• New here? Register here now for access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Plus, stay connected and follow BP on Instagram @buckeyeplanet and Facebook.

Madden to Join NBC in 2006

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
Also according to MSNBC.

NEW YORK - John Madden will join NBC as a game analyst when the network begins televising its newly acquired Sunday night football package in 2006.

The network scheduled an afternoon teleconference with Madden to make the announcement.
“John Madden is the best analyst in the history of the National Football League and, in my opinion, the best analyst of any kind in sports television history,” said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. “John is much more than a football legend, he’s an American icon.”

Madden has spent the past three seasons teamed with Al Michaels on ABC’s now-defunct “Monday Night Football.”

“I have been doing this a long time and when I went to ABC to do ’Monday Night Football,’ I thought I would finish my career there,” Madden said. “But when the NFL did this new television deal, I looked at 'NBC’s Sunday Night Football’ package, and I thought this really fits me well.”

NBC is a partner in the joint venture MSNBC.

Before joining ABC, Madden teamed with Pat Summerall to call Fox’s lead game from 1994-2001. They were the top NFL announcing team on CBS for 13 seasons before that.

Known for his folksy style and his love of football’s grit and grime, Madden has won 14 Sports Emmys.

The former Oakland Raiders coach — he led them to a win over Minnesota in the 1977 Super Bowl — has become a pop-culture phenomenon thanks in large part to the popularity of his video game “Madden NFL Football.” Since its initial release in 1989, the game has sold more than 43 million copies and become the No. 1 selling sports video game of all time.

NBC is reportedly paying $600 million for a six-year contract that will allow the network to broadcast the NFL’s Sunday night game starting with the 2006 season. The Sunday night game was previously shown on ESPN, which will now televise the Monday night game.

NBC also gets two first-round playoff games and the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2012 as part of the deal.
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
It has been painful to watch the death of MNF over the past few years.

With the advent of fantasy football, the NFL and their broadcasts have become a glorified version of a lottery drawing. People watch not because the games are compelling, but because they want to see how their fantasy team does. People will even root against their favorite teams in the name of a good fantasy scoreline. And when the dust settles early Sunday evening, most of the fantasy games have been decided. By the time Sunday night and Monday night roll around, all we're left with is the ashes of our fantasy games and two very shitty pro football games that nobody gives a damn about anymore. The NFL isn't gonna back down from this phenomenon though, because there is huge $$$ to be made. That doesn't make it any less sad though.

Parity has killed MNF. They draw up the schedule, and highlight matchups between the teams that were good last year. This year though, last year's good teams all suck and end up playing like shit on national TV, while this year's good teams get buried in the 1PM regional schedule on Sunday. MNF will continue to suck until the NFL brings a little more flexibility to the schedule to accomodate for this.

As a fan though, I'm happy for NBC. My biggest fear was that they were gonna have their putrid Notre Dame broadcast team doing NFL games.
 
Upvote 0
Meatwad,

Would you rather watch last year's Dolphins v. last years 49'ers or Everyone Loves Raymond? (Thump will assure you making the wrong choice means you're gay)

I think that has something to do with it as well. Any football will show better than the crap they put up against it. fantasy sports or no.
 
Upvote 0
Madden needs to hang it up. It's almost painful to listen to him... all he does is kiss the super stars asses and state the obvious. " you know, if the Packers score more than the Vikings they will win the game tonight!" UGH!
 
Upvote 0
LoKyBuckeye said:
Madden needs to hang it up. It's almost painful to listen to him... all he does is kiss the super stars asses and state the obvious. " you know, if the Packers score more than the Vikings they will win the game tonight!" UGH!
Click to expand...
Agreed. His act was overworn for me about 10 years ago. I can't believe he's still considered a top analyst.
 
Upvote 0
“John Madden is the best analyst in the history of the National Football League and, in my opinion, the best analyst of any kind in sports television history,” said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics.
Click to expand...

Get the fuck outta here. Madden, never was, isn't, and never will be a decent analyst. All he does is state the ridiculously obvious, make stupid sounds like "Poomf" and "Whumpf" and "Whap", and hands out that fucking deformed 6-legged turkey for Thanksgiving. Fucker looks like an obese Lemony Snickets...
 
