Opinion: NFL icon Madden retires

John Madden, a voice known to many, retired from broadcasting this past week. When someone who has been around the sport for sometime thinks football, John Madden may very well be who those people see. Whether it is his video game line and merchandise, or his way of making the game seem more fun with his “Captain Obvious” remarks mixed with his vast knowledge of the sport, John Madden will be missed.

Even for his criticizers, they have to admit that he’s a face of the sport. However, at age 73, the hard work seemed to have been slowly catching up to him. It has been more and more evident, from his continued refusal to fly anywhere to his absence from a game last season because he could not handle the cross country trip that week.

Madden broadcasted NFL games with Pat Summerall in the 1980s and 1990s on CBS and FOX. Most recently however, he moved to ABC’s Monday Night Football prior to its move to ESPN in 2006. His latest color commentary job was with Sunday Night Football on NBC. He finished off his broadcasting career by doing the color commentary for the Super Bowl earlier this year.

Madden was inducted to the NFL Hall of Fame in 2006. His record of being a coach and having won over 76% of his games in his 10-year career were more than enough to get him in. That’s even if you don’t include what he has done for the sport, marketing or broadcast-wise.

Perhaps the best known contribution of Madden is his video game line. Since 1988, the video game series, Madden NFL, has carried his name. It is the most popular video game line ever released in North America.

Despite his popularity as a broadcaster, John Madden was once quoted saying, “I’m always going to be a football guy who’s an announcer. I will never be an announcer.”

John Madden retires a proud, profitable, famous and well known career as a broadcaster but will always be a face of the sport he loves so much.
 

• Facebook Comments
• Site Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out