HOF=2006John Earl Madden (born April 10, 1936 in Austin, Minnesota), was head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1969-1978 and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Even though he led the Raiders to victory in Super Bowl XI, Madden is perhaps best known for his nearly three-decade career as a color commentator for various broadcasting networks, where he has become a household name. He currently serves as a popular TV football commentator, author, and commercial pitchman for various products and retailers. This subsequent profession resulted in countless endorsement deals, including the popular, NFL-branded home video game series that has carried his name since 1990: Madden NFL. Madden was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 4, 2006.

Early life

Madden grew up in Northern California graduating from Jefferson High School, Daly City in 1954. John Madden played junior college football at the College of San Mateo before transferring and playing college football and baseball at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, California. In football, he played both sides of the line, winning all-conference honors at offensive tackle , while as a member of the school's baseball team, he played catcher. Madden was drafted in the 21st round by the National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles in 1958, but suffered a knee injury in training camp and never played in a professional game.

Career as a coach

Madden began his coaching career while working on his master's degree at Cal Poly. After two years as an assistant coach at Allan Hancock Junior College in 1960 and 1961, he was elevated to head coach the following year. Following an 8-1 season in 1963, he was hired by Don Coryell as a defensive assistant at San Diego State University, where he served until 1966. During that final campaign, the Aztecs were ranked among the top small college teams in the country.

Building on that success, Madden was hired as linebackers coach for the Oakland Raiders in 1967, and played a role in helping the team reach Super Bowl II during that first year. After Raiders head coach John Rauch resigned to take the same position with the Buffalo Bills, Madden was named the Raiders' head coach on February 4, 1969. With his hiring, he became the youngest head coach in the National Football League.

Over the next 10 seasons, Madden guided the Raiders to 103 victories, 32 losses and 7 ties, including seven division titles and six seasons of 10 wins or more. That sustained success helped establish the team as an NFL power and gave Madden the highest regular season winning percentage (.759) for a coach in NFL history with over 100 career wins. In addition, his overall winning percentage (including playoff games) ranked second behind only legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Madden and Lombardi also won the Super Bowl and never had a losing season as a head coach. Madden has a winning record (36-16-2) as a head coach against other NFL head coaches in the Hall Of Fame that he coached against and coached the Raiders to a 11-1-1 Monday Night Football record.

However, the team endured continued frustration over coming up short in the playoffs, especially against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Five title-game losses in seven years left the Raiders with the same image that the Dallas Cowboys had previously had: the inability to win "the big one." Despite a 12-1-1 mark in 1969, the team lost 17-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs in the final American Football League championship game. Three years later, what appeared to be a last-minute victory over the Steelers instead became a part of football lore when Franco Harris' "Immaculate Reception" gave Pittsburgh a 13-7 win. Then, in 1974, after defeating the two-time defending Super Bowl winner Miami Dolphins in dramatic fashion, the Raiders lost again to the Steelers in the AFC Championship game.

In 1976, the team's luck finally changed when the Raiders put together a 13-1 regular season, escaped the first-round of the playoffs with a dramatic victory over the New England Patriots, then defeated the Steelers for the AFC Championship. Then, on January 9, 1977, Madden's team finally captured their first Super Bowl with a convincing 32-14 win over the Minnesota Vikings.

The Raiders lost the AFC Championship Game in 1977 to the Denver Broncos, with Madden battling an ulcer for most of the season. After a 9-7 campaign in 1978, which kept the team from making the playoffs for the first time in seven years, Madden resigned. Citing health reasons during the January 4 press conference, the 42-year-old Madden stated that the years of stress had given him "the body of a 70-year-old," according to his doctors.

Often obscured by images of his wild rantings on the sidelines during games was Madden's concern for players. One of the prime examples of this attitude came in the weeks following a Raiders' preseason game against the New England Patriots on August 13, 1978. New England receiver Darryl Stingley was permanently paralyzed by a hit from the Raiders' Jack Tatum, with Madden offering his family's home to Stingley's wife, who stayed there while waiting to be transferred to Chicago to begin rehabilitation..

Career as a broadcaster

John Madden with Al Michaels on Monday Night Football

Since 1979, Madden has worked as a color commentator/analyst on network television broadcasts of NFL games. After working lower profile contests for CBS during his first few years, he was then elevated to the network's top football broadcasting duo with Pat Summerall. When the Fox Network gained the rights in 1994, the pair shifted to that network with Madden reportedly making $8 million per year. Following his appearance during Super Bowl XXXVI in February 2002, Madden left Fox to become a commentator on ABC's Monday Night Football, working with longtime play-by-play announcer Al Michaels. While he took a pay cut to take this position, he was still making $5 million a year. [1]. Some have speculated that the increased exposure of Monday Night Football ensures that additional endorsement deals will make up the difference.

Madden's lively, blunt, and sometimes insightful football commentary has won him critical acclaim and fourteen Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sports Event Analyst. His announcing style is punctuated with interjections like "Boom!" and his use of the 'telestrator', a device which allows him to superimpose his light-penned diagrams of football plays over live or re-play videocamera footage. Madden's use of the telestrator helped to popularize the technology, which has become a staple of television coverage of all sports.

