042 Game Changer transcript (John Madden)

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[00:00:00] Amit: This is Famous and Gravy, a podcast about quality of life as we see it one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

[00:00:11] Michael: This person died 2021, age 85. He had an irrepressible way and a distinctive voice. Uh, Bob Dole. Not Bob Dole. Good guess though. Fox snagged him in the mid 1990s to establish credibility.

[00:00:29] Friend: Sorry, I'm gonna take a moment and just laugh at Fox and credibility. That's cute.

[00:00:35] Michael: His electronic arts video game evolved into a cultural phenomenon.

[00:00:40] Friend: Maybe it's a sport caster. Then I will never guess the answer.

[00:00:44] Michael: Fastidious in his preparation, he introduced what is now a standard exercise in the craft. Observing practices, studying game film and interviewing coaches and players on Fridays and Saturdays.

[00:00:55] Friend: I literally am thinking of names that like my grandfather would talk about. Like, who, which is like Rod Caru, not Rod Caru. No. Cuz Rod Caru probably died in the seventies. not Rod Caru his influence steeped in every man's sensibilities and studied with wild gesticulations and paroxysms of onomatopoeia – wham doink whoosh – made the NFL more interesting, more relevant, and more fun for over 40 years.

Oh, I got it. John Madden. Okay. John Madden.

[00:01:26] Michael: Today's dead celebrity is John Madden.

[00:01:30] Archival: Ah, uh, talking, uh, with the recent, uh, Emmy Award winner, John Madden. Now, uh, when you were coaching, and you of course you explained the home field advantage and what that means.

Did, did you have anything inspirational to leave with players before they went out into combat? Yeah, and I had no idea what it meant. Uh, I used to always. Call up all the players and I would say if we were kicking off or receiving and then what we were going to do, then the last thing I always said was, don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.

We go walk out. I have no idea what it meant, but my guys liked it. Yeah, they go, yay, first. Never. Never had anyone ask me, Hey coach, what's that mean? I dunno, but it sounds me, doesn't it?

[00:02:18] Michael: welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

[00:02:21] Amit: And I'm Amit Kapoor.

[00:02:23] Michael: And on this show we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of life. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question, would I want that life today?

John Madden died 2021, age 85. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary. John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach, who became one of America's most recognizable ambassadors of professional football reaching millions and generations from their broadcast booth and through the popular video game that bears his name, died on Tuesday, he was 80.

Did they get the coaching career in? Yeah,

dude, they got everything in Hall of Fame Coach. Ah, there we go. Right off the bat. Okay. One of America's most recognizable ambassadors of professional football. I really like ambassadors. That's good. That is a good use of that word. And then reaching millions and generations.

So I like that they're getting longevity in there by speaking to generations. Yep. And then they say from the broadcast booth and through the popular video game, they had to get the video game in, but they also got the broadcast

[00:03:39] Amit: booth in. Yeah. They got the three stories of Madden, like the ghost of Christmas, past, present, and future I guess.

I guess the video game could be future. They got it

all.

[00:03:47] Michael: Yeah. When I first read this, I thought this is one of those where the author wrote the line and like looked at it and wordsmithed it and tinkered and then finally, , this is done. Yes. I have written the first line of John men's obituary, and may it now be printed forevermore in the New York Times.

I, I, I mean, I'm already gushing, man. I love this and, and I mean, we can pick it apart. I've already started

[00:04:13] Amit: it. We don't necessarily have to, you know, there is such a thing as good enough,

[00:04:17] Michael: you know, they don't speak, I guess, much to his personality here, so they don't say like, boisterous. Yeah, something like that.

If you read the rest of the obituary, it is glowing and they really go all out with some of their verbiage outside of the first line of the obituary. It's maybe a little bit matter of fact. I, I suppose could be one criticism of this. You could have pointed to his passion or boisterous as you would. I really like that word.

That could have gone in here, but I don't know. I mean, it does get the, like, main chapters of his professional. For which millions of people know him, some who experienced him as a football coach, some as a broadcaster, and some as the video game guy.

[00:05:00] Amit: Yes. They didn't mention a middle name. I love Earl. It's perfect for

[00:05:04] Michael: him.

Yeah, that is good. actually didn't notice that. Why do you like the name Earl? What does Earl mean to you? If I

[00:05:10] Amit: were to draw a picture of an Earl? Yeah. It would look a lot like John, Matt , and

[00:05:14] Michael: I think that's why . I agree. Um, well, I have my. Do you wanna go first? You always hate it when I say a score that might match yours and I worry we might be in that territory.

