(NOTE: This is a preview of a film review to be presented before the Talking Sports Gather Group at Temple Emanu-El on Tuesday, January 11,2022.)
To say we lost a lot in 2021 is the understatement of a lifetime. In politics we lost Bob Dole and Harry Reid, in entertainment we lost Stephen Sondheim, and in sports, we lost Hank Aaron, Tommy Lasorda,the man who made Wayne Gretzky great, his dad Walter, but most of all, we lost John Earl Madden,born in 1936 in Austin, MN, but recognized around the world as the second winningest coach in NFL history during his eleven-year run with what was then the Oakland Raiders. He never played a full game professionally with the team that picked him in 1958, the Philadelphia Eagles, but he successfully parlayed his college football know-how, as a player and a coach, into a long and colorful reign as a Head Coach and, an accomplishment nobody, least of all Madden himself, ever expected, a nearly three-decade long career in broadcasting that took him to all four NFL broadcast networks working alongside household names such as Bob Costas, Pat Summerall, Vin Scully, and Dick Stockton. John could never have been mistaken for Walter Cronkite what with his slightly less-than-elegant clothes (He once said a panhandler gave HIM a dollar!) and loud, brash style, but that's what made him a sports broadcasting superstar and awakened an interest in football in people who would rather watch Masterpiece Theater, kids who were pushed by Mom and Dad into Pop Warner Football,and even Mom herself. He turned FOX into a sports power, and became as effective a salesman for Miller Lite, Outback Steakhouse, and his own Madden video game from EA Sports, as he was for the game.
John may have just left us, but his legend lives on (BOOM! DOINK! WHAP!) in the beautiful new documentary ALL MADDEN, available on Hulu and ESPN+ (I'm not sure if it's available on FOX Nation, but if it is, it may be one of the more watchable, maybe the ONLY watchable, program on that service.) Instead of relying on a single narrator, ALL MADDEN features some of his final on-camera appearances,interviews with family, fellow coaches, players such as Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman, and recollections from the aforementioned commentators as well as Al Michaels and Melissa Stark, his own highlight reel of commercials, his'own rough-and-tumble,smash-mouth all-pro team,and,OF COURSE, the highlight of many a Thanksgiving dinner, the Turducken, which John himself invented.
Although Hollywood has turned out masterful biopics on Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and, recently, Kurt Warner, they fall woefully short when compared to this real-life look at a figurative and literal football giant. ALL MADDEN is all entertainment (And I DO mean all entertainment! They even show his monologue as SNL guest host!) and, on a scale of Strike Out to Home Run, clearly knocks it out of the park. You don't have to be a football fan to enjoy it (But hey! it doesn't hurt!), but that was, and is, and will always be the beauty of John Madden, who turned the spotlight away from Cosell and the more overrated sports broadcasters, and proved himself to be what he wanted, an ordinary guy talking to ordinary guys, but leaving an extraordinary impression on football, sports, and America.
Happy New Year!
Steve
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