John Madden, 1936-2021

John Madden was a big man who looms large in the history of the National Football League.

John Earl Madden was born on April 10, 1936, in Austin, Minnesota, near the Iowa State Line. This is Big Ten Country, but when he was young, his father moved the family to Daly City, just south of San Francisco, and so John always considered himself a West Coast guy.

He went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Daly City, and then to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He was a catcher on their baseball team, and a tackle, both offensive and defensive, on their football team. At both Jefferson and Poly, he was a teammate of his neighborhood friend, John Robinson, who went on to coach at both the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Rams.

He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1959. But, having already injured one knee in high school, he injured the other knee in training camp, and that was the end of his playing career. He would not get to be on the Eagles team that won the 1960 NFL Championship.

That team was quarterbacked by Norm Van Brocklin, the Hall-of-Famer who went on to become the 1st head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and the 2nd of the Atlanta Falcons. John remembered walking into the locker room on crutches, and seeing Van Brocklin looking at football film. Van Brocklin said, "Hey, Red, come watch with me."

They studied film together, and, John said, that's when he became a coach. Oddly, Van Brocklin wasn't a very good coach, although he never really had the horses.

In 1960, John got a job as an assistant coach at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California, outside Santa Barbara. He became head coach in 1962. In 1963, he was hired as an assistant at San Diego State University, under Don Coryell, who would later coach the San Diego Chargers and engage in some memorable AFC Western Division battles with Madden.

In 1967, Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis hired him to be linebackers coach. They won the AFL Championship, losing to the Green Bay Packers of Vince Lombardi in Super Bowl II. A year later, John Rauch resigned, and Madden was named his successor as head coach. At 32, he was the youngest non-playing coach in pro football history. (Several early coaches ran their teams while still playing for them.)

Davis, who was also the Raiders' general manager, built a team in his image. Nasty. Sometimes weird. Someone once compared them to "the Island of Misfit Toys" in the 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But with Davis running the organization, and Madden running the team, they built a record that made them one of professional football's iconic franchises. They inspired NFL Films head Steve Sabol to write a poem, which he showed to Davis, who loved it, saying, "This is what the Oakland Raiders are all about." It concludes:

The Autumn Wind is a Raider

pillaging just for fun.

He'll knock you 'round

and upside-down

and laugh when he's conquered and won.

John Madden seems, from current perspective, to be too nice a guy to coach the Raiders. That's misleading: He was the perfect guy to coach that team -- and, maybe, only that team. Most coaches in those days acted like domineering fathers. He was more like the cool older brother, who would teach you things that Dad wouldn't teach you. The players related to him: White and black, urban and rural, the straight-laced and the party animal, the merely mischievous and the truly dirty.

He gave his players one rule, and only one: "Be on time." He liked to say, "Wearing a tie on the team flight never won a game." That gave them a freedom that most coaches wouldn't give. He coached them for 10 seasons, never finishing lower than 2nd in the AFC West. He won the Division in 1969 (the last season of the old AFL West), 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976. He reached the AFL or AFC Championship Game in 1969, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977.

In 10 seasons, he went 103-32-7. Not only did he become the 1st coach ever to win 100 games in as few as 10 seasons, but his .763 winning percentage is the highest in NFL history, slightly higher than Lombardi's .738. He was the Light Side of the Raider Force, Al Davis was the Dark Side, and, together, they built something that wasn't always good, but it was always must-see TV, long after John left for the broadcast booth.

But the Raiders had difficulty winning big games. In 1968, his last year as an assistant, they beat the New York Jets in a regular-season game remembered as "The Heidi Bowl," but lost the AFL Championship Game to the Jets. In 1969, they lost the AFL Championship Game to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 1970, the 1st post-merger season, they lost the AFC Championship Game to the Baltimore Colts.

They missed the Playoffs in 1971. In 1972, they thought they had the Pittsburgh Steelers beaten in a Divisional Playoff, before a play known as "The Immaculate Reception." Various Raiders insisted that the play was illegal for various reasons: The pass hit Frenchy Fuqua, not Jack Tatum, therefore all Steeler players were ineligible receivers; Franco Harris caught the ball when it was on the ground, therefore it was an incomplete pass; and Phil Villapiano was illegally blocked by John McMakin, therefore the ball should have been placed at the spot of the foul, and then 5 yards marked off, negating the touchdown.

It's been nearly half a century. Every piece of footage of the play that has ever been found has proven that the ball hit Tatum, and never hit Fuqua. Every piece of footage found shows McMakin's block was legal. And no piece of footage found has yet shown the ball hitting the ground as Harris caught it. Still, Madden said he would never get over the play: "No matter how many times I watch the films of the Immaculate Reception play, I never know for sure what happened."

