THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
John Madden was one of a kind, or one of three kinds maybe. One of the most successful coaches ever, the most influential television sports analyst ever and the inspiration for and voice of the first great sports video game. He was the personification of Oakland, coming as he did from gritty, blue collar Daly City, and became an aspirational pitch man to middle America. He was big, bordering on bigger than life.
When I began doing football analysis in Britain, I told myself I could never be another Madden. But I could try to avoid being like the horde of guys who were not Maddens. That meant trying to see the big picture, as a coach might; working to learn and be prepared; and finally daring to trust my instincts to bring my own knowledge, about football and the wider world, to the game. Which also meant my humor. Actually, it was a lot like trying to be another Madden (Lord knows the networks kept running out former players who thought all they needed was their own version of "Boom", Madden's key exclamation while doing replays) or at least showing I'd learned from him.
When we would line up plays to discuss during the US commercial breaks of games Madden did, I'd be pleased if we were doing the same play he came out of the break to do. I would be almost as pleased if they snuck the same play in before we could get to it, and hope I could find another as interesting. Actually, one of my favorites was in Super Bowl 36, when the Pats got the ball back on their own 18, score tied, 1:21 left, and no time outs. Madden said they should play for overtime because of their bad field position, but I was saying no, they have to go for it here. After the third straight completion to JR Redmond, who got a first down and went out of bounds to stop the clock, Madden said "Now I kinda like what they're doing." I beamed to everyone who'd heard me get there ahead of him! He'd conceded I was right!
We all know Madden was afraid to fly. What people didn't know was how smart he was. For many years he used the train, and on one such journey he met Jeanine Basinger, my film professor and one of my best friends, as well as one of America's finest film scholars. She also didn't fly; they were both headed out to California. Turns out they came from similar stock: he was born in Austin, Minnesota on the Cedar River; she came from Brookings, South Dakota not far north of Cedar Falls. Turns out too, they were the same age though Jeanine never realized that until he died. She told me Madden was one of the smartest people she'd ever met, and one of the most curious. He always wanted to learn. They clicked in part because she knew little about football and he could talk to her about anything and everything else. She also astutely noted he didn't really care much about how he appeared to other people: he knew what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do, and that to her was a mark of a truly creative person.
Madden's journey to coaching was circuitous. His dad moved the family to California when he was young. He played football in high school in Daly City, with future USC coach John Robinson, then in 1954 in junior college at the College of San Mateo, in Tom Brady's hometown, which got him a scholarship to Oregon. But before playing he tore his knee, so moved on to Grays Harbor JC in Washington and finally back to San Mateo. He wound up playing two years at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, and getting drafted by the Eagles, in round 21, the 244th pick.
He tore his other knee in camp, and was cut, but he later said watching tape with Norm Van Brocklin while he rehabbed was a huge learning experience. He returned to Cal Poly to take a Master's degree in education, and coached at Allan Hancock, another local junior college. His big break was getting hired by Don Coryell as a defensive assistant at San Diego State. Coryell was one of the great offensive minds, and was paying particular attention to the passing concepts of the local AFL team, the San Diego Chargers, under Sid Gillman. This got Madden noticed by one of Gillman's ex-assistants, Al Davis, who hired him as linebackers coach of the Raiders in 1967.
Davis was a Brooklyn street kid whose idea of the Raiders was in perfect synch to Oakland. Davis' Raiders became a cult, more like Sonny Barger's Hell's Angels, another Oakland product, than the Dallas Cowboys. Al liked tough guys and outlaws, and he wanted a downfield passing game. Beat you to a pulp, then land the knockout punch with a big pass. And never give an inch, on the field or off. Davis had bought into the team, then took control, and after giving up the coaching reins was still owner/general manager.
At one point the other AFL owners had made Davis commissioner of the league; once they got into the NFL Davis became a huge thorn in commissioner Pete Rozelle's side; when Davis wanted to move the Raiders to Los Angeles, and the league said no, he took them to court and won. The fans in Oakland actually cheered him.
