John Madden has died | Hacker News Reader

John Madden has died

profootballtalk.nbcsports.com

225 pointsncw9683 comments

The most impressive thing about him is he is a football legend to different generations based on his work in three separate disciplines. People born in the 1950s or earlier remember him as a Hall of Fame coach. People born before the 1990s remember him as the country's most beloved sports broadcaster. People born in the 1990s or later remember him as the guy behind video game football. It is hard to think of anyone else who had a similarly large impact in one field in three such distinct ways.

He's also had impact in how camera work for sporting events have been done. They've implemented cameras that were clearly inspired by Madden games.

And those who browse YouTube will remember him as JOHN MADDEN of critical acclaim from Moonbase Alpha videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B488z1MmaA

I will remember him for turducken: https://youtu.be/RsAuIsn3Kw4

Right on. I remember him strictly as an announcer. He rarely had anything super important or overly technical to say, but we loved listening to him nonetheless, probably for that reason...like a football grandpa. Reminds me a lot of Harry Caray, and I'll forever miss listening to both.

Hall of Fame coach with the #1 highest winning percentage in league history, rarely had anything important to say. Unbelievable. You'd probably come out of a personal lecture by Albert Einstein saying, all he talked about was that ancient E = mc2 stuff that we covered way back in high school.

Did you actually ever listen to his broadcasting, or did you just read wikipedia and decide to make a hateful comment?

While you're wikipedia'ing, check out the Packers current coach.

Dude, nothing I said was "hateful." If you choose to publicly insult successful, highly-regarded, widely-loved people, don't be surprised when others point out that you sound stupid and are likely in the wrong.

So in other words, you've never heard him broadcast. Thanks.

No idea what gives you that impression. Why would I be defending a random person I simply read a Wikipedia article about? Of course I heard him broadcast football games. Hundreds of times, from the mid-80's on. I have a pile of videotapes of games he did with Pat Summerall (who was also amazing in the booth). I was lucky enough to have a personal conversation with him once.

He increased my knowledge and understanding of football immensely, and I'm certainly not alone. His contemporary broadcasters, like Cosell & Meredith, had no idea how to break down a nickel defense or the ability to point out the key block that opened a hole for Walter Payton or gave Troy Aikman an extra second in the pocket to find a receiver deep. John Madden did that consistently for two decades, with a passion and exuberance that was unmatched. He was able to clearly explain why Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White were so effective at causing chaos defensively -- but also, in the rare cases when they were neutralized, how o-lineman did so and what blocking schemes were frustrating them. He brought attention to players, especially lineman, who were generally ignored, and explained the concepts of blitzing and stunting and pulling and various defensive fronts to the masses, both why they worked and also how opposing coaches strategized around them.

If you weren't able to absorb any of his concepts and wisdom, if it wasn't "important" to you, well, that's your problem, but publicly posting so doesn't take away from Madden's greatness.

I’ve always wondered if Madden’s legacy as an announcer was tarnished a bit by the video games. It was magical having him dynamically announce the game you are playing, but the sophistication was limited, especially in XBox/PS2 era. I remember his voice saying generic silly things about the games I played as much as I remember the real games he announced.

IRRC, he also said he focused on explaining the game to someone who wasn’t a fan yet. It sometimes drove lifetime enthusiasts nuts, but I appreciated that he saw his role as making a complex game accessible.

See, I don't think the video games hurt much as much as tried to represent the real him. I could see that idea that he only wanted to explain to nonfans. His announcing was always very basic and nontechnical, to the point of being overly obvious. But I appreciate him no less for that - he was addicting to listen to, and that's what matters most IMO.

There's Christopher Lee

Pre-1970s: Dracula

1970s-2000s: Scaramanga

2000s: Count Dooku/Saruman

“At the end of the game the team with the most points on the board is going to win.”

― john madden

My friends used to say, “Thanks, John Madden” whenever someone said something particularly obvious.

From one of the earlier madden games: "he tried to go through the hole, but there wasn't any hole."

Madden was the butt of many jokes for his “duh” comments but the older i get, the more sense they seem to make.

I’m reminded of the “software is just ifs and loops” post from weeks back. I had that opinion when I started, lost it for 15 years and find it returning more and more.

One day in the late 90s or early 2000s a friend and I were playing Madden. My dad walked into the room and announced “huh, why are they playing football on a Friday.” He hadn’t noticed at a casual glance that it was a video game- John Madden’s voice was coming out of the TV and it looked like football, so it must be football. That has always stuck with me as an impressive level of immersion.

Sports video games, and Madden in particular, helped mainstream gaming and computing in a very real way. I hope EA brings him back to the cover one last time next year.

