RIP: John Madden, 85

[wamego relays champ]

Coach, Broadcaster, and video game namesake

[NotDutra5]

There are others enjoyable but, IMHO, the best color analyst the NFL has seen. Made it seem like he was sitting next to you in a bar watching along with you.

[gh]

best Miller Lite salesman too

[Atticus]

the best color analyst the NFL has seen.

Al Michaels and lately, Tony Romo, are play-by-play stars, but for color, JM was in a league of his own (and they made a classic video game of it!)

[Adam$]

Fair or unfair, he will always be remembered for one call in Ma. That being the final 90 secs. of the Patriots v. SL Super Bowl.

[NotDutra5]

Fair or unfair, he will always be remembered for one call in Ma. That being the final 90 secs. of the Patriots v. SL Super Bowl.

If you referring to his opining that the Patriots should just play for overtime, I know about 8 guys all sitting in a room watching the same game saying exactly the same thing.

[18.99s]

I first heard of Madden through the video game, in the early 1990s while in college. I didn't have cable or satellite TV when growing up in Jamaica, so I hadn't watched any NFL before moving to the US for college (except a vague memory of when they aired a Super Bowl on Jamaican TV). A guy in the dorms had the John Madden Football video game, and I asked "who is John Madden"?

I wasn't really interested in playing the game, as I didn't understand enough about American football. But as I sat back watching the other guys play, I was amazed when hearing Madden's voice in the game, giving live commentary that reasonably matched what was happening in the game. As a computer science student I kept thinking "how did they program that"? I appreciated that he was an active participant in the production of the game, not just another celebrity who merely licensed their name for a game.

Since he retired from coaching and commentating over 10 years ago, I suspect that most most of the under-30 crowd who know of him also first knew his name through the video game (the modern iterations of it, now named Madden NFL).

[br]

John Madden Was Glad He Passed On the Coach Ernie Pantusso Role in ‘Cheers’

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...le-1235067996/

“When Cheers first started, they wrote me in as the bartender, Coach,” Madden said. “So, I talked about it. If the thing fails, you’re a failure, and I didn’t want to lose. And if the thing won, which obviously it did, then I would have had to quit what I was doing, what I loved. So, I couldn’t figure out why I should do it.”

[bad hammy]

Funny, John Madden was two years into his ten-year stint as the best coach the Raiders ever had when, in 1970, this 12-year-old Raiders fan got tired of their big-game choking ways (a Super Bowl loss and a trio of conference champs losses in four years - the last two under JM), so I switched allegiance to the 49ers of the John Brodie days.

The Raiders got over the Super Bowl hump before the Niners but then Walsh & Montana arrived while Al Davis spent time f'n over the folks in Oakland by moving the Raiders to LA and then ransoming them back to Oakland followed by another move (led by mini-Al), this time to Vegas; the Raiders have a long history of treating their fans like crap . . .

Loved Madden as a TV guy, never played his video games.