Upvote 0
MililaniBuckeye said:
Get the fuck outta here. Madden, never was, isn't, and never will be a decent analyst. All he does is state the ridiculously obvious, make stupid sounds like "Poomf" and "Whumpf" and "Whap", and hands out that fucking deformed 6-legged turkey for Thanksgiving. Fucker looks like an obese Lemony Snickets...
Click to expand...


Turducken.
 
Upvote 0
ABJ

8/3/06

`Boom' into HOF

Ex-coach, broadcaster John Madden, known for syntax, entering hall

By Tom Reed

Beacon Journal sportswriter

<!-- begin body-content -->Imagine if the NFL held a dinner party this weekend in Canton and put at the head table place settings for the following people:
• Coach with the best winning percentage in NFL history, minimum of 100 victories.
• Football television analyst with 15 Emmy awards in 28 seasons.
• Creator of a popular video football game that has introduced countless kids to the NFL.
• Pop culture icon, recognized television pitchman, author of four football-related books that have reached the New York Times best seller list.
Would this confluence of talent not represent a cross section of what has made the NFL so influential the past 40 years?
John Madden: party of one, your table is ready. John Madden: party of one, your table is ready.
Madden has arrived in Canton aboard his fabled Outback Madden Cruiser for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He will be enshrined Saturday as the Super Bowl-winning coach of the iconoclastic Oakland Raiders.
Millions of football fans, however, know him better as the face of the popular Madden video game and as the excitable and plain-spoken NFL commentator.
Madden is the Forrest Gump of pro football. He has been an eyewitness to many of the sport's most indelible moments. The Heidi Game. The Immaculate Reception. The Holy Roller. Madden coached in all of them.
As a broadcaster he has seemingly called every big game for the past three decades, awarding six-legged turkeys on Thanksgiving and seasoning his syntax with ``Boom'' back when Emeril was still playing with Easy Bake Ovens.
``John is a very unique character in football,'' said hall of fame tight end Dave Casper, who played for Madden's Super Bowl Raiders of 1976. ``He deserves to go into the hall under his own category -- the All-Madden category.''
After Madden accepts his place in the Canton shrine, he will make TV broadcast history on Sunday by becoming the first man to have worked for all four ``major networks'' as he calls the Hall of Fame Game for NBC.
His broadcast partner, Al Michaels, considers Madden ``the best analyst who ever lived.'' His best friend and a fellow coach, John Robinson, says Madden's popularity transcends generations.
``My wife's parents think John is the greatest human being going,'' Robinson said. ``My 9-year-old grandson (Johnny) is so impressed I know `John Madden from the video game.' ''
Madden reportedly is paid $40 million a year from all his endeavors. He owns a home in northern California and an apartment in New York's famous Dakota, once the Central Park address of John Lennon.
The 70-year-old grandfather hardly looks the part of American affluence, which explains a lot of his appeal.
Madden almost is as uncomfortable in a suit and tie as he is in an airplane. (He hasn't flown since suffering his third panic attack in 1979.) He is more at home in a coffee shop than a country club.
``I'm the luckiest guy in the world,'' Madden said. ``I never really had a job. I was a football player, then a football coach, then a football broadcaster. It's been my life.''
Humble beginning
Madden grew up as the son of an auto mechanic outside of San Francisco in Daly City, Calif. He rode freight train cars and sneaked into pro sporting events with Robinson.
Sports were at the center of their daily existence in the 1940s, and a young Madden played football and baseball. He blossomed into a solid offensive tackle at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 21st round of the 1958 draft.
A knee injury prevented him from ever playing a pro game, but his rookie season proved invaluable for his coaching career.
He spent each morning sidled up to Eagles coach and future hall of famer Norm Van Brocklin, watching film and studying the game at a big-picture level. ``The longer that season went, the more I knew that I better start getting serious on this coaching thing because it doesn't look like I'll ever be playing again,'' Madden said.
His rise through the coaching ranks was swift. San Luis Obispo High. Allan Hancock Junior College. San Diego State. It was in November 1966 that Madden, while serving as San Diego State's defensive coordinator, met Raiders' owner Al Davis.
Davis hired Madden as a Raiders' linebackers coach the next season and in 1969 shocked the football world by naming him head coach at age 32.
``Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life,'' Madden said. ``During the time, the 10 years I was head coach, he gave me everything. I was never turned down for one thing.''
Nickname central
Davis and Madden assembled a team filled with character and characters. The Raiders became known as ``the NFL's middle finger.''