Legend. Don't think I'd love football nearly as much as I do if he wasn't around calling games when I was a kid. He had an infectious love for the game. The game lost a lot of its appeal when he stopped broadcasting.

I ran into John Madden a few years ago at A.G. Ferrari in Soma (he had a residence nearby at the St Regis). He cut in line in front of me, to get his seemingly daily sandwich. The lady behind the counter and I let it slide.

I'm glad I didn't quote the game (or worse, say "boom, tough actin tinactin"), but it was definitely interesting to have thought "Huh, what a wild life. Now he's just an old man who wants a sandwich like anyone else".

Even when you are wealthy or famous at the peak of whatever fame or wealth you may have, or at the end of it, some times you just want to be left alone and have a sandwich.

Still, don't cut the line

Ehh, yeah, that’s not really cool. I wonder how many times he got away with that?

Likely zero. "boulos" was probably tapping away at something on his phone or listening to headphones and didn't respond when the employee at the deli counter yelled "Next." Or maybe, it was as simple as an 80-something year-old guy not feeling comfortable leaving his 80-something year-old wife at home alone for long.

Whatever happened, boulous is still so bitter about it that he felt it necessary to post this story on the day the man died. Says a lot more about him than about John Madden.

I'm not sure how you read 'bitter' into his story.

Seems like OP just had a moment of realisation that the cultural elites have similar desires to the common folk and wanted to relay that minor connection to the man

If that's what he wanted to get across, he could have just stated that both he and John Madden were both on line to get a sandwich somewhere. That actually would have been somewhat endearing. There's absolutely no reason to bring up the part about cutting in line -- let alone making that the focus of the story -- unless he wanted to portray John Madden as some kind of jerk (which, as all of today's tributes have demonstrated, is the polar opposite of what he actually was).

Yes, a person who feels that's necessary to do, on the day the man died, is mighty bitter about something.

Yeah, nah, I think you've missed the point of the guy's post all together. Understandable if you're grieving the loss of someone.

Is breaking through a human formation to reach a goal bad manners or good football?

I have no idea if this applies to Mr Madden, but sometimes when you become wealthy, you expect people to cater to you and the little people don't matter. "Cutting" line to get to the front wouldn't even seem as a faux pas to them. They just expect to be served with priority.

John Madden had dementia so it's entirely possible he just did the same thing every day without even knowing what he was actually doing.

Again, I wasn't trying to slander Mr Madden. I was just countering the comment about wealthy people "just wanting to be left alone".

I actually met Mr Madden, and he was not an asshole at that time. So definitely not insinuating anything against him.

Occasionally I do dumb shit that probably comes off as a jerk move, but it is unintentional ... and I am neither wealthy nor old enough to claim dementia. I try to cut people slack, and even famous people can't be Mr. Nice Guy 100% of every day, even if it seems like that should be their personality.

I cannot just let your story sit here unchallenged on the day this great man died. First of all, John Madden lived his whole life as just a simple guy who wants a sandwich. He was as blue-collar as they come. The clothes he wore. Took a bus (sure, his own bus, but still) everywhere.

More importantly, perhaps he cut a line, I wasn't there and don't know. But literally everybody he worked with, who interacted with him for years or decades, insists he was gracious, generous, and kind. It's not right to mention your single interaction without countering with the thousands of people who loved this man.

One more anecdote. In 1978, during a preseason game, Jack Tatum of Madden's Raiders put a hit on New England's Darryl Stingley that paralyzed him for life. Madden, not New England's coach, and not Tatum, visited Stingley in the hospital that night. And the next day. And the day after that. And regularly, for weeks and months. He opened his house to Stingley and his wife. He returned from away games and immediately drove up to check on Stingley. He had no obligation, no responsibility, he just thought it was important to do.

Madden definitely had a hulking, physical presence about him. I had grown up listening to his broadcasts with Pat Summerall and played Madden on various systems. Fast forward about 10+ years and I had moved to San Francisco and frequented The Grove near Yerba Beuna. I am terrible at recognizing celebrities in real life, but I immediately recognized him when he walked in. I had already ordered so I didn't notice if he cut anyone in line... one of the few times I can remember being starstruck.

I was looking at Madden NFL 200x games last week specifically the assortment of music (Chamillionaire, Earshot, Slipknot, Green day, etc.) that got me into listening to music in the first place. If it wasn't for those games, I don't think I would have ever gotten into football or listening to music.

Modden NFL helped demonstrate technology really well in a variety of ways that was fun and interesting to people who didn't see the appeal in video games like Pac Man. It was definitely a big contributor to getting more people into electronic interactive content.

