John Madden, the Super Bowl-winning coach of the then Oakland Raiders and iconic color sportscaster whose name is practically synonymous with the NFL, has passed away at the age of 85. His folksy style of commentary endeared him to a generation of football fans, and then his eponymous line of video games made him literally a household name for millions of kids and parents alike. Few have become so identifiable as the face — and more so the voice — of a sport as was Madden. And his loss leaves a void in the game that cannot be filled.
John Earl Madden was born in 1936 in Depression-era Minnesota. His father, an auto mechanic, moved the family to Daily City, California in the Bay Area while John was a boy. He was a high school football star and college player for the College of San Mateo and then on scholarship to Oregon. A knee injury red-shirted him and after a few more transfers, he ended up playing for Cal Poly while earning both a bachelors, then master’s in education. Madden won all-conference honors as an offensive tackle. I must confess that before researching this piece, I never knew he’d been a star athlete. He was, in fact, so good at the game that he was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1958. But Madden would never play pro ball as, once again, a knee injury dashed his plans, this time for good.
One wonders had his knees been firm if Madden would have played the game and then perhaps ended up in relative obscurity. But blessings come in all forms. It was during rehabilitation that the desire to coach revealed itself to him. At first as assistant coach at Allen Hancock College in Santa Maria then at San Diego State where he was mentored by Don Coryell.
Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders, took notice and brought him on as linebacker coach in 1967, helping propel the team to Super Bowl II. In 1969, at age 32, Madden was named the Raiders’ head coach, making him at the time the youngest in the then American Football League. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Madden would go on to lead one of the great teams of the 1970s, building an all-star roster that included the likes of Kenny Stabler, Fred Biletnikoff, Cliff Branch, Otis Sistrunk, Dave Casper, John Matuszak, Ray Guy, Ted Hendricks, Jack Tatum, Art Shell, and others. The boisterous coach imprinted his style on this collection of bruisers, for whom gray, silver and black seemed ideal colors, and enacted Al Davis’ concept of “orchestrated mayhem.” Before he ever climbed into an announcer’s booth, those of us who grew up on the game of the Seventies marveled at this hulking man with the contorted face who was tailor-made to lead this outcast group of players whom one coach referred to as a “criminal element.” His was a non-authoritarian style. He gave his men leeway to, as some complained, play dirty (although given the low number of penalties they were just physical…or the refs were afraid to toss the flag). All Madden asked was “play like hell when I tell you to.” And it worked. His ten-year run produced seven division titles and a Super Bowl win in 1977, earning him a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He was heralded as one of the great coaches of the game when he retired in 1979. But his star was only rising. A nation was about to be introduced to the Madden mystique, and sportscasting would never be the same.
I could list all the networks for which he called games, and comment on his Lite Beer commercials, or his coast-to-coast rides in his quirky Madden bus (his claustrophobia had become so severe that soon after he left coaching it prevented him from flying). But that is all out there. I wanted to give a bit of his story before he became the Madden most know. A fine athlete and terrific coach. Facets about his life that are sometimes overlooked given his subsequent fame.
With that said, what made John Madden so much a force in the booth that really it is impossible to imagine a replacement? I think it was the fact that his love of the game poured out of him and into our living rooms every time he spoke into the mic. He once said: “Football is what I am. I didn’t go into it to make a living or because I enjoyed it. There is much more to it…I am totally consumed by football, totally involved. I’m not into gardening…or any other hobbies. I don’t fish or hunt. I’m in football.” And we could tell. Which is why we loved his commentary.
As color man to the stoic and dependable Pat Summerall for years, Madden was able to chat about anything that crossed his mind, in a way my buddies and I might while downing a few beers at Buffalo Wild Wings on football Sunday. He didn’t limit his trademark telestrator pen to just diagraming plays on the screen for us, thus presenting a fascinating glimpse into the thought process of a head coach in real time. He would scribble over all sorts of things we watching at home hadn’t noticed, often tongue-in-cheek, reminding us this is, after all, a game to enjoy. (My favorite was his detailed analysis of Cowboy QB Troy Aikman’s apparently failed attempt at growing a beard.)
For me, the classic Madden was during that great Chicago Bears season of 1985-86 when one could tell that to the old coach, this was what a football team was all about…that if he was still coaching, this was the team he’d want to lead. Like Madden himself, the 85 Bears were a colorful, fun-loving group of iconoclasts who morphed into absolute steamrollers on the gridiron. I can remember Madden calling the playoff game between the Bears and the New York Giants. A classic match-up. Here we are, Madden was saying… Chicago Bears and New York Giants. Soldier Field, Chicago. It’s freezing, and snow is whipping across the stadium. Two of the oldest franchises duking it out old school… and yet, he lamented, they were playing on artificial turf? Oddly enough, my friends and I had literally just said the same thing! That was Madden. He was our everyman. The guy with whom we’d love to hang and watch a game — any game. Very often, he was as much the spectacle as the playing on the field. Who else can say that today?
The hugely successful video games to which his name is attached kept the name “Madden” fresh for a younger generation of football fans after he left the scene. As such, John Madden is football for so many. So he will live on, I suppose. And I guess all things must pass. Still, as I get older I notice this lesson keeps coming at me at an unnervingly rapid pace. It is as if pieces of not just my youth, but the Americana in which I grew up, are being chipped away, one John Madden at a time. Yes, 85 years, especially so full as his, is one helluva life. But then, as he might say, you look up and “Boom!” the great one is gone. And the simple fact is that the game of football, John Madden’s raison d’etre, is emptier today.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and author. His latest novel, The Extraordinary, tells the story of a family dealing with a Marine veteran’s PTSD as told through the words of his autistic teenaged son.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.