The Raiders team Davis had assembled included some tough guys. Ben Davidson, arguably the dirtiest player ever. George Atkinson and Jack Tatum, arguably the hardest-hitting pair of safeties ever. Otis Sistrunk. Bubba Smith for a couple of years. They had veterans like Willie Brown, Dave Grayson and Dan Connors giving them solid play at the corners and MLB, but this was a team guys with painted faces and spiked shoulder pads could love. They were rough, but also built around a dominating offensive line, especially the left side with three Hall of Famers, Jim Otto, Gene Upshaw and Art Shell, and behind them big fullbacks like Marv Hubbard, who'd played at Colgate and whom they'd signed from the Hartford Knights of the Continental Football League (he'd be succeeded by another Colgate guy, Mark Van Eaghen).
John Rauch was the Raiders' coach, but Davis wasn't satisfied with anything except a championship and he expressed his dissatisfaction in ways that Rauch couldn't stand. Rauch gave him a 12–2 season in 1968, but lost a playoff game to the 12–2 Kansas City Chiefs, who then lost to the Jets who famously won the third Super Bowl. It was all too much for Davis, and Rauch couldn't stand Davis' interference anymore so he left to coach the Bills. Davis promoted the 32 year old Madden, after only two years as the team's linebacker coach, to head coach.
If Davis thought, Jerry Jones-like, that he'd be able to dominate his new young coach he soon discovered he was wrong. Madden told Davis that he'd been smart enough to hire him so he was smart enough to let him do the job for which he'd been hired. And they improved, slightly: Madden went 12–1–1 in 1969, basically with Rauch's team, but lost to the Chiefs again in the AFC championship; Kansas City went on to win the Super Bowl.
People often wonder why it took so long for Madden to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. One major reason was that he inherited a great team, and succeeded with it, but not overwhelmingly. Look at, for example George Seifert, who actually did better with Bill Walsh's 49ers teams than Walsh himself did, but will probably never see Canton because the perception is he merely easy-rode a great team onward. He then went to Carolina and couldn't repeat his success. Barry Switzer gets no credit for taking over Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys. Lombardi was an innovator of sorts, Madden wasn't. Oakland wasn't a popular team, and I believe Madden's success as a unique and iconoclastic announcer hurt him with Hall of Fame voting journalists, many of whom saw their jobs being done better by a guy on TV.
After that first season, Madden took Oakland to the AFC championship game in four of the next six years without ever winning it, but he had established a certain amount of independence from Davis when something key happened off the field in 1969.
Al Davis loved QB Daryl Lamonica's downfield arm; Lamonica was called the Mad Bomber. But in 1968 the Raiders drafted Alabama's star QB Ken Stabler, their best since Joe Namath. Stabler wasn't the prototype big, tall, drop-back passer the NFL craved then (and sometimes still does today), so Davis sent him to the Spokane Shockers of the Continental League that year, then recalled him late in the season. Stabler was so furious he sat out the 1969 season, but Madden talked him into returning in 1970. He was still Lamonica's backup, but he was Madden's preferred choice. This became increasingly obvious, and it was Stabler who nearly beat the Steelers in the 1972 playoffs, only for the Raiders to lose on the Immaculate Reception. Finally, Madden won the battle of wills with Davis and Lamonica was traded away.
The Raiders' real problem in the Rauch-Madden era was basically the quality of play at the top of the AFL/AFC. First it was the late '60s Chiefs, probably the best team of the decade apart from the Packers. Then it was the Steelers and their Steel Curtain dynasty. Houston, another fantastic defensive team, could barely get a look in. Oddly enough, the Steelers and Raiders were built similarly, on tough, punishing line play on both sides, hard hitting second and third level defense, steady running games. They were very evenly matched player for player. The difference may have been that the Steelers were better at Al Davis' long game with Terry Bradshaw throwing to Lynn Swann and John Stallworth than the Raiders were, at least until they drafted Cliff Branch in '74. When Dave Casper came in the great '76 draft, they had, along with Fred Biletnikoff, the varied pass game they needed to be complete. Also in '76 they added two guys on D who were born to be Raiders: "The Tooz" John Matuszak and "The Mad Stork" Ted Hendicks.
