I agree - I thought Madden brought so much to the game. I remember watching a Bears game that he was calling. A snowstorm blew in off of Lake Michigan, and Madden could not have been more excited. "THIS is football!" he yelled. So was he.
Rated.

A nice tribute to a guy who, in his unique style, actually is a piece of Americana in the same way that Howard Cosell was missed--except John was never obnoxious because you knew his opinions were based on actual experience on the field.

You're right: Football will miss him. Now the question is who will replace him?

NBC announced Cris "foghorn" Collinsworth will replace Madden.

One of the many things I like about Madden is his love of the guys who go out and get their uniforms dirty every week.

I"m going to miss Madden. He did something very few people in any profession manage to pull off - he stayed relevant even after he left the sport and the younger generations took the field and the broadcast booth. His passion for and knowledge of the game made him a valuable asset to broadcasting and to fans. I'll miss him. He was the reason the term Old School can be praise of the highest order.

He was a great coach too. Never flew always drove around in his bus.

Wish I could give you you rates for this great little tribute.

I loved and respected him as a coach and I loved and respected him as a commentator. He will be hugely missed as the voice of the NFL.
Rated BOOM!

A colorful and entertaining character who will be missed. He was one of those "personality" guys and he knew his stuff - not the typical blow-dry cut plastic announcer types that are everywhere. Of course I'm old school myself. Nice tribute.
Rated

I will miss him too. Yeah, he said some pretty obvious things, but they came across when you could hear the excitement in his voice. In the era of fanasty football, he would still get excited about an OL making a great block on a 2 yard gain. Most of the fans now are mad the RB only got 2 yards instead of 10 so that they would get another point. Madden just loved football. He loved the strength, speed, intelligence, and grit of the game.

he's not gone... his voice lives on forever (inside my Playstation)

Main reason why the Madden video games are more enjoyable than the NCAA games: you get Madden vice Corso.

"NBC announced Cris "foghorn" Collinsworth will replace Madden.'

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where's the mute button??!!

I cannot stand that egotesticle asshole.

I liked Madden because he never hesitated to give credit to the Offensive and Defensive linesman. I heard him say one time that if it were not for the offensive linesman, Terrell Owens wouldn't have an ass to strut. I hope everyone's wrong about Collinsworth. He's a good an announcer as he was a player.

Yeah, I'll miss Madden too. He and Al Michaels made a great team. The all-time best, however--Cosell, Mereidth, Gifford--will never be topped.

I'll miss him too. Our dialogue at home always goes like this, when he on TV:
me: "I like John Madden!"
my husband: "I can't stand him."
Trivia - John Madden is so afraid to fly, he goes everywhere by land. Which is why he never came to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl.

John Madden and Pat Sumerall WERE the voices of the San Francisco 49ers during the 1980s. They were the ones who told us that Joe Montana had made this or that pass, and that either Jerry Rice or John Taylor had caught it. God how I miss them.

An old friend and I used to entertain ourselves doing Madden impressions.

"What I love about Kansas City is the ribs. You're driving into town and BOOM! Rib joint. You drive around and BOOM! Another rib joint. And you go into any of them and BOOM! Ribs!"

He will be missed.

You know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think it was time for Madden to go. He was the master of the obvious.

He'd go to the telestrator, and circle the wide receiver, and say, you see, he runs this pattern. And then he gets open, and the quarterback sees him and throws him the ball, and boom, it's a touchdown.

Uh, no kidding, John? Tell me WHY he got open. Tell me where the corner let him go and where the safety screwed up. Tell me who got beat. I know he ran a post pattern and got open and the quarterback saw him and threw him the ball and it went for a touchdown.

Or in the last Super Bowl, during the Pittsburgh drive to win the game, Madden says "wow, this is big." Uh, no crap? It's the Super Bowl and it will likely determine whether you win or lose the championship. You think I don't know that it's big?

Madden needed to go. He was like a quarterback who was hanging on based on past glory who needed to hang 'em up.

John goes BAM! into retirement.

Well, yeah, near the end there he was kind of becoming a caricature of himself but that was OK. He was still so much better than the blow dried guys that proliferate behind the booth today. He was rough but fair always and knew what went down in the trenches as others have already said. And, unlike Collinsworth, he didn't (IMO) hate the Browns.

