He was a figure, known by all American football fans. John Madden passed away on Tuesday December 28 at the age of 85. It was a monument of the NFL ( National Football League), the professional league of American football.
He died Tuesday at the age of 85. He was a highly respected coach in the 1970s and led the Oakland Raiders to Super Bowl victory.
He then led a more than successful dual career as a television consultant and as an ambassador for the most famous video game devoted to American football, creating a franchise that bore his name.
John Madden Biography
He was a figure. A mouth. A voice, too. John Madden, a multifaceted character, has accompanied American audiences in various forms over the past half century. He left at the age of 85, and the sports press duly salutes his disappearance since the announcement of his death on Tuesday evening.
He was born in Austin, Minnesota, the son of Earl and Mary Madden. His father, an auto mechanic, moved the Madden family to Daly City, California, a town in San Francisco, when Madden was seven years old in 1941. He attended Jefferson High School, graduating in 1954.
He was passionate about American football all his life, in his youth he played at the “College of San Mateo” he was selected in the draft in the 21st round (244th overall selection) by the Philadelphia Eagles team in 1958, but a knee injury sustained in training a year later ended his career as an offensive tackle player.
John Madden Career
He has gone through all the stages. His playing career ended in a hurry following an injury, which led him to become a coach at just 23 years old.
First in the NCAA (American college football championship ), before joining the NFL and signing a contract with the Oakland Raiders in 1969, becoming the youngest technician in League history at 32 years and 10 months .
He stayed there for ten seasons, for a very flattering record of 103 wins in 142 games. At the head of the Raiders, he won the Super Bowl in 1976 against the Minnesota Vikings. Performances that will bring John Madden to beinducted into the Hall of Fame as a coach in 2006.
“No one loved football as much as Coach…There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for everything he did to make football and the NFL what they are today ,” League Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
After his coaching career, he continued his career in the NFL, but this time as a consultant, at only 42 years old. His voice was also used for the video game devoted to US football, “Madden NFL”, at Electronic Arts. He had retired in 2009.
On December 25, the Fox Sports television network presented the documentary All Madden , in which they recount the biography of the legendary Raiders coach, from being a complete unknown to being the valuable strategist who transformed Oakland’s philosophy.
He briefly appeared in the movie Christine. Madden was seen coaching a football team during a television broadcast.
A bus full of NFL pros gets lost and crosses paths with kids looking for directions. Madden helps the team design the game’s winning play, “The Annexation of Puerto Rico”, which was a version of a fumblerooski.
He also played himself as the announcer for the fictional games in the movie The Replacements alongside his broadcast partner at the time Pat Summerall.
A Madden film clip interview about De La Salle’s football coach Bob Ladouceur appears near the beginning of the end credits of the 2014 film When the Game Stands Tall .
He has been featured in a variety of television and radio commercials, including Ace Hardware, Outback Steakhouse (the corporate sponsor of Maddencruiser ),Verizon Wireless, Rent-A-Center, Miller Lite, Toyota, Sirius Satellite Radio, and “Tough Actin “Tinactin .
In particular, the Miller beer ads cemented Madden’s image in the public eye as a goofy but lovable personality.
He had a brief film role playing himself in the 1994 youth football film Little Giants and the 2000 film The Replacements . He appeared in a 1999 episode of The Simpsons , “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday“.
He also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Liveon NBC in 1982 with musical guest Jennifer Holliday. Additionally, he appeared in Irish band U2’s music video for the song “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of“.
His comments on a fake football game in which Paul Hewson is the kicker who misses an onside kick to win the game. He makes a similar appearance in the video for Paul Simon’s 1972 single “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”, in which he attempts to teach the fundamentals of soccer to a group of children playing a game of pickup.
He has also recorded television and radio public service announcements for a number of causes, including NBC/Ad Council’s The More You Know in 2009 and Vascular Cures (formerly the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation) in Redwood City, California (based on the health experiences of his wife, Virginia Madden).
To minimize trips to the studios, he built Goal Line Productions in Pleasanton, California, a facility that is now managed by his son, Joe. The facility features a 7,000 sq ft (650 m 2 ).
John Madden Awards And Honors
- Super Bowl XI winner (as head coach of the Oakland Raiders)
- 2002 Winner of the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.
- Pro Football Hall of Fame (Class of 2006)
- Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (Class of 1991).
- Yahoo! Sports Top 50 All-Time Network TV Sports Broadcasters (#2).
- California Hall of Fame (Class of 2009)
- 1984 NSSA National Sportscaster of the Year
- 2010 NSSA Hall of Fame Inductee
- Winner of 16 Emmy Awards
John Madden Personal Life
He met his wife, Virginia Fields, at a bar in Pismo Beach, California, and married on December 26, 1959. They live in Pleasanton, California and have two sons, Joseph and Michael. Joe played football at Brown University and Mike attended Harvard University, where he started out as a catcher on the football team.
Madden’s spirited and flamboyant delivery has earned him critical acclaim and fourteen Sports Emmy Awards as Outstanding Sports Analyst.
His announcement style is peppered with interjections like “Boom!“, “Whap!”, “Bang!” and “Doink!” ‘and with his use of the telestrator, a device that allows him to superimpose his light-pencil football game diagrams over video footage.
His use of the telestrator helped popularize the technology, which has become a staple of television coverage of all sports.
Madden was also known for working on the annual Thanksgiving Day games for CBS and later Fox. He would award a turkey or turducken to players on the winning team. 
He also awarded a turkey drumstick to the players of the winning team during the Thanksgiving Day game, often bringing out a “nuclear turkey” with up to eight drumsticks for the occasion.
The drumsticks served as a strange interpretation of the “player of the game” award. He stopped advertising Thanksgiving Day games after he moved to ABC in 2002, but the tradition continued. Fox, CBS, and the NFL Network present the Galloping Gobbler, All-Iron Award, and Pudding Pie Award, respectively, to the game’s “Most Valuable” Player.
John Madden Net Worth
In addition to his involvement on the field and on the radio, he was the official broadcaster for the football video game that bears his name since 1988: Madden NFL . This involvement skyrocketed the value of his net worth to $200 million, according to the site Celebrity Net Worth .
It should be noted that as part of the EA products , Madden obtained a percentage of all the games sold, for which he received a payment of 150 million dollars in 2005, just for the use of his name in video games.
