During a December 1986 NFL game between the New York Giants and the franchise now known as the Washington Football Team, some object suddenly appeared on the field, disrupting a Giants pass play. At first the CBS play-by-play man, the late Pat Summerall, said “somebody threw a shoe.” Then the camera panned to the culprit: a pigeon waddling around the 10-yard-line. Summerall then then teed up his partner, analyst John Madden like he had so many times before. “How did he get in there?”
Madden, like he always did, just ran with it. “Well, he wanted to get down there, he couldn’t get a seat,” Madden begins, analyzing avian behavior as if the pigeon was a lineman in the trenches. His words, pitched high enough to convey an infectious enthusiasm for all things football, began to ramble in that familiar, endearing way. No one else had that sound before, or has had it since. “He tried to get up above and there was no place … the only place… that he could land was right there.”
Madden died unexpectedly Tuesday at age 85, and America lost a treasure. Madden was arguably the most influential person in a sport that, more than any other in the country, often doubles as religion. “He was football,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, in a statement that contained no empty platitudes or hyperbole, but only truth.
To keep reading this article, click here.
Comments
Post a Comment