John Madden has died

The most impressive thing about him is he is a football legend to different generations based on his work in three separate disciplines. People born in the 1950s or earlier remember him as a Hall of Fame coach. People born before the 1990s remember him as the country's most beloved sports broadcaster. People born in the 1990s or later remember him as the guy behind video game football. It is hard to think of anyone else who had a similarly large impact in one field in three such distinct ways.

“At the end of the game the team with the most points on the board is going to win.”<p>― john madden

One day in the late 90s or early 2000s a friend and I were playing Madden. My dad walked into the room and announced “huh, why are they playing football on a Friday.” He hadn’t noticed at a casual glance that it was a video game- John Madden’s voice was coming out of the TV and it looked like football, so it must be football. That has always stuck with me as an impressive level of immersion.<p>Sports video games, and Madden in particular, helped mainstream gaming and computing in a very real way. I hope EA brings him back to the cover one last time next year.

Legend. Don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d love football nearly as much as I do if he wasn&#x27;t around calling games when I was a kid. He had an infectious love for the game. The game lost a lot of its appeal when he stopped broadcasting.

I ran into John Madden a few years ago at A.G. Ferrari in Soma (he had a residence nearby at the St Regis). He cut in line in front of me, to get his seemingly daily sandwich. The lady behind the counter and I let it slide.<p>I&#x27;m glad I didn&#x27;t quote the game (or worse, say &quot;boom, tough actin tinactin&quot;), but it was definitely interesting to have thought &quot;Huh, what a wild life. Now he&#x27;s just an old man who wants a sandwich like anyone else&quot;.

I was looking at Madden NFL 200x games last week specifically the assortment of music (Chamillionaire, Earshot, Slipknot, Green day, etc.) that got me into listening to music in the first place. If it wasn&#x27;t for those games, I don&#x27;t think I would have ever gotten into football or listening to music.<p>Modden NFL helped demonstrate technology really well in a variety of ways that was fun and interesting to people who didn&#x27;t see the appeal in video games like Pac Man. It was definitely a big contributor to getting more people into electronic interactive content.

What a loss for Football, what a loss for Broadcasting.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure I saw him coach in the 70&#x27;s but my fondest memories of him are as a broadcaster in the 80&#x27;s and 90&#x27;s.<p>No matter how trivial the thing he said was you felt like you had just received critical knowledge directly from the football Gods. (Because you did!)

Truly a loss to the game of football. I will forever remember his voice while commentating as well as him drawing on screen in a silly fashion, to explain different plays.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ovcTKHupdxo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ovcTKHupdxo</a>

This podcast helped me understand just how significant an accomplishment the Madden video game was—I recommend!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overcast.fm&#x2F;+dxvETG06k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overcast.fm&#x2F;+dxvETG06k</a>

Great 30 for 30 podcast episode, where they feature a few stories &#x2F;from&#x2F; Madden himself about what it was like creating the first John Madden video game and how his early influence helped make it what it became.<p>&gt; Madden&#x27;s Game: we look back at how John Madden went from being a football player and coach to the conscience of a billion dollar video game franchise that has stayed true to the sport itself.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;30for30podcasts.com&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;maddens-game&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;30for30podcasts.com&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;maddens-game&#x2F;</a>

His name shall live on eternally in the stacks of unsold used sports games at Goodwill and Savers.

This article on ESPN has some anecdotes of events in his career, and I think it&#x27;s really good:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.espn.com&#x2F;nfl&#x2F;story&#x2F;_&#x2F;id&#x2F;31215567&#x2F;coach-broadcaster-esports-icon-legacy-john-madden" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.espn.com&#x2F;nfl&#x2F;story&#x2F;_&#x2F;id&#x2F;31215567&#x2F;coach-broadcast...</a><p>Looks like he may have been responsible for at least inspiring the digital first down line that&#x27;s just part of the broadcast now. It&#x27;s not all football stuff, though.<p>Hard to know who famous people really are, but he seemed to be a pretty good dude.<p>One thing I remember that I rarely read about is him being involved with marketing for Florsheim shoes. My dad had extra wide feet and for whatever reason the Florsheim dress shoes were the ones he liked to wear for work. On a couple of occasions as a kid I got dragged along with him to the Florsheim store in the mall so he could get shoes. I think this was in the mid-to-late 80s. They had what was basically a video game cabinet, except it was like a guided sales catalog or shoe picker, and it was narrated by John Madden. At least it was something I could mess with instead of sitting around looking at shoes.

This is Chuck Yeager level of loss. Being European I knew these guys mostly thanks to really good video games.

I wonder what will happen with the game franchise. For a lot of folks his name is synonymous with NFL gaming.

Over the last few days I&#x27;ve been seeing here a lot of these random so and so, zoology&#x2F;cyclist&#x2F;librarian legend, dies at some advanced age.

how much does he or tony hawk make liscensing thier brands to video games?

It’s all over, fat man.<p>You’ll be missed.

At least we still have Frank Caliendo.

This might be in poor taste, but will the next Madden game be a zombie FPS next year?

On the issue of obituaries, etc. on HN, I think it&#x27;s helpful for us to remember that we are reaching that point when the people of our collective childhoods, the pioneers of technology, media, entertainment, etc. will start to die off. I didn&#x27;t realize Madden was that old, what a great guy he was.