales boosts?

[MA]

This thread should be merged with this one:

https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards...d.php?t=408450

[ponytail]

He made watching football fun. RIP John.

[MA]

There is already an existing thread that was created by TMC:

https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards...d.php?t=408437

[TJ]

RIP Coach Madden. He was a football lifer. There will never be another broadcasting team like Pat Summerall and John Madden.

Fox aired a great documentary on Christmas day. It's available on Peacock now. It's nice that he was able to see it on the weekend.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by D-Dey

I heard that earlier today.

The man who introduced America to the "CBS Chalkboard," (a.k.a.; the Telestrator) for the 1981 football season.


And yet Vin Scully is still alive.

Speaking of which....Vin Scully pays tribute to broadcast partner John Madden:

Vin Scully reminisced about what it was like to call NFL games with John Madden, who passed away on Dec. 28.

Scully said he was so impressed by Madden’s knowledge of football that simply sitting with him in the broadcast booth had an impact.

“There was no sense in my mind that I was competing with John,” Scully said on NFL Network. “You could say I was just holding on for dear life and loving every minute.”

You can take a look at the full clip here.

[TMC]

John Madden was remembered throughout the NFL on Sunday

The sports broadcasting icon, who died Tuesday at age 85 three days after Fox's Christmas Day premiere of its All Madden documentary, was celebrated throughout the NFL in various ways. The NFL on Fox, for instance, added Madden's silhouette to its NFL logo. "All around the league, we mourn the loss of the iconic John Madden: coach, broadcaster and so much more whose legacy will live forever," said Fox's Kenny Albert ahead of the Las Vegas Raiders-Indianapolis Colts game. Fox Sports, which is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Madden's presence also aired a tribute to Madden. CBS, where Madden got his broadcasting start also showed an emotional tribute. CBS' Tony Romo also did a Madden impression during the Chiefs-Bengals game. ALSO: John Madden was glad he passed on Cheers' Coach Ernie Pantusso role.

What made John Madden great: "John understood how television worked, why it worked, why it didn’t work, and when it didn’t work"

That's according to NBC's Sunday Night Football executive producer Fred Gaudelli, who was the last producer to work with the iconic sports broadcaster, during his stints on ABC's Monday Night Football and NBC's SNF. Gaudelli said Madden, who died last week at age 85, used to have a saying that has always stayed with Gaudelli as a producer: You can’t format a live event. “John understood how television worked, why it worked, why it didn’t work, and when it didn’t work,” Gaudelli said. “He got TV on a level like a Dick Ebersol level. Al (Michaels) has the same quality. They just know what the audience needs and they know when they need it. Not that they’re perfect. I mean, no one’s perfect. But in those big moments, they’re not somewhere else when there’s something in front of the audience. If I made a decision differently in the game that took us away from something, which invariably I did, he would hit that talk-back button and say, ‘Hey, can we get back to the game?’ I mean, even to this day, if I feel like I’ve been on a topic too long that’s away from the game, I feel his voice coming through that talk-back.” Gaudelli added: "John was one of the most curious people I’ve ever known, and curious about everything and curious about you. He wanted to know your background. He wanted to know why you were wearing a pink shirt. He wanted to know why you don’t wear socks with your shoes. He just wanted to know. He was authentic in the same way Barkley is. They are who they are. He didn’t try to be somebody on the air that he wasn’t off the air. He was John Madden 24-7. Like Dick Vitale too. There are a few of those guys out there, but his curiosity did not have a ceiling."

ALSO:

• Every sport could use a John Madden: "Madden had a master’s in education, but in retrospect that combination of performance and education, theatrical goofiness and real rigor, was coaching—he helped you understand, and got you to care," says David Roth. "Those are valuable skills for a television commentator or anyone else, but the NFL is not really about this kind of demystification anymore. In its current iteration, the NFL is less concerned with winning people over than reminding them how significant it is; the battle has been won in a way it was not during Madden’s tenure, and the NFL now celebrates and consolidates and brands and rebrands that victory much more than it does anything else. As befits a league that sees itself as a sort of unofficial auxiliary branch of the armed forces, mystification is very nearly the point. This is where the difference between Madden and, say, Jon Gruden is at its most obvious—Madden saw his job as fundamentally being about clarifying and communicating, the other in the catechistic recitation of coachy bluster and jargon. It’s not just that Madden would be too singular and silly a figure for the contemporary NFL, although he would be. It’s that what he did best isn’t something the NFL is currently much interested in doing."
• Madden made audiences smarter by teaching them the subtleties of the game

[TMC]

John Madden will be on the cover of his Madden video game for the first time since 2000

Madden 23 will honor its iconic namesake, who died in December at age 85.