They hit hard. They played rough. They gained a reputation for dirty tactics. They boasted players with electric nicknames: Snake (Ken Stabler), the Assassin (Jack Tatum), Mad Stork (Ted Hendricks) and The Tooz (John Matuszak).
The Raiders training camp hotel, the El Rancho Tropicana in Santa Rosa, Calif., was reputed as a haven for alcohol, guns and motorcycles. Hall of fame offensive tackle Bob Brown said he fired off between 50 and 100 rounds of ammunition just to ``settle in'' for camp.
``If I told you off the record some of the stuff that went on, you would say, `Bob, you've got to be kidding,' '' he said. ``And I would have to take the next space shuttle off the planet.''
Brown said Madden was the perfect coach for the dysfunctional Raiders. Madden was an excellent communicator and he treated everyone like men. He didn't get caught up with disciplinary measures that lacked football practicality.
He had three rules: be on time, pay attention and ``play like hell when I tell you to.''
The Raiders never had a losing season under Madden. He finished with a 103-32-7 record and won seven division titles. ``I've said before, John had a great asset of understanding people,'' hall of fame lineman and new Raiders coach Art Shell said. ``He understood that this is a people game. He allowed the players to be themselves.''
Madden said despite the franchise's outlaw image, core players such as Jim Otto, Gene Upshaw, Shell, Willie Brown and Casper were quality people.
``When a character would come in, he didn't lead the band; the band was being led by pretty solid guys,'' Madden said.
Some believe the Raiders should have made more Super Bowl appearances under Madden, but the franchise had the misfortune of playing during the dynastic era of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins.
Robinson became head coach at USC in 1976 and predicted both men would wins titles at the Rose Bowl that year. Robinson delivered a national championship and Madden followed with a Super Bowl victory over the Minnesota Vikings.
``John came out and looked at me and said, `Two doofuses from Daly City -- who would have thunk it?' ''
Madden retired after the 1978 season, citing ulcers and burnout. How all-consuming had the job become? He said he once thought his soon-to-be 16-year-old son, Mike, was turning 12.
Michaels likens Madden's relatively brief 10-year coaching run to the stellar pitching career of Sandy Koufax. Some hall voters were reluctant to elect Madden in the early 1980s, assuming he would leave the broadcast booth and return to coaching.
Oops.
Madden has becoming a broadcasting giant. He has gone from a ranting, referee-baiting coach of the renegade Raiders to a witty, insightful commentator whose delivery seems as genuine as the guy on the next bar stool.
Perhaps the only thing more unlikely has been his metamorphosis into a video-game icon. Madden was teaching a football-related course at the University of California in 1979 when he was approached about lending his name to a computer game.
``It came out in a computer version,'' Madden said. ``Then, boom, lo and behold, boom, here comes the hardware for video games and we already have the software.''
Madden finds difficulty summing up a career as varied as it is successful. Joe Horrigan, the hall vice president of communications, might supply the best observation.
``Most people in the sports world are lucky if they can make one transition -- from player to coach or from coach to broadcaster. John has made three or four,'' Horrigan said. ``His greatest legacy is that he's known on so many levels.''
<!-- end body-content --><!-- begin body-end -->
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
BasketballJunkie,

Thanks for posting that article, it was a great read.

Personally, I am a huge fan of John Madden--not so much as a broadcaster, but as a good guy who knows and loves football. Few people understand and appreciate the game as much as he does and his passion for the game gets others excited about it.

I've read 3 of Madden's 4 books, and that is where you really see his knowledge for the game. Maybe it is because of the books, but I don't understand people who don't like Madden. He isn't arrogant. He doesn't judge players outside of their football ability. And he is always positive about the game.
 
Upvote 0
NBC: Madden will miss 'SNF' game

NEW YORK (AP) -- John Madden will miss calling an NFL game this weekend after working 476 in a row.
The 72-year-old Sunday Night Football analyst, who travels by bus because of a fear of flying, will take a break to spend time with his family instead of making three straight cross country trips, NBC said Monday.
Madden went from Jacksonville, Fla., to San Diego last week; he would have had to return to Florida for this Sunday's game at Tampa Bay. There's no Sunday Night Football game the following weekend, so Madden would have then headed home to the Bay Area.
NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol first approached Madden in the spring with the suggestion of skipping the trip.
Cris Collinsworth, normally a part of NBC's studio show, will fill in for Madden.

Entire article: John Madden will miss calling an NFL game this weekend - NFL - SI.com
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top