They finally won the Super Bowl after the 1976 season, and Madden, after one more season in which they went 11–3, quit coaching at the age of 42. Put it this way: Vince Lombardi got his first head coaching job when he was 44, and he coached only ten seasons too, mistakenly coming back for one year of coaching in Washington after retiring, which almost literally killed him. Lombardi's final 7–5–2 year with the Redskins means Madden has the best regular season winning percentage of any coach with more than 100 wins (103–32–7 .759) but his 9–7 playoff mark drops him below Lombardi overall. Vince went 9–1 in post-season, so he's at .750 (105–35–6) to Madden's .739. George Allen (.712) is the only other coach over .700 in the regular season, but of course Allen's playoff record was 2–7. There's a piece to be written about the great coaches who come from small college backgrounds; I see some similarities between Madden, Allen and say, Bill Belichick. For example, small colleges are generally victimized by bigger schools who have more and bigger players and win by dominating them physically.
The real legacy of John Madden came after his coaching career. He became the color commentator who transformed the way we watched football on TV. He brought his coach's eye to the game, with quick witted humor and an ability to explain in plain English what was going on. He also almost single-handedly justified the invention of the telestrator, and I swear the simple one-pen version Madden used is still easier and more effective than the modern push-button consoles. And a single moment of "there's the hole and BOOM! He lays out the safety" is worth a bushel basket full of next-gen stats telling us that a receiver hit 23.2 mph but not how he got open. Madden, in effect, gave permission for color commentators in all sports to be, well, colorful - though in his case case colorful was never a replacement for intelligence or communication, never forced or phony and he would not play the clown (except in commercials). The message even got through to England after a couple of decades.
He was teamed with Pat Summerall on CBS. Summerall had worked well with Tom Brookshier, but he and Madden were probably the best pair we've ever seen. With Summerall the master of "less is more", but with a quick eye and an innate ability to get the most relevant information in no matter how little time Madden left, Madden's seeming free-form commentary was always anchored firmly. Summerall was enough of a player to always know the kind of situation Madden was about to bring up, and enough of a broadcaster to let that play out. They meshed right from the start. Madden was also not afraid to tell you what he thought about coaching decisions, about player mistakes, about the reasons behind the flow of the game. He didn't drift too far into the minutiae, he never substituted jargon for understanding - the greatest fault in many of today's sufferers of punditosis.
Everybody loved Madden. When he and Summerall moved from CBS to Fox for huge money, it was part of Fox's strategy to lure bigger affiliate stations to the network for the one bit of programming they knew would sell: they outbid CBS for the games and then paid over the odds to have the most popular announce team doing it. In 2002 Summerall announced his retirement, and Madden's deal was up. He moved to ABC for Monday Night Football, teaming with Al Michaels. The team started off shaky, but eventually Michaels, who is a brilliant all-purpose play-by-play man, adjusted to Madden's presence, realizing he didn't need to compete. The pair moved over to NBC for Sunday Night Football in 2005 and Madden retired officially after the Super Bowl between Arizona and Pittsburgh in February 2009, maybe the best ever.
Moving to ads was a natural progression Madden began early in his career. Being a shrewd businessman, he was a prolific pitchman. His ads for Ace hardware ("Ace Is The Place") were ubiquitous, but his best might have been the series of commercials for Miller Lite, which started with Mickey Spillane (and "the Doll") and expanded to a wide cast of celebrities, especially from sports and especially including Rodney Dangerfield. Madden is at his best as the commentator in the celebrity golf tournament, or doing a straight-forward pitch for Lite that ends with Bubba Smith demonstrating the "easy-open can" by ripping it in two.
In that ad, Madden says "when you start something good, everyone wants a piece of it", and that applied to him as much as to beer. For example, Madden each season selected an "All-Madden" team. Not the All-Pros but the players Madden thought played the most like the way he wanted football to be played: with toughness, and grit, and will to win. It was suggested by his boyhood friend John Robinson: choose players he thought represented the game well. It was such a good idea, in the great echo chamber that is TV, another network came up with the unique idea of Phil Simms' "All Iron" team.
