John Madden has died(profootballtalk.nbcsports.com) |
John Madden has died(profootballtalk.nbcsports.com) |
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.
Pre-1970s: Dracula
1970s-2000s: Scaramanga
2000s: Count Dooku/Saruman
― john madden
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.
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.
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".
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.
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!)
> 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://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.
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.
You’ll be missed.
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.
I actually met Mr Madden, and he was not an asshole at that time. So definitely not insinuating anything against him.
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.
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.
While you're wikipedia'ing, check out the Packers current coach.
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.
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
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.
Yes, a person who feels that's necessary to do, on the day the man died, is mighty bitter about something.