Quiet, you. John Madden was aces and your hardware is fat.
Beyond pick-up games during recess, I never played football as a kid. So years later, when I became more interested in how the game was actually played, Madden was pretty much the lens through which I experienced the whole sport. He opened it up in a far more entertaining and instructive way than all the barking tough guys and the solemn, sour-faced traditionalists ever could.
It’s colored by a lot of nostalgia, but for someone like me, football couldn’t have had a better ambassador. RIP.
I never played much of the Madden computer games despite being hooked on both computer gaming and sports-related stuff growing up. I am old enough to remember as a little kid watching him and the Raiders at games in Oakland in the mid 70s, including the 1976 AFC Championship where they beat the favored Steelers on a chilly day after Christmas. What a rivalry back then. The Coliseum absolutely rocked that day, and they went on to beat the Vikes in the Super Bowl to close out an impressive season.
Decades later, when I returned to the area, I learned that the Coach retired not far from where he coached the Raiders, and not far from where I live. I’d hear he would occasionally be spotted on Main Street chatting with locals. Though I never met him personally, I’ve heard he was a good man, and that’s what matters most at the end of the day, doesn’t it? RIP
I want to add one more thing on Madden. I was just browsing youtube (yes I know a desperate hive of scum and villainy) and came across the video of Barry Sanders’ 1991 47 yard TD run against the Cowboys (the one where Barry makes half the Cowboy defense just MISS him and strolls into the end zone - you know the run I mean.) And I had forgotten that was a John Madden called game. B/C John doesn’t actually say much. He starts telling some shaggy dog football story as the ball is snapped, then Barry gets going and John just… shuts up. He lets Pat call the play clean, and then he just stays quiet while we get all the reaction to the spectacular run. He let the football game, and the amazing play, talk. For a guy famed for saying stuff, he also knew when to NOT say anything. It is IMO a very rare talent.
When the late Darryl Stingly was rendered quadroplegic in a preseason game in Oakland, only one person from either team rushed to the hospital after the game to check on Stingly. That person was John Madden. The Patriots only got somebody there eventually because Madden called the team from the hospital and told them to get someone’s ass over there. Stingly later described Madden as having “a heart as big as his body.”
Was at that preseason game as a kid. What an awful mishap. There has been and always will be an element of brutality to the sport, and the risks will never be fully eliminated so long as it is played, regardless of improvements to protective equipment and the rules.