The Raiders lost the 1973 AFC Championship Game to the Miami Dolphins. In 1974, they dethroned the 3-time defending AFC Champion Dolphins in a wild game at the Oakland Coliseum that became known as "The Sea of Hands," but lost to the Steelers again in the AFC Championship Game. They lost to the Steelers again in the 1975 AFC Championship Game.

Finally, in 1976, after a 13-1 regular season, and a controversial Playoff win over the New England Patriots, they beat the Steelers, and advanced to Super Bowl XI. Once that stumbling block was removed, the last remaining game must have seemed like a piece of cake, because, on January 9, 1977, they dominated the Minnesota Vikings, 32-14. John Madden was carried off the field at the Rose Bowl by his players.

John's best friend while growing up in Daly City was John Robinson. Exactly 8 days earlier, Robinson led USC to victory in the Rose Bowl game on that very same field. Robinson had spent the 1974 season as the Raiders' running backs coach.

Madden got the Raiders back to the AFC Championship Game in 1977, but lost to the Denver Broncos. After missing the Playoffs with a 9-7 season in 1978, he resigned, citing an ulcer, and what would now be called "occupational burnout."

Tom Flores -- who succeeds John as the earliest living head coach to win a Super Bowl -- took control, and led them to wins in Super Bowls XV and XVIII. Super Bowl XV was played in New Orleans, and Flores followed the Madden model: Leave the players alone, and let them enjoy themselves.

Dick Vermeil, another Northern California guy, who got the Philadelphia Eagles there, was concerned that his players would misbehave in that most misbehaving of American cities, and kept them on a short leash. The considerably looser Raiders won big, and, 2 years later, Vermeil, himself a relatively young coach at the time, quit, calling himself "burned out." Oddly, like Madden, he went into broadcasting. Unlike Madden, he went back into coaching -- and won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams.

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Between realizing that his playing career could not continue, and deciding to become a coach, John Madden married Virginia Fields in 1959. In Pleasanton, California, in the East Bay near Oakland, they raised 2 sons, both of whom played Ivy League football: Joseph at Brown University, and Michael at Harvard.

Within a year of his marriage, the Cal Poly team plane crashed. John Robinson, then still a player at Cal Poly, was on that plane, and remarked that he was the dividing line: Everybody behind him lived, and everybody in front of him died. Madden lost friends as a result of that crash, and was afraid of flying thereafter. He endured it until 1979, when, in his 1st year as a game analyst for CBS Sports, he had a panic attack while flying back from covering a game in Tampa. He said he never flew again. Ironically, Virginia became a licensed pilot. But John never flew with her.

So from the 1980 season onward, he took Amtrak to the cities where he would cover the games. CBS, knowing they had a valuable commodity, accommodated this. One of the commercials he did for Lite Beer from Miller (as Miller Lite was then known) reflected this.

In 1981, after 2 years as a backup analyst, CBS paired John up with their Number 1 NFL play-by-play man, former New York Giants tackle Pat Summerall. They remained CBS' top team through the 1993 season, when CBS lost their share of the NFL's TV contract, and Fox gained it. The honchos at Fox Sports were no dummies: Their first hires were Pat and John, and they remained together through the 2001 season. Fox paid John more than any team paid any player. It was worth it: He may have been the greatest ambassador the NFL has ever known.

Years before former basketball coach Mike Fratello became known as "The Czar of the Telestrator," John Madden pioneered its use in TV broadcasts. He tended to draw a defensive player's path to a ballcarrier, and then, on impact, yell, "Boom!"

At the end of the 1984 season, he announced what he called "The All-Madden Team." For Fox's broadcast of Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, he announced an All-Time All-Madden Super Bowl Team, honoring the game's 1st 30 years. For their broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999, he announced an All-Madden All-Millennium Team, honoring the greatest players of the last 1,000 years. (The NFL was only in its 79th season.) In his 1994 book All Madden, he explained:

What does it mean to be "All-Madden"? It's a whole range of things. For defensive linemen and linebackers, it's about Jack Youngblood playing with a busted leg, Lawrence Taylor wreaking havoc on the offense, and Reggie White making the other guy wish he put a little more in the collection plate at church. It's about a guy who's got a dirty uniform, mud on his face and grass in the ear hole of his helmet.

Because of his fear of flying, Madden never broadcast the Pro Bowl from Hawaii. Nor did he do any overseas games, such as the preseason exhibitions the NFL sometimes did in London. But he broadcast 12 Super Bowls.

And he loved doing Thanksgiving Day games from Detroit or Dallas. He brought a "turducken": A chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey, and he would would present a turkey leg to the game's most valuable player. One year, he realized the real MVP was the Dallas Cowboys' offensive line, and he couldn't give 5 men 2 turkey legs. So, the next year, he brought what he called a "nuclear turkey," a bird with 8 drumsticks.

