John Madden was a teacher before he became a Hall of Fame coach, before he became one of the great TV broadcasters in the history of the medium, before he became the name (and face) of a seminal video game.
It was those teaching instincts that served him best in winning 103 games and a Super Bowl coaching the Raiders, in piling up 16 Emmy Awards, in making sure the game that bore his name, at its rudimentary start, was 11-on-11, because he saw Madden as not just a way to kill time but also as a way to learn about football.
The best TV analysts do that, of course. They teach you. They make complicated games seem perfectly simple because their words allow us to understand the game better than we did before. That was Madden’s greatest gift to football fame, which followed him from CBS to Fox to ABC to NBC, and would’ve followed him to Styrofoam-cups-and-string if that was the only way we could listen to him.
But Madden, like the other best of the best — and like all terrific teachers, whether they’re explaining the prevent defense or the Pythagorean theorem — also had a way of making you smile, both because he was funny and because he allowed you in on his little secret pockets of knowledge.
My friend Tom Pecora, who has dabbled in broadcasting when he wasn’t coaching hoops, now assisting Baker Dunleavy at Quinnipiac, put it this way the other day: “The world we live in now will never allow highly intelligent and articulate characters to entertain us with funny, irreverent observations. We take ourselves way too serious now.”
Madden really was unique among football announcers in that he took football seriously, but never himself, he always seemed to be having a hell of a time, and he wanted to make sure we did, too. How many announcers (outside the Manning brothers) do we have fun with anymore? Tony Romo showed early promise, combining Madden’s combo of humor and an insider’s eye, but too often lately he comes off as ill-prepared and goofy.
Madden was never those. There have been others. Nobody ever would have asked to see Al McGuire’s degree from the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, but McGuire, like Madden, made you a smarter fan just by listening to him. Jim Valvano’s all-too-brief run at ABC and ESPN did the same thing. Dick Vitale is best known for his catch-phrases and his schtick, which is a shame, because when he breaks down the game he does it in simple, easy-to-digest ways that simply make the game more understandable.
The baseball version of Madden was Tim McCarver, whose national work was polarizing because everyone believed he hated their team. But for those of us who grew up on McCarver’s Mets broadcasts on Channel 9, where he worked from 1983-98, you knew that Mets games weren’t just where you went to see the daily brilliance of Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter and the young Darryl Strawberry, it’s where McCarver gave a master class on baseball’s ins and outs night after night. Hernandez and Ron Darling, on SNY, hint at that as regularly as anyone now, and so does David Cone on YES.
We need more of that. We need more broadcasters who aren’t afraid to be themselves, who aren’t afraid to show some humor in order to hammer the point home. Jeff Van Gundy gives us flashes of that. Romo still does, though not as often as he probably should, given his reputation. If the TNT studio crew of Shaq O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith did NBA games, that might best replicate for basketball what Madden did all those years for football.
In the last words he ever typed, the great columnist Red Smith said he always comforted himself watching ordinary ballplayers thusly: “Someday there would be another Joe DiMaggio.”
Someday, maybe, there’ll be another John Madden. Let’s hope so.
Vack Whacks
It was nice of Michigan to show that Power 5 schools can enjoy just as much success when they get paired against an SEC team as a non-Power-5 school such as Cincinnati can.
Last time we met on Sunday, I mentioned Carl Erskine was the last of the surviving 1955 Dodgers — something that surely came as a surprise to Roger Craig (91 years young) and Sandy Koufax (who turned 86 on Thursday). Apologies to both.
Dan Reeves was a gentleman who, in the right mood, could tell you a story and fill your notebook. He was the first Giants coach I ever spent any significant time around, and I learned something every time he spoke. Godspeed to him.
For everyone who reads this column, emails me about it, tweets to me about it: thank you, always. Happy New Year. Let’s have a fun 2022, shall we?
Whack Back at Vac
Michael Keneski: When Vince Lombardi said that “winning is the only thing,” I believe he would have made an exception for welcoming back Antonio Brown and Kyrie Irving!
Vac: The fact someone hasn’t made a time-travel show about Coach Lombardi (who technically didn’t coin the phrase) landing in 2022 is just hard to believe, when you think about it.
Robert Lewis: Jason Garrett and Colt McCoy, where have you gone? we didn’t know how good we had it till now.
Vac: It’s like a toothache: you never know just how big it is till the pain goes away.
@NySportsHere1: What is so pathetic is even the Jets are smarter than the Giants now. They knew to cut bait on Gase and Darnold and not waste another year. Giants can’t help themselves right now. So sad.
@MikeVacc: When Giants fans start envying Jets fans … dogs and cats … living together … total chaos!
Vito Vaccaro: It’s about time! You know I have been waiting for this. No more managers in training. You won’t see the nonsense that happened last year. Reminds me of the last managers that were needed at that special time and place. Gil Hodges, Davey Johnson.
Vac: I have a sense Buck Showalter likes the way you think, Vito.