<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut is there higher praise for a commentator then Madden-esque? <\/span>I will admit that it took me a long time to come around on Cris Collinsworth—and even now I’m not sure I’ve forgiven his inappropriate relationship with Michael Phelps’ Mom—but I now begin to see in him the things that I will miss from Madden. <\/span>The play-by-play knowledge, the detail on where every player should be, the types of insights that only come from spending a week in a dark room with lots of gametape. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut if coaching is Madden’s Bond, and his commentating is the string of box-office successes, then his video game is truly his Dr. Jones. <\/span>There’s a story that the original Madden Football<\/i><\/span> guys tell: for the sake of the developers the original version was only going to have 7 players per side but Madden threatened to walk out if they didn’t make the game as realistic as possible. <\/span>Twenty-one years later, EA and the Madden<\/i><\/span> series continue to push the boundaries of realism- even at the sake of game-play (I mean, can anyone<\/i><\/span> actually use that QB Vision mode from ’06, that thing is impossible!) <\/span>I remember upgrading my Madden every time I upgraded the system, then upgrading from Madden ’01 to Madden ’02 just to have Chad Pennington be able to complete a pass, I remember turning off exhaustion so that Mike Vick in Madden ’04 could accomplish anything, and I remember the first time I heard that Collinsworth was going to take Madden’s place as the voice of the game. <\/span>It was the warning shot across the bow that said ‘Hey, I’m not gonna be around forever.’ <\/span>I’m going to remember the game, and the Madden cards, every time a punter kicks a 60 yarder or a QB hits 10 passes in a row, but mostly I’m going to remember “You used to be able to put stick ‘em on your hands to catch those balls, now they’ve got those gloves.” <\/span>I heard that comment over and over again every time my receiver would miss a pass, heck I think he even said it when my QB spiked the ball. <\/span>It’s such a simple comment, a throwaway-line designed to make us feel like he’s playing with us, but it’s more than that too. <\/span>It’s the kind of thing your grandpa would say, it’s a way of saying “In my day we’d use our hands; we didn’t have all these newfangled advantages you guys have.” <\/span>He might as well as have said that in his day they had to drive 70 yards, uphill, in the snow, barefoot. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen I first saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/i><\/span>, Sean Connery wasn’t a father-figure, to me he was a grandfather. <\/span>He had all those stories, all his life’s work, and everything was harder in his day. <\/span>But he let you in just enough so that you noticed that he truly had forgotten more than you will ever know. <\/span>Yes, John’s stories kinda meandered, and his highlights this past season were things like telling us about eating at the buffet with the Eagles. <\/span>He wasn’t a hard-nosed coach anymore, he was just a sweet old-man who loved food and football and sharing his stories. <\/span>But we’ll miss that guy too—even if it was his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen<\/i><\/span>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMadden retired on a Thursday and it was a retirement that was so expected and yet so surprising. <\/span>The sports world recently lost Harry Kalas but it was a way that we all kinda expected- one day he just couldn’t make it to the ballpark. <\/span>And as much as it breaks my heart, I know one day we’re gonna lose Vin Scully the same way. <\/span>These guys are old-school in the most complimentary sense of the term. <\/span>They are from a different generation in which you show up, everyday. <\/span>So it’s actually kind of refreshing to see him be able to walk away on his own terms. <\/span>And whether as a coach, commentator, or video game personality John Madden always had such success that it is now nearly impossible to think of anyone ever replacing him. <\/span>It’s enough to make you want to get on a bus, go to Canton, and look for that 1970s Madden- back before he was an icon, when he was just a really cool young man ready to take on the world. <\/span>If you let yourself slip back to him back then, you can hear him say “Madden. <\/span>John Madden.” <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our own Leaky Pipes says a fond farewell to the great John Madden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4154"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4154"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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