I watched part of the special on Christmas Day and looked at Mrs. Hoffman and said, “that has the look and feel of a memorial for someone who’s really close to dying.” Sure enough. One of the few people who you can’t begin to articulate his influence on the game, but you can sum it up with one word: boom!
If he’d have waited 4 more days, I could have scored points in the Celebrity Death Pool.
Great coach who burnt out too soon and then applied that deep knowledge to educating the viewer.
But was also so energetic and entertaining
Truly a one-of-a-kind announcer. Will be (and already is) missed. Football fans were spoiled.
He and Summerall made one of the great broadcast teams of all time. He was one of the first, maybe the first, to bring the Telestartor to TV broadcasts.
RIP
And for anyone who doesn’t like him there is a strange Twitter rant comparing Maddon to plantation owners through his video games, I won’t link it but but it should be easy to find if your curious.
I saw that rant. Guy was (is) a dumbass for it.
I wonder what the ratios are from what he earned as a coach:: what he earned as a broadcaster :: what he earned as a video game namesake
I’d bet it is something like 10% :: 25% :: 65%
I’d guess coaching is less than 5%. Were coaches in the 70s raking in bank? I doubt it. And he only coached 10 years.
He also had a number of other endorsment deals over the years where he made some money.
But I saw estimates that he had a net worth around $200M at the time if his death and was paid over $150M over the years by EA sports so yeah I’m going to guess that dwarfed what he got as broadcaster even though I think he was the highest paid broadcaster by a pretty wide margin at the time.
RIP. Pretty amazing to have a video game series named after you without ever playing (only Tiger and PGA is the other one I can think of but Tiger was GOAT-like player). So much influence on the game
Madden had best winning % for any coach (> 10 years) and as an announcer arguably was the GOAT
I am a sports fan so hard to say what the “average” person knows, but I would say Madden and Cosell are possibly the only two sports announcers that most people knew of outside of sports without something external (Rizzuto in Dashboard Lights or Gifford being married to Kathy Lee), maybe a Costas, particularly with the Olympics, but just for doing what they did
Al Michaels (similar to Costas)
Marv Albert
Brent Musberger
Keith Jackson (maybe)
Enjoying the Madden retrospectives this week. Just a cool guy
Not noted: had a fear of flying (more so, claustrophobia), had a bus converted for himself by Greyhound to get to weekly games. Huh, I guess the bus wasn’t so claustrophobic?
(Note: I’m not doing much reading about Madden.)
The Madden Cruiser was a luxury bus that Madden took around the country to get to the NFL games he was calling. It was given to him by Greyhound bus lines as part of a 1987 endorsement deal that covered all expenses for the bus, including a personal driver.
Riding in your own bus is not claustrophobic because you have the choice to stop the bus whenever you want and get out. Tougher to do this in an airplane.
I do remember Madden did not announce all games with Al Michaels because the logistics were sometimes not worth it (West coast to East coast back to West coast)