So many of the great ones are gone. I miss Curt Gowdy, Lindsey Nelson, Al DeRogatis, Vin Scully, Alex Karras, Harry Caray, Gib Shanley and Herb Score (for Clevelanders), Dandy Don Meredith and yes, even Howard Cosell. Of course, I just dated myself.

A little anecdote to illustrate how true it is that John Madden Is/Was Football - I saw this documentary about him where he was revealed to have a full tackling sled in his back yard and he talked sincerely about how "Every man should own a five-man tackle sled." That's a sentence you just don't utter unless your Y chromosomes are actually stamped Y... A Tittle. :)

John is a goofball. I did love him however, as a coach. Better than John are the comedians on sports radio who imitate him. They crack me up! So bye-bye John, you became loopier as the years went on ; it's heady to believe your own press. As you drive into the sunset I wish you a fond "happy trails". Take a horse, it's more fun.

Madden didn't simply have a fear of flying. As a young man, just starting his coaching career, he was an assistant coach on the staff at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. En route to a road game, the plane carrying the Cal Poly team, coaches and staff crashed. Most perished, but a handful walked away from the wreckage. Maddem was one of them. He believed that you only get to walk away from one plane crash in a single lifetime. He never got on another plane.

I'm a Jamaican guy, born and raised... The national pastimes there are Soccer, Cricket, and Athletics (Usain Bolt, speedster, anyone?) ...I never watched a single down of Football until I first visited the USA in the early Nineties when I was in my mid-thirties. In the purple-and-gold, football-mad town of Baton Rouge, home of the Ell-Ess-Yeaux Tigers, you HADDA watch Football. First game I ever caught on TV, I couldn't fathom the point of the Quarterback handing off the ball to this Running Back who would seem to instantly attract a pile of men each big as a barn, then then the Zebras would unstack this huge mound of men -- and let them do the whole thing all over again. How would a team win?

Well, these many years later I live in Florida, I'm crazy for Football (the Pros over College, thanks), and I do, finally, GET it. Each season I win our weekly office-pool at least a couple of times during the 21 or so weeks we run it (there are four seasons in each year: pre-season, regular season, post-season, and the off-season which is when nothing grows, or even breathes -- after the Superbowl, it's all about surviving Hawaii Love-Fest, then low-points like the Combine, the Draft, Training-Camp, and such, until we can slooowly rise from our stupor with the first pre-season games)...

It's plain to see, SURELY, Football in general and the NFL specifically puts zest in my daze, um, days... And JOHN MADDEN has been a big part of making it so. He has clarified many mysteries about the game for me, like why doesn't the QB just hold the ball and take off for the end-zone himself directly after each snap, down after down? It would be so efficient, no?

Well, BOOM! No. That 'boom' as well as being the thunderclap of the concussion that the happy opposing blitzers would surely plant on the QB the second time he tried to pull that play (if not the very first second that he did), of course is Madden's trademark call -- and it is also the lightning-bolt of understanding he gives to puzzled newcomers cottoning to the game, and I suspect also to crusty veteran lovers of the game -- may I live long enough to be one.

MadTypist, your note accurately captures the prime elements of Madden's magical contributions of commentary to Football. Rated!

[I will miss Madden too, and mourn his retirement.]

I loved John Madden, he was an important figure in my youth.
That said it's way past time he hung it up. In a lot of ways he'll represent the best and worst in television. A quirky and ironic voice part clown part sage. Madden and Summeral are without a doubt a brilliant team whose strengths and weaknesses balanced perfectly in the 1980's and through to the early nineties. They were the identity of CBS' NFL coverage and thus of the NFC. In those years there were some outstanding rivalries between the Niners and the Cowboys, the Cowboys and the Giants, the Cowboys and eagles etc. In a close hard fought match up no broadcast team was better at describing the action without getting in the way, and when the game was not close they could be funnier than any comedy you can name. Television has a way of squeezing the joy out of things. I remember the first time Madden went crazy with the pencil on the screen, it was bizarre, wild and hysterical. Then he started doing more often and it was still funny but it was also a cue to the audience that they might want to check the AFC match on NBC. By the time they moved to FOX it was almost all schtick. I hope he enjoys a grand retirement because he certainly deserves it, and I hope we are spared any imitators.

I will miss him too, for sure. For me, he's the best.