RealClearSports: John Madden: Great Announcer, Better Man

By Art Spander

He was the voice, whose love both of his sport and his work was open and infectious. John Madden didn't just make us understand football, he made us understand ourselves.

The NFL and its television broadcasts will go on because institutions inevitably outlast the people who bring them to popularity and prominence.

Yet, cliché as the phrase may be, things never will be the same.

Madden truly was the guy on the next chair in the restaurant, or the next stool in the bar, the guy who had to get into the conversation. Then, unpretentiously, unlike so many others because he knew what he was talking about, John simply took over.

Or to borrow a Madden observation, "Boom!''

At age 73, John on Thursday announced he was retiring from the broadcast booth, a property he seemingly had held in perpetuity for four different networks, the last being NBC on Sunday nights. It was there he and Al Michaels kept us informed and entertained.

Now as Kipling would have said, like all captains and kings, John Madden departs, with his class, to our sorrow. We're not only losing a football mind, we're losing a friend.

His family had something to do with the decision. He'll be married to the wonderful Virginia 50 years in December, and they have two sons and six grandchildren, whom, from August to January, were virtual strangers to John.

The two Northern California teams, the Oakland Raiders, which Madden coached to a Super Bowl win more than 30 years ago, and the San Francisco 49ers, also had something to do with the retirement. They have slipped so far from their championship years they're not considered worthy of Sunday night TV. Madden thus never was able to get back to his Bay Area home during the NFL season.

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"I'm not tired of anything," said Madden, "but I'm going away."

So, this fall, for the first time since he was a freshman at Jefferson High in Daly City, the working class community dead south of San Francisco, John Madden will not be involved in football.

"What made it hard," he said during his morning radio spot on San Francisco's KCBS, "is I enjoyed everything so much. I always felt I was the luckiest guy in the world."

John Madden was everyman, with a sharper intellect. He liked to make us believe that on his cross-country bus journeys he only ate at places named "Joes," or slept in his clothes.

He is a closet intellectual who always made you feel good. Even when he was berating you, as he did now and then when he was Raiders coach and I was covering the team for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some sporting leaders, coaches, managers, general managers, insist they never read the papers. Madden wasn't at all that disingenuous.

He'd come jogging and yelling across the Raiders old practice field in Alameda, waving the sports page and telling me in a few unsavory phrases I didn't have a clue what was going on. Then, when the workout ended, he would give me a clue and an explanation. Boom.

A few years back I was driving from Oakland to San Francisco, sitting in the line of traffic waiting to pass through the toll booths on the east end of the Bay Bridge. A horn sounded. And sounded again. Three lanes to my right, it was Madden, honking and waving - his arm, not a sports story he didn't appreciate.

John's pal from the time they were kids has been John Robinson, who went on to a successful coaching career himself, leading USC to Rose Bowl wins. "We were just a couple of doofuses from Daly City," Madden reminded of the pairing.

Part of their ritual among the group with which they ran was buying ice cream cones. "Another kid would yell 'First dibs,'" said Madden, "and he got to lick your cone. So we all would immediately lick our own cones to keep anyone else from getting some of yours. John Robinson would still eat my cone after I licked it."

Along the way, Madden has licked the world. He coached. He became a TV analyst. He did commercials for seemingly every product from Lite Beer - "Tastes great; less filling." - to Ace Hardware. He has a weekend home on the Monterey Peninsula. He owns huge hunks of the Diablo Valley beyond the hills east of Oakland. He was voted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has an eponymous EA video game.

And arguably, he's the biggest star ever connected to the NFL.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Madden said about leaving, repelling in advance any stories that he has a medical problem. "I'm not tired of traveling. It's just this is the right time, the right thing."

We'll miss you, John.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/04/john-madden-great-announcer-better-man.html

© RealClearSports 2009

The city that can't stop hurting

OAKLAND – This is
the city that can't stop hurting. The city that can't stop weeping.

Once, Oakland was
known as the home of the Raiders, the Athletics, the Golden State Warriors. Once
the questions were about Al Davis' disconnect or Billy Beane's “Moneylessball.’’

Now they're about
death, about the killing of four policemen by a parolee who should never have
been let free.

Now the area that proudly labeled itself the "City of Champions" is a chump, an
embarrassment.

This is my city, Oakland, where I live, where I've worked, where I've watched the sporting heroes come and go, where I saw
Reggie Jackson and Jim Plunkett and Rick Barry lead franchises to
titles.

This is where
Catfish Hunter pitched a perfect game, Art Shell, Gene Upshaw and Bob Brown
blocked their way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Sleepy Floyd scored a record
29 points in the fourth quarter, 51 overall, in the NBA playoffs against the
Lakers.

This is the town to
which sports gave an identity, the town that no longer needed a postscript to
note it was across the Bay from San Francisco.

Now it's the town
that has lost its way and its soul, a town infamous for a crime instead of
famous for any team.

So shocking. So
disturbing. So jarring.

Here we were
wondering if the A's would have pitching, or if the San Francisco Giants would
have any hitting. Whether JaMarcus Russell would take his role as Raiders
quarterback seriously enough to stay in shape. Whether Warriors management was
interested in anything except the large crowds, which persistently supported a
perennially losing team.

The city turned out
en masse for the funeral Friday. Law enforcement officers from throughout the
land came to services held at Oracle Arena, where the Warriors play. What a
strange linkage, a reflection of grief in a building designed for
enjoyment.

You may have read. Two of the murdered policemen spent time assisting the
local teams at Oracle or the McAfee Coliseum next door. They were known by the
athletes, appreciated by management. By all counts, they were good guys.

By all counts Oakland is a good city. Or was. Now its already tarnished
reputation is stained even more. Now rather than debate whether Al Davis ought
to sell the Raiders – he won't – or if Lew Wolff's intent in buying the A's was
to move them to San Jose, people will talk about lawlessness and
pain.

Talk of terror rather than elation. Of residents saying they no longer can tolerate living here.

Cities struggle to get on the front pages. But not this way. They want
tourists, new businesses, satisfied citizens. They want teams that bring
spectators to the arenas or stadiums. Not situations that bring
disgrace.

It's going to be a difficult
road back. This isn't like a few toughs throwing flashlight batteries at a
leftfielder at the Coliseum, or members of the Black Hole harassing a spectator
at a Raiders game. This is virtually beyond comprehension, but it is all too
real.

Plaques in the so-called Court of Champions, the concourse between Oracle
and the Coliseum, call attention to winners, the A's World Series titles, the
Raiders Super Bowl victories, the Warriors 1975 NBA crown. In another part of
town, the names of the four slain policemen already have been etched onto a
granite wall.

Who dared imagine we would be compelled to remember this tragedy the way
we do the triumphs?   

Oakland is forever tainted. There is no escape. Journalists do not
forget, even when writing about sports. Oakland, a story about the A's will
remind us, is the city where four policemen were shot and killed. It's
unavoidable. It's understandable.

The A's, Warriors and Raiders sent their condolences, showed their
support. The teams that shared in the elation of better times properly shared in
the sadness of this terrible time.

Oakland, on the landfall the Spanish settlers originally called the
contra costa, or the other shore, the one on the east side of the water, has
suffered in comparison to San Francisco.

In one of the most misunderstood of observations, Gertrude Stein,
returning to her razed childhood home in Oakland, said, "There is no there,
there." The line became a mantra.

Kicked around, razzed, chided, Oakland battled image and derision
to gain its sense of self through sports. To those who never knew where the city
was located, the success of its teams figuratively put Oakland on the
map.

It's still there, under an ocean of teardrops.

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© RealClearSports 2009