What a loss for Football, what a loss for Broadcasting.

I'm pretty sure I saw him coach in the 70's but my fondest memories of him are as a broadcaster in the 80's and 90's.

No matter how trivial the thing he said was you felt like you had just received critical knowledge directly from the football Gods. (Because you did!)

Truly a loss to the game of football. I will forever remember his voice while commentating as well as him drawing on screen in a silly fashion, to explain different plays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcTKHupdxo

This podcast helped me understand just how significant an accomplishment the Madden video game was—I recommend!

https://overcast.fm/+dxvETG06k

Great 30 for 30 podcast episode, where they feature a few stories /from/ Madden himself about what it was like creating the first John Madden video game and how his early influence helped make it what it became.

> Madden's Game: we look back at how John Madden went from being a football player and coach to the conscience of a billion dollar video game franchise that has stayed true to the sport itself.

https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/maddens-game/

His name shall live on eternally in the stacks of unsold used sports games at Goodwill and Savers.

This article on ESPN has some anecdotes of events in his career, and I think it's really good:

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31215567/coach-broadcast...

Looks like he may have been responsible for at least inspiring the digital first down line that's just part of the broadcast now. It's not all football stuff, though.

Hard to know who famous people really are, but he seemed to be a pretty good dude.

One thing I remember that I rarely read about is him being involved with marketing for Florsheim shoes. My dad had extra wide feet and for whatever reason the Florsheim dress shoes were the ones he liked to wear for work. On a couple of occasions as a kid I got dragged along with him to the Florsheim store in the mall so he could get shoes. I think this was in the mid-to-late 80s. They had what was basically a video game cabinet, except it was like a guided sales catalog or shoe picker, and it was narrated by John Madden. At least it was something I could mess with instead of sitting around looking at shoes.

This is Chuck Yeager level of loss. Being European I knew these guys mostly thanks to really good video games.

I wonder what will happen with the game franchise. For a lot of folks his name is synonymous with NFL gaming.

EA will keep his name and they'll continue to make a boatload of money with each yearly release while making the minimum amount of fan-requested changes with the least effort possible.

lol sadly exactly right I'm sure

The game is actually regressing. Just bought Madden after 3 years and the initial load time is somehow longer. Game sometimes stutters when running plays. Don't get me started on MUT being pushed everywhere. At this point, I wish they'd give me Madden 07 with better graphics.

They are doing the same thing with Fifa, pushing FUT and hoping kids gamble on packs. Gaming isn't about genuine good fun now, it is too focused on milking Mom and Dads wallets. I took a few years off Fifa because it was heading that direction and I knew it was time to retire. Caved in and purchased Fifa 22 last week after a 3 year sabbatical.

My wife: "How's the new game?!?" Me: "Feels like 2019, I'm not sure what I bought."

I'm officially done with yearly sports releases and I guess that's ok to them because I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore.

> I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore.

Every year a new crop of kids come of age for the parents to be willing to buy them a game. For the rest, it's a status symbol just like the annual purchase of a new phone. Gotta have the latest player rankings! Like purchasing skins/wardrobe/stickers for in-game use. A whole generation of people that will probably be just fine paying Toyota a monthly fee to use their key FOBs.

I feel like this can apply to just about all sports related video games.

Having retired over a decade ago, I bet a fair number of Madden players already have no idea who John Madden is and may think it's an obscure term like gridiron.

They'll probably use his twitter account to shill NFTs sometime in the next year.

EDIT: for the downvoters: I was referring to Stan Lee's twitter account now being used to shill NFTs, and saw John Madden as the next logical target of that behavior. Said it tongue in cheek. I'll keep my jokes to myself from now on.

Get ready for Tom Clancy's Madden 2023

Over the last few days I've been seeing here a lot of these random so and so, zoology/cyclist/librarian legend, dies at some advanced age.

how much does he or tony hawk make liscensing thier brands to video games?

It’s all over, fat man.

You’ll be missed.

Rest in peace, you turducken lover. There's a place on the West Bank in New Orleans that made them for him special order and sent them to him on game days.

I’ll never forget him sawing through a turducken with his bare hand on TV as he explained what it was.

At least we still have Frank Caliendo.

This might be in poor taste, but will the next Madden game be a zombie FPS next year?

On the issue of obituaries, etc. on HN, I think it's helpful for us to remember that we are reaching that point when the people of our collective childhoods, the pioneers of technology, media, entertainment, etc. will start to die off. I didn't realize Madden was that old, what a great guy he was.

The only thing that happened sooner in my life was musicians.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com