John Madden, whose 30-year broadcasting career included 11 Super Bowl broadcasts, stints with all four broadcast networks, and a level of national fame that few sportscasters have ever reached, has died.
The NFL announced late Tuesday that Madden, one of the best known analysts in the history of sports broadcasting, died suddenly Tuesday morning. There was no immediate word on the cause. His death comes just three days after FOX debuted a much-hyped 90-minute documentary about his life in which he sat down for a rare interview.
In a 30-year broadcasting career, Madden was the lead NFL analyst for all four of the major broadcast networks — first CBS (1979-94), then FOX (1994-2002), ABC (2002-06) and NBC (2006-09) — and called 11 Super Bowl games. For nearly all of that time, he worked either with Pat Summerall (CBS and FOX) or Al Michaels (ABC and NBC).
For the younger generations who know him primarily — perhaps even solely — through the EA Sports video game that bears his name, it may be hard to convey just how ubiquitous Madden was in his prime. He was a regular fixture in television commercials, an object of late night parodies, and graced the cover of Sports Illustrated when that was still a cultural touchstone.
A bona fide celebrity, he was well-known for his catchphrases, telestrations and general idiosyncrasies, from traveling to game sites via his Madden Cruiser bus to popularizing the “Turducken,” an amalgam of holiday meats that he sometimes featured on-air during Thanksgiving week games. Beyond anything else, he was known for his deep knowledge of the game and his skill in communicating that knowledge conversationally and with enthusiasm. As The New York Times put it in 2008, he was “the lovable football professor.”
Long before Tony Romo, Madden commanded the kind of massive contracts that were unheard of for a sports TV analyst. As recounted in The Ringer, in an era in which sports broadcasting salaries topped out around $2 million, Madden was making quadruple that amount.
Unlike Romo, Madden did not start out immediately on the #1 broadcast team. He debuted with CBS in 1979 and worked alongside five different play-by-play partners before eventually rising to the #1 team alongside Summerall in 1981.
He joined CBS after a short but celebrated coaching career in which he won a Super Bowl with the Raiders. In a 2000 profile by the Baltimore Sun, he said he only ever thought about returning to coaching once, when Jimmy Johnson told him that he was on the verge of leaving the Cowboys in 1995.
Madden said he and Johnson started discussing strategy and coaching staffs and the like, and before he knew it, he was fired up about coaching again.
“I walked across the street with [Fox commentator and former Raiders linebacker] Matt Millen after dinner and I told him, ‘I hope when I wake up in the morning that this feeling goes away.’ When I woke up the next morning, it had gone away,” Madden said.
[News from NFL Communications 12.28]
