John Madden passed away on December 28th at the age of 85 leaving behind of the most memorable and lasting impacts on football in American history. Although he stopped coaching in the NFL (1978) before I was born, retired from the television booth well over 10 years ago, and hadn’t been in the spotlight much at all for a long time, his death was a reminder of just how much of a cultural significance he had in our country.
This was arguably a Mount Rushmore NFL personality, especially for someone who never played in the league.
Iconic Booth Vibe with Pat Summerall
I have vague memories of the Madden and Pat Summerall booth during the years at CBS together (1981-93) but it was when Fox won the bidding rights away from CBS and the duo moved networks for 1994 that they’d hit their peak for many of my age. At the time, Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman signed a new deal paying him $1.9 million for 1994 and Madden was rumored to be making even more than that annually with Fox.
He was worth every penny and more.
Didn’t it always seem like Madden did every Cowboys game at the old Texas Stadium? I know he called so many games but when I think about Madden it always takes me back to afternoons watching the ‘Boys beat up on another team.
You can hear Summerall & Madden looking at this picture.Â
Of course, there were all of those Thanksgiving games with the Cowboys that eventually turned into yet another Madden tradition given to us all with the post-game turkey leg award. Any time I see footage of those 1990’s games in Dallas with the partial shadows dominated by the bright white natural light coming in from the open roof I instantly think of Madden’s weird quips.
Frank Caliendo’s Impersonation
It was early second semester in January 2003 when a couple college buddies of mine told me I had to listen to this skit by a comedian impersonating John Madden. Most of my first couple years of college were a haze to say the least but this event on a bitterly cold New York night I remember in vivid detail.
I can remember the weird-shaped dorm room and placement of the beds and couches. We all crammed in and a friend sat at his desk no doubt loading up Limewire or Napster or whatever pirating system we all used at the time to download this clip from The Bob & Tom Show:
Nearly pissed myself on first hearing.Â
I may not have ever laughed this hard in my life before or since. I don’t know what I expected but Caliendo’s impression has stuck with me ever since. This skit gave us years worth of inside jokes with each other. Ironically, the Summerall “Thanks John” was maybe the most popular for when anyone said a captain obvious thing among our friends.
NCAA Football Without Madden
I know I sparingly played some of the early Madden Football games on Sega in the early 1990’s but as you can see in the embedded video below a lot of those early offerings for the sport were rough to play at the time and even more dated now looking back. Electronic Arts first Madden game debuted in 1988 while the precursor to what would become the NCAA Football game, Bill Walsh College Football, didn’t come out until 1993.
Compare the videos below and Madden makes a decent jump in graphics from 1999, another jump in 2000, while 2001 was when the game first looked like it does today. The college game was really rough around the edges through 2001 until the 2002 game gave us the modern look which debuted on the PlayStation 2.
Madden’s influence on NCAA football video games.Â
We really have to give thanks to John Madden because who knows what the evolution of the NCAA game looks like without him?
One of the best things about Madden was how perfect his voice and delivery was for color commentary on television and it transitioned perfectly to video games. Once Madden started hitting their stride with graphics having his voice available was a big part of driving the popularity of the game across the world. It just felt like a big deal and as close to the real thing as you’d find with a sports game.
The Weird Story of the Very First John Madden Game
I’m sure many of our readers would agree that the college football game was a better game overall than Madden. A lot of that has to do with the more complex nature of the college game and more teams to play, I think. If you’re reading this, odds are you think college is a better game than the NFL thus the video game was going to be better for you, too.
However, once Madden’s color commentary left the game fully in Madden 10 things never felt the same. It’s something I think the college game long struggled with–Brad Nessler and Kirk Herbstreit are mighty fine at their jobs yet don’t bring near the excitement or flavor that Madden could in the same digital role.
RIP to a legend. It’ll be pretty crazy to see just how long Madden’s name lives on over the decades thanks largely to the video game.
Might just be me getting old, but I can’t play Madden anymore. It’s way too hard. I have ’21 and the version before that I had was ’14. Somewhere in-between those two versions, I became an old man. Very hopeful that whenever College Football games come back, they aren’t just the Madden shell with college teams.
Same, I picked up a copy 2-3 years ago after maybe 4-5 years away from the series and it was ugly. Adjusting the sliders it was like either losing 40-0 or winning 40-0, way too tough to get things competitive.
That’s my fear too, EA really only seems to care about their online modes and the microtransactions that come with it, which I guess makes good business sense but the creative and actual gaming aspects of their recent offerings across the board (FIFA, NHL, Madden) are lacking at best.
The NCAA series was always a lot more fun than Madden, even though Madden’s graphics and some elements of gameplay were a bit ahead and more cutting edge. Hopefully EA can recapture the spirit of the NCAA series, but I don’t have much hope in their operating decisions. And I def agree with you and Eric that Madden is past the point of unplayable for me as well.
Dear lord if they make recruiting contingent on being connected to some server and all that crap I will be so mad.