The All-Madden also became, eventually, part of the Madden video game. Now I cannot claim to know anything about playing these games, but I am told that it is by far the most realistic of the football games, and that it was the first such, and that its basics have provided a template for the other most popular sports games, including FIFA and the NBA. Madden had great input with EA in the creation of the game, and it actually was delayed in its original release until he felt the company had got it right. He also provided voice.
I have the sense today that too many people see football as a video game, as a source of fantasy points, as an endless Red Zone highlight reel, and ignore the basics of the game, the things that make it football. We grumpy old timers sometimes feel that the NFL and broadcasters bend over backwards to that perception: make it high scoring, encourage big plays, sell fantasy, sell electronic effects, sell gambling and let flash bang and jargon and clowning replace analysis.
Paradoxically, we also want to see the game be made safer, not by half-measures backed by PR aimed at avoiding the costs of the game. Madden was a part of that. He was opposed to early contact football for kids; he was opposed to an NFL initiative to "train" coaches in a 90 minute session, saying that was no way to learn how to coach. Having coached one of the hardest-hitting teams of all-time, and celebrated hard hits as both coach and commentator, he became an advocate of player safety.
I have always wondered how much Madden's retirement from coaching was due to the injury to Darryl Stingley in an exhibition game in 1978. Stingley was running a cross and Jack Tatum got him with a fierce shoulder hit to the head. Stingley suffered two broken vertebrae and a compressed spinal cord: he was left a parapalegic for the rest of his life. Although he called it a "freak accident" he never reconciled with Tatum, largely because Tatum promoted himself as "The Assassin", known for such hits, and Stingley didn't want to encourage that image, or Tatum's profiting from it.
But it was Madden who rushed off after the game to the hospital to sit with Stingley, and Madden who called the Patriots, already getting off their team bus at the airport to go back home, to get someone from the team back at the hospital for Stingley. Madden visited him every day for months; they became friends, and he worked behind the scenes for Stingley and his family.
The Patriots' owner, Billy Sullivan, tried to cancel Stingley's insurance after the fact, which was pretty typical of Sullivan. The league interceded, and eventually Stingley got the rest of his contract paid, his medical expenses for life, and his children's educations. I wonder if Madden was one of the behind the scenes voices in Pete Rozelle's ear. Raiders' captain and guard Gene Upshaw also visited; when he became head of the players' association, he got Stingley an NFL pension. I honestly don't believe it's a coincidence Madden retired as coach that year; I think he might have been distracted a bit. It's not that he blamed football, obviously, but by moving into the booth he gave himself more time to think about other things in his own life, as well as examine the game from a distance.
Even so, I always think of Madden as a Raider. Every gang needs one guy who can see the big picture, who can keep the others together, who isn't afraid to question them and himself. Al Davis was a football tycoon who came up a different way than most NFL owners, but he never questioned himself. He reminds me a bit of Howard Hughes: willing to do anything to win, always eager to take on the authorities if he couldn't get what he wanted. Davis, like Hughes, became a one-dimensional cult figure in the end. "Just win baby" doesn't work when you're not winning. It's a shame he didn't live to see the team move to Las Vegas, another outlaw city, perhaps, but one that's all glitz where Oakland was all grit. I have this vision of Davis sitting Hughes-like, in a sterilized room, nails grown long, watching endless reels of Raiders' game film.
I have no such image of a Madden in decline, no Fat Elvis playing Vegas in spangles. I see him, bigger than life, interesting and interested, right up to the end. I see a down to earth intellect combined with a fierce drive and an ability to motivate people because he could make them understand what he wanted, and how to do it, which is what made him such a good commentator as well as coach. Have you ever read Personal Memoirs,Ulysses Grant's autobiography? In its introduction, the historian James McPherson explains that one of the elements of Grant's genius as a field commander was that his orders were never ambiguous, his writing, like the writing of his book, is straightforward, clearly and cleanly expressed, and he makes complicated battles seem easy.
When I first read that passage I immediately thought of Madden, as if that were the secret to his commentary. Make it seem easy. I owe him at least that insight. Madden was indeed larger than life, and I doubt we'll see another guy like him for a long time to come.