His love of food even led to a change in his mode of transportation: In 1987, Greyhound offered him the use of a customized bus, basically a hotel room on wheels. It became known as the Madden Cruiser, and he claimed it was the best way to see the country, especially since he could now do something that he couldn't do on the train: Take little side trips to anywhere, in search of just the right hot dog, just the right steak, just the right tacos, and so on. (Despite being a Minnesota-born Irishman, far from the tropics in both ways, he loved Mexican food.)

In 1998, he published John Madden's Ultimate Tailgating, discussing his favorite recipes, his favorite places to eat, and how food shapes the football-watching experience. It was the last of 6 books he wrote. He also did commercials for Miller Lite (when they had a baseball game, he was on the "Less Filling" team, in spite of his weight), Outback Steakhouse (which eventually sponsored the Madden Cruiser), Ace Hardware (leading their competitor True Value to hire Summerall), and "Tough Actin'" Tinactin, a fungicide used to treat athlete's foot.

His last broadcast for Fox was Super Bowl XXXVI, which may also have been the last time the New England Patriots were a lovable underdog. He moved to ABC, and paired up with Al Michaels for Monday Night Football. In 2006, Michaels and Madden moved to NBC for Sunday Night Football. John thus became the 1st person to call sporting events for each of American TV's "Big Four" networks (Michaels fell short because he's never worked for CBS), and became the 1st man to call a Super Bowl on 4 different networks. His last broadcast was Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, ending a 31-season career.

But there are millions of football fans who didn't watch his broadcasts, and may not even have known he was a coach. Because from 1988 onward, he sponsored EA Sports' Madden NFL football video game. He saw the game as a way for people who didn't know football to learn how the sport really works.

But this gave rise to the Madden Curse: A player who appeared on the box's cover before the new season would either have a bad year or be injured. The first real player to appear on the cover was Garrison Hearst in 1998. It didn't affect him: He set a San Francisco 49ers team record for rushing yards in a season.

The most notable example was Shaun Alexander, on the cover of Madden 07, released before the 2006 season. The season before, the running back had won the NFL's Most Valuable Player award, and helped the Seattle Seahawks reach their 1st Super Bowl, although they lost it. But after being on the cover, he suffered the first of a series of injuries that left him 547 rushing yards short of 10,000 for his career, and may be keeping him out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He doesn't blame the Curse, saying, "Do you want to be hurt and on the cover, or just hurt?"

John Madden was honored with 16 Emmy Awards, and election to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and the California Hall of Fame -- the latter honoring people who have come from California and achieved fame in all walks of life. He is the only man honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame with induction as a coach and as a recipient of their Pete Rozelle Award for media work.

Four days ago, on Christmas Day, the Fox Network aired All Madden, a documentary about him. Yesterday, December 28, 2021, John Madden died at his home in Pleasanton. He was 85 years old. After all his noise -- some of it cantankerous, much of it joyful -- his death appears to have been peaceful.

* Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, winner of Super Bowl XLIII, John's last broadcast: John Madden was a true football man. RIP, Coach.

* Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, perhaps forgetting about the existence of George Halas, but not too many others: I am not aware of anyone who has made a more meaningful impact on the National Football League.

* Vin Scully, who broadcast a few football games with him: I was saddened to hear about the passing of John Madden, at age 85. One the all-time greats, he showed me the ropes during our brief football partnership. He was always kind and delightful. He can now join his former partner, Pat Summerall, in calling Super Bowls in heaven.

* Lisa Olson, former NFL writer for the New York Daily News: Devastated. RIP to a legend, to a man who always returned a phone call, who was always gracious, who never hesitated to offer warm greetings or advice, our friend John Madden

* LeBron James, not a football guy: Rest in Paradise To the John Madden!!!! Your legacy will continue to live on !!!!!

* Dan Rather, not a football guy despite coming from the football-mad State of Texas: Few approached life with the joy of legendary football coach & broadcaster John Madden. A colleague at CBS, he was a gentleman with a boisterous sense of humor. On the sidelines & in the booth, this voluble mountain of energy was a trailblazer. A golden era ends with his passing.

* Curt Menefee, anchor of Fox NFL Sunday: Just heard that the All Madden documentary will re-air in about an hour at 9p ET/6p PT on FS1. I love the fact that John Madden not only got to see it in full, but received all of the tributes from each participant and watched it with his family on Christmas Day. A living eulogy.

For the record, he appears not to have been related to the John Madden who played 13 seasons as a center in the NHL, including winning 2 Stanley Cups with the New Jersey Devils and another with the Chicago Blackhawks.

But Coach John Madden felt like family to all of us. He might be the one person in football who was beloved by fans of all 32 NFL teams. And he earned it, in many ways.