They won’t, but there will be basically no updates/upgrades to offline modes or features year-over-year if they follow the other recent titles. Hopefully since NCAA is new and fresh, they will have more to build upon and it won’t be quite the same, but I won’t give EA the benefit of the doubt ahead of time
They’ll make it some sort of “NIL” mode where you have to spend real money for recruiting advantages because hey if it’s in the game, it’s in the game.
Ha, probably so. You have to “buy the bagman” for $19.99 to be able to sign 5-star prospects, Texas A&M mode unlocked.
In all seriousness it will be interesting to see how they incorporate all the changes in the time between 2014 and 2023. The last one I have is 2013 and I play sometimes with my daughter, and the last dynasty we put together I wanted to make a current-ish schedule with us playing 6 ACC teams and I was surprised to find that in the game Pitt, ‘Cuse, etc. are still Big East and not ACC.
Literally the reason we still have our PS3 sitting next to the PS5.
Same for me but with the xbox360. Beyond the antiquated conferences it really sucks the final game was the last year before the playoffs started, would have been sweet to have one old game with the playoff and then you could go back for the BCS days.
Must haves:
Fully customizable post-season. Players should be able to create whatever playoff scenarios they want, or go back to old bowl system, or BCS, or whatever.
No-limitation conference customization. I can’t speak for ’14, but ’13 required a minimum (4 or 5, I think) of teams in a conference, and you couldn’t disband conferences completely. So while I reorganized to put some of the old Big East teams into the ACC or AAC, I had to keep a legacy version. Also, “Independents” is treated as a conference so I couldn’t put teams that joined conferences into them without moving someone to “Independents.” It was just a mess. Let me make it however I want.
Do NOT make it necessary at all to interact online with other people just to play. I don’t care if those are features you can choose, but I just want to build dynasties. Let me recruit and call plays. If they try to force online loot box crap on us, I probably won’t buy it.
The funny thing is the whole reason it went away, player likeness, is the least important thing to me. I always played dynasty mode, and after 4-5 seasons all those players were gone anyway. Sometimes I’d sim (especially after 2018 or so) to the current year so the real “players” were all gone anyway. I get that some people really want to play with Tyler Buchner or Bryce Young or whomever, but that matters to me not at all. I want Bob Genericname, the 5-star QB from Anytown, Texas.
Last part is true. But it was sick to make like Amir Carlisle a Heisman winner.
Any relation to Bob Wehadababyitsaboy?
In all seriousness, I think he is related to Maurice Stovall.
Anyone know if Derek Mason for DC has legs? It’d be kind of fun to hire away an SEC DC in a lateral move, and he had the 17th F+ defense this year running mostly a 3-down base, so at least some scheme fit.
He obviously failed to win in the SEC as HC at Vanderbilt, but I don’t know that it makes a lot of sense to hold losing at Vanderbilt against someone long term. Plus it’d give the coaching staff some extra insight into HC-administrative duties that some people are worried about.
Prior HC experience is an absolute must for our DC position. The more the better. Needs to be DC + “HC Guru”
I like Mason as a DC only. While I agree we shouldn’t hold losing at Vandy against him, I’m equally not sure it counts as “HC Guru.”
I remember Mason and Kelly had some spats, I forget over what exactly but I know they weren’t/aren’t big fans of one another. Obviously that element doesn’t matter now, just bringing it up to wonder out loud if there could be any lingering “ehh” feelings in the athletic department or football program over Mason personally. Professionally, like you say, he seems to check a lot of boxes.
The insiders/media seem to be coy about this, as if they didn’t want to name a candidate in December but knew of one. I kinda wondered if that might have meant Mike Tressel (current Cincy DC, Jim’s nephew), given Freeman’s ties to the family and all.
Tressel is the other name I’ve seen mentioned. Mason was new today for me.
Sad news for older ND fans. Ross Browner has passed. Just 67 years old. As good of a football player as I’ve seen at ND….RIP.
2002 was a clear jump in terms of player presentation for NCAA, but man it was weird to go from 99 and the Nebraska-Michigan players were blocky but looked like players, to 2000 and FSU-Tenn where Chris Weinke or whoever the heck that was at QB for FSU looked like a Minecraft character. It actually got WORSE graphically from 99 to 2000. Then all of a sudden in 2002 it looks normal.
My first one I had was 98 I think, just out of college. At least that one had the same perspective angle instead of the really early ones.
98 was the version I took to college with me, with the PS1. Man I played the hell out of that game.
Put way too many hours into Bill Walsh College Football where they didn’t have official licensing for many teams so you could have great matchups between South Bend vs College Station
Irish Sports Daily said the following 5 names are being looked at for DC with more to come. Jon Heacock, Iowa St., Dereck Mason, Auburn, Tim Banks, Tennessee, Chris Ash, Jacksonville Jags, Al Golden, Cincinnati Bengals.
Al Golden?
Please tell me that’s purely for the “Golden”Dome puns, because otherwise, naw…naw naw naw.
I think he’s a longshot. Heacock and Mason seem to have the most momentum right now, plus multiple outlets are saying that Freeman is keeping mum on some other candidates.
Heacock is an interesting one. I don’t know much about him, but I know lots of people around the country were interested in copying many of the things ISU did on D the last few years to slow down Big12 offenses.