John Madden: The Gentleman's Average Joe

Well, it finally happened. April 16, 2009, is the day that marks end of an era. John Madden decided to call it quits. Because of this, football play by play will never be as good as it has been over the last X number of years. Also, a Madden-less NFL season makes me cringe a little bit.

Seriously, I'm almost distraught over this whole retirement thing. Cris Collinsworth has been named as the replacement, and while I think that's a good choice, it's laughable to go about "replacing" the likes of Madden. It's hard to get used to not having someone or something you're familiar with around.

It's like replacing natural sunlight. whatever you do, nothing will duplicate the original source.

What Madden brought to the booth was very unique and organic. He broke down things in simple terms, while remaining semi technical in his observations. While most play by play guys identify when a defense blitz's, Madden explained where the weak points in the Offensive line was, and what the defense could do to exploit that to the fullest.

He taught fans the game of Football instead of just telling them the game. That's what made John Madden Famous(aside from winning a Super Bowl, or having a long running video game series named after him.)

Most people are forgetting the other casualty brought forth by this sad event. Frank Caliendo's career is toast. The Madden impressions gots ta' go, and that guy has absolutely nothing to fall back on. TBS would probably like a refund. Guess it's back to Mad TV for him, huh?

What Will I miss about John Madden? The classic "BOOM!" ? Nah. The occasional offbeat remark that had nothing at all to do with the game? Yeah, basically. Madden was able to mask the boringness(not a word, but probably should be) during downtime in a football game.

When the camera was pointed at the booth because some wing nut decided streaking was within his constitutional rights, Madden had an interesting bit of dialog queued up in is cerebral cortex. When the game he was covering featured a losing team that no body was interested in watching play, John Madden talked about said teams glory days.

In my opinion, John Madden is a National Treasure. Anybody with the ability and technical know-how to entertain in light of embarrassments like the Raiders and '07 dolphins should be put in high regard. As long as Madden doesn't try to coach in the NFL again(and fail like Joe Gibbs did), he will be missed.