In Memoriam

[Irishman]

Is this a topic that is already here? I could not remember....I probably could have started one much sooner than this. 

That said, I just saw this posted this evening. As a football fan, I loved listening to Madden's insight. He made things easy to understand, and it was obvious he loved his job. 

RIP John and thank you for so many great memories

[Guest]

Huge loss.  Loved listening to Madden call Bears games on cold wintery Sundays in their heyday from 1985-1987.  

[Irishman]

For years now, whenever I have said Brett Favre's name, I hear Madden saying it in my head. 

[Irishman]

Even with teams I hated, he still made the games fun to watch. 

 

[Bobref]

He and Summerall are the standard by which all sports broadcast teams are measured. And don’t forget his coaching career. Won a Super Bowl and over 100 NFL games as coach of the Raiders. A real giant of the game.

[Bobref]

Didn’t realize this, but of all NFL coaches who coached at least 10 years, he has the highest winning percentage … just ahead of Vince Lombardi.

[PHJIrish]

Coach Madden was good at whatever he did.  I loved his everyman style as a broadcaster.  He made it sound easy.

RIP!!!!!

[Bobref]

Thinking about it, I bet he made as much $$ in his career from EA Sports as he did as a coach and broadcaster combined.

[DE]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

Thinking about it, I bet he made as much $$ in his career from EA Sports as he did as a coach and broadcaster combined.

Bob 

As a parent with a teenage son who loves  to “game”, I respectfully disagree. I bet he at least quadrupled it, 😂. 
 

We ALL definitely went into the wrong business. 

[DE]

Todays youth will very likely only know John Madden as the video game “guy”. Which is ok, for now. 
 

Hopefully they have someone in their life like I did, who will educate them on John Madden entire. When I was growing up, I only knew Madden as the announcer. My dad educated me on all he knew about Coach Madden. 

[ragdoll]

Madden coached Raiders and the Steel Curtain changed the game forever with their defense. He coached under Don Coryell at San Diego St before the Raiders and have to figure that helped his defensive strategies. Madden made interesting all the eras of football he was involved with. He was one of the greatest to ever be a part of the game. Makes me want to watch all of those Madden coached Raiders playoff games and the playoff games he commentated.

[ragdoll]

sea of hands game on right now NFL network. awesome!

[Bash Riprock]

I was reading one of the reasons he left coaching was his fear of flying.  As an analyst, he did travel in his Madden Cruiser bus.

He was a legend as a coach.....those Raider teams...wow!  Stabler, Sistrunk, Upshaw, Casper, Guy, Biletnikoff, Branch, Van Eeghen, Hayes, Villapiano, Tatum, Hendricks, Banaszack, Davis, Otto, etc.  Man, his teams were fun to watch.....

[DE]

4 hours ago, Bash Riprock said:

I was reading one of the reasons he left coaching was his fear of flying.  As an analyst, he did travel in his Madden Cruiser bus.

He was a legend as a coach.....those Raider teams...wow!  Stabler, Sistrunk, Upshaw, Casper, Guy, Biletnikoff, Branch, Van Eeghen, Hayes, Villapiano, Tatum, Hendricks, Banaszack, Davis, Otto, etc.  Man, his teams were fun to watch.....

I remember my dad teaching me all about this. 

[Bash Riprock]

11 hours ago, DE said:

I remember my dad teaching me all about this. 

OUCH!!

Sounds like your Dad knew great football!!

 

[DE]

Just now, Bash Riprock said:

OUCH!!

Sounds like your Dad knew great football!!

 

He enjoyed football, learning, history, and story telling.

Often times, I would wonder why he was telling me this.  Now I know.  It was our time together.

I knew Madden as a commentator, much like today's youth will only know Madden for his video game.  

I hope kids are learning about Madden entire and not just his success in the video game field.

[Irishman]

Another great coach has passed. RIP 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32972670/dan-reeves-former-nfl-coach-player-dies-77 

[Bobref]

50 minutes ago, Irishman said:

Another great coach has passed. RIP 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32972670/dan-reeves-former-nfl-coach-player-dies-77 

Just thinking how old this makes me feel … because I remember him well as a player.

