John Madden
John Madden was an American football coach and sports commentator born on April 10, 1936, in Austin, Texas.
Madden attended Jefferson High School before going on to study at Grays Harbor College, the College of San Mateo, and the University of Oregon. He went on to serve as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, a tenure that produced eight playoff appearances, seven division titles, and seven AFL/AFC Championship Game appearances. The most celebrated moment of that run came when he led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XI. He holds the highest winning percentage among NFL head coaches who coached at least 100 games, a record that stands alongside his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
After his coaching career, Madden worked as a sports commentator and sports journalist, a second career that kept him closely connected to the game he had coached at the highest level. His work in broadcasting added another chapter to a professional life already marked by substantial achievement on the sidelines. He was also inducted into the California Hall of Fame and received the Sports Lifetime Achievement Award, recognitions that reflected the breadth of his contributions to American football both as a coach and as a public face of the sport.
Madden died on December 28, 2021, in Pleasanton, California, at the age of 85. Across his coaching and broadcasting careers, his work remained rooted in professional American football — first as a head coach building one of the more successful records in NFL history, and then as a commentator and journalist bringing that experience to a wider audience.
Quotes by John Madden
John Madden's insights on:
The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn't smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.
Thursday night football is here to stay. So we're looking at ways to make it safer. Now they're playing division games, so you limit travel. Now the question is, should you play Sunday night before a Thursday night?
The best thing about getting older is knowing history. The longer you live, the longer you have been in a sport, the more you know, and the more you know where things started.
Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to a football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback's idea.
I would never be one to critique the announcers when I watched games. I try to watch the play and listen to the broadcasters and what they are pointing out. I was never one to say this one was good or bad.
I like to hear about what people do. That's more interesting than talking about what the hell I do.
The thing that I always respected about Bruce Arians was, when he was at Pittsburgh, he let Ben Roethlisberger decide what he liked. I used to do that. You can put something in and force-feed it to a quarterback. But if he doesn't like it and have his heart in it, it's not going to be as good as when he really likes something.
It takes about three times as long to explain to someone why you won't give them an autograph as it does to actually give them an autograph.