John Madden
John Madden
John Earl Madden is a former American football player in the National Football League, a former Super Bowl-winning head coach with the Oakland Raiders in the American Football Conference of the NFL, and a former color commentator for NFL telecasts. In 2006, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his coaching career. He is also widely known for the long-running Madden NFL video game series he has endorsed and fronted since 1988. Madden worked...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntertainer
Date of Birth10 April 1936
CountryUnited States of America
When I got out of coaching, I had taught a class at the University of California, an extension class on football for fans. I was looking for tools. I was showing them films. I was going to write a textbook. Trip Hawkins came to me about making it a game for computers.
Trip Hawkins - and this was the early 1980s - was saying there's going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they're going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.
They can take football away from ABC on Monday nights, but they can't take away the memories.
I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.
Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.
I just worry about overexposure. No matter how much you wanted to watch the NFL, there were no more games between Monday night and the next Sunday. I don't want us to become like college basketball or college football where you have games on every night. That's the direction it's going in. I really don't know that it's a great direction.
Discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it. Discipline is knowing what you're supposed to do and doing it as best you can.
In all the years that I've been in football - I went directly from coaching to broadcasting - I never really had a lot of experience watching it.
When you have great players, playing great, well that's great football!
Nothing jazzes me up like football. I've acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn't make sense.
Boom, boom, foom, poom! He just ran right at 'em!
The best feeling is watching a real football game, because the games they show in the movies aren't real.
He got up looking out of his earhole!
To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.