Madden sometimes ends up the butt of jokes, as occasionally his commentary borders on the rhetorical and blatantly obvious. This tendency may have increased since his final years of working with Pat Summerall. It's not uncommon for someone to rib on Madden's "Maddenisms" by saying something like "The only way for the Raiders to win this game is to simply just to score more points than [the opposing team]..." Comedian and impressionist Frank Caliendo does an uncanny Madden impression, mocking Madden's penchant for overstating the obvious in an exaggerated way. Madden has publicly stated he does not like Caliendo's impression, as it portrays him as a simple-minded, easily distracted buffoon.

While doing commentary for Super Bowl XXXVI, Madden made a statement that later was heavily criticized. With the New England Patriots leading the St. Louis Rams, 17-10, the Rams scored a touchdown to tie the game with just over 1 minute remaining in the fourth quarter. Madden declared that if he were the Patriots coach, he would have his team run the clock out and go to overtime. However, New England decided to attempt a game-winning drive and managed to score a field goal to win the game as time expired.

In 2005, Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, announced that Madden would do color commentary for NBC's Sunday night NFL games beginning with the 2006 season. Madden thus will become the first sportcaster to have worked for all of the "Big Four" U.S. broadcast television networks. It was announced on February 9, 2006 that Michaels would also be moving to NBC with Madden after his new ABC/ESPN contract was nullified so he could work on the NBC telecasts.

For listeners of KCBS-AM radio in San Francisco, Madden does a 15 minute on-air chat with an anchor person every weekday morning at 8:15am with recorded repeats throughout the day. Madden has aired sports commentaries in syndication on the Westwood One radio network in the United States.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Madden with its Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award in 2002. In August 2005 the Hall's Veterans' Committee selected Madden and Rayfield Wright as candidates for entry into the Hall in 2006. Madden was inducted into the Hall of Fame on August 5, 2006.

Other activities

Madden on the cover of Madden '99, part of the Madden NFL video game series.

In recent years he has appeared in a variety of radio and television commercials including Ace Hardware (interestingly, Madden's partner Summerall was the spokesman for True Value, Ace's main business rival), Outback Steakhouse (the current corporate sponsor of the Maddencruiser--see below), Verizon Wireless, Rent-a-Center, Miller Lite, Sirius Satellite Radio and Tinactin. In particular, the Miller beer advertisements cemented Madden's image in the public eye as a bumbling but loveable personality. He had a brief movie role playing himself in the 1994 youth football film Little Giants.

In addition to his real-world exploits, John Madden lends his voice, personality and name to the Madden NFL series of football video games published by Electronic Arts. Madden NFL is created at Electronic Arts Tiburon Studios in Orlando, Florida and consistently is one of the top selling games in North America every year. He has also recorded radio and television public service announcements for a number of causes, including the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation of San Francisco (based on the health experiences of his wife, Virginia Madden).

Madden is the author/co-author of several football-related books, including One Knee Equals Two Feet and Everything Else You Need to Know About Football (1987); The First Book of Football (1993); All Madden: Hey, I'm Talking Pro Football! (with Dave Anderson, 1996); John Madden's Ultimate Tailgating (with Peter Kaminsky, 1998) and the best-selling memoir Hey, Wait a Minute! I Wrote a Book! (1985).

Madden is also noted for his fear of flying, believed to be related to the October 29, 1960, plane crash that claimed the lives of most of that year's Cal Poly football team. Having graduated from the school only two years previous, Madden lost many friends in the accident. He travels around the country in a luxurious customized coach-bus, which he has dubbed the Maddencruiser. As a result, Madden has never worked commentary during a Pro Bowl game; they are held in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu.

When not on the road, he and his wife Virginia reside in a historic restored abode in Pleasanton, California, an upscale community east of San Francisco. He also maintains an apartment in the Dakota Apartments in New York City as an East Coast base during the NFL season.

Coaching Record

Oakland Raiders|1969|1970|1971|1972|1973|1974|1975|1976|1977|1978|Totals

Year	Regular Season	Winning Pct.	Playoffs
12-1-1	0.923	1-1	1st - AFL West
8-4-2	0.643	1-1	1st - AFC West
8-4-2	0.643	-	2nd - AFC West
10-3-1	0.750	0-1	1st - AFC West
9-4-1	0.679	1-1	1st - AFC West
12-2	0.857	1-1	1st - AFC West
11-3	0.786	1-1	1st - AFC West
13-1	0.929	3-0	1st - AFC West
11-3	0.786	1-1	2nd - AFC West
9-7	0.563	-	2nd - AFC West
103-32-7	0.750	9-7

Winning Percentage based on the regular season record
*''Oakland missed the Playoffs in both 1971 and 1978

References

*CNN Money article on Madden salary
*Cal Poly Sports Information office

External links

Pro Football Hall of Fame: Member profile
*Madden's daily show on KCBS radio
*Madden's website

Parodies on MADtv

*John Madden popcorn popper
*John Madden Vagicil commercial
*John Madden on Paula Zahn now

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John Madden (football)

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