[Irishman]

3 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Just thinking how old this makes me feel … because I remember him well as a player.

I am too young to remember, but he played great in the ice bowl at Lambeau. That was 54 years ago yesterday. 

[PHJIrish]

6 hours ago, Bobref said:

Just thinking how old this makes me feel … because I remember him well as a player.

Yeah, we're old Bob!  We're losing a lot of good ones lately.

[Muda69]

And of course the left wing crazies have their opinion regarding the legacy of Mr. Madden: 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/a-professor-attacks-john-madden/

Quote

A history professor at Dallas College sent a since-deleted series of tweets to interrupt what he characterized as the “veneration” of the late John Madden following the legendary coach’s death on Tuesday.

The professor wrote:

I have lots of opinions on John Madden. The creation of the Madden video game was not a great development for the U.S. It further glamorized violence and dehumanized Black athletes, helping to establish plantation cosplay that has grown worse in the era of fantasy football.

The video game distanced the reality of the violent sport from fans, and transformed human behaviors into artificial numbers and simulations. It glamorized athletes, using their name for profits while encouraging fans to disregard the humanity. Madden built a digital plantation.

Sure, there is a lot of significance to his life and his impact. But it’s pretty clear most of his accomplishments were not beneficial or healthy for athletes, (particularly) non-white athletes. John Madden made a life in football, one of the most violent and exploitative sports.

When your entire life is based on expanding and profiting off of one the of most violent and exploitative games, veneration is not exactly something that you deserve.

It is first of all urgent to observe that no one—not a single, solitary person—cared whether this professor had “lots of opinions about John Madden,” much less what those “opinions” were.

Second, consider the substance of the professor’s argument: Madden lent his name to a video-game series that depicted professional football. People get injured while playing professional football. The majority of professional football players are black. The Madden video game uses metrics to rank players. Slave owners in the antebellum American South relied on data of one kind or another to assess the capacity of slaves. Therefore—and this is a leap larger than almost any I’ve ever seen—Madden “built a digital plantation,” “dehumanized [black] athletes,” and “establish[ed] plantation cosplay.” Quick—and without looking at your notes: Can you think of a difference between professional athletes and chattel slaves?

Mourn, not only for Madden, but for one who would defame a dead man before his body hit the earth.

 

[gonzoron]

On 12/29/2021 at 6:38 AM, Bobref said:

Thinking about it, I bet he made as much $$ in his career from EA Sports as he did as a coach and broadcaster combined.

According to the "All Madden" documentary, the video game generated $7 Billion in revenue.

I highly recommend the documentary if you haven't seen it yet. It was finished and shown to John 3 days before he passed. Powerful stuff. 

It's available on ESPN+ and Peacock. https://ew.com/tv/how-to-watch-all-madden-john-madden-documentary/

[ragdoll]

On 1/1/2022 at 9:21 AM, Irishman said:

Another great coach has passed. RIP 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32972670/dan-reeves-former-nfl-coach-player-dies-77 

And a rival of Madden and Raiders. 

[Irishman]

My earliest memories of Irish football included Ross Browner...RIP

 

 

[Bobref]

6 minutes ago, Irishman said:

My earliest memories of Irish football included Ross Browner...RIP

 

 

Wow! He was a freshman at ND when I was a senior in the 1973 national championship season. One of Our Lady’s all-time greatest players.

Ross Browner was one of the most decorated defensive players in the history of college football. At the University of Notre Dame he was a four-year starter at defensive end in 1973 and 1975–77. He was a unanimous All-America his junior and senior seasons of 1976 and 1977. In 1976, he won the Outland trophy as the nation's best interior or defensive lineman also in 1976 United Press Internationalnamed him Lineman of the Year. He won the Lombardi Trophy as the nation's best lineman and the Maxwell Award as the nation's best player and again won the UPI Lineman of the Year Award, the only player ever to win it twice. In the decade of the 1970s, Browner was the only lineman who won the Maxwell. In 1977, he also placed fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy. During his senior year in college, he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the subheading of "Notre Dame's Peerless Ross Browner."