Yeah,

[00:05:26] Amit: you're very thoughtful in the new year. Well done. Well done. 2023

[00:05:29] Michael: is gonna be it. It's the new year. New Michael. Yeah, I'm

[00:05:33] Amit: ready to go and I am gonna dole out the rare 10 motherfucker. That's what I'm calling. That's okay. There's nothing wrong

[00:05:39] Michael: with it. Good, good, good, good. I just wanted you to know that's where I was.

This is perfect.

[00:05:43] Amit: I, I'm not gonna say it's perfect. I can't do that, but I'm gonna give

[00:05:46] Michael: it 10, but you just gave it a 10.

[00:05:47] Amit: How? There's two different things. Okay. I could be giving it a 9.85. I'm wearing it up to 10. Perfect. Would be a 10.00. Okay. Yeah,

[00:05:56] Michael: but it's a temp and, and and is the point, uh, one five, the lack of the word boisterous.

I mean, what is the, what is the, what is the thing that keeps it from being perfect to you?

[00:06:05] Amit: Um, my insecurities of not like allowing bestowing perfection on anything that makes sense.

[00:06:11] Michael: Visit 10 out of 10 to me. Bravo, New York Times on this. Okay. I think they really got it right. Great. All right. Shall we move on?

Yes. All right. Category two, five things I love about you here. Amit and I work together to come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we want to be talking about them in the first place. I bet there's gonna be some over overlap you category where, where did, this is generous podcast. Let's redo

[00:06:33] Amit: this.

Yeah, this is good. Okay. Number one, great explainer. And there's some, oh, good one. There's some ways that I want to describe this. So he was a broadcaster, unlike any other broadcaster, was in that he was an every man describing the game, you know? Yeah. And he was describing it as he sees it almost as a father would like watching a little league.

But he so desperately loved the game that he wanted everyone to understand what was going on, which is why he was so simple in his explanations and using all the whams and doings and booms

[00:07:06] Michael: and boom nepal's there. Right again, between the eight and the nine, you see that hole right there. He sees it and knows that he can get all the way to the goal line with it.

Look at the things they're trying to do. Boom. They're going deep up, making big plays. Is he

[00:07:21] Amit: happy? You know, there's a couple ways that you can be a good explainer. You can be very articulate and you can be great with analogies or you can be somebody that just uses very simple language. A story that's told about John Madden is in this brief stint between coaching and starting broadcasting.

He taught a class at the University of California called Watching Football. This

[00:07:42] Michael: is late seventies, about early eighties, somewhere around there. Yes, I'd, whether

[00:07:45] Amit: this was a four credit class, I'd kind of like to know if anyone was in it, please write us . Um, but the point was to basically get people to appreciate and understand all the rules of the game and it.

Co-ed class, and the way that he taught it is what I thought was interesting. You know, he would go through plays or rules or strategies, but he would be very attuned to when he would lose people, when he got too much into the weeds, or giving too much detail though, to where it was no longer interesting.

That is a God-given talent. Yeah, and something to love about anybody. I mean, that's what makes a good orator of any kind. A great c e o, a great minister, great teacher, a great teacher of anything, a great parent, a great friend, a great spouse, and he had that gift. You know, it's not because he was blessed with this wonderful vocabulary.

There's terrific insight into how people think. He was just attuned to whether people would pay attention or not, and he crafted his entire way of telling stories and broadcasting games and calling plays by plays, plays by plays. Plays by play, by plays, play by plays that way. And often in a lot of the tributes that you saw coming out after his death, they used that a lot.

Like John Madden, the great teacher, John Madden and I, I don't know that I heard the great explainer pr. Somebody probably used it, but that's what I chose. That's a

[00:09:06] Michael: perfect description. Much like the 10 out of 10 obituary. Great explainer is a 10 outta 10. Number one item for thinking I love about John Madden.

Really good

[00:09:15] Amit: Amit. Um, yeah. And how perfect that, that follows a 10 on the obituary where like that obituary explained things perfectly. Let's give it a 10

[00:09:22] Michael: before we go on. I, you know, I'm a, I'm, I love football. It's one of those things where I could sit and watch it all day. I have no problem with it. I think you are a fan of football.

Maybe not quite at that level. I wouldn't use the word.

[00:09:34] Amit: Is that okay? I'm selective

[00:09:35] Michael: observer. Well, the reason I wanted to talk about that is because I did wanna just pause, and I think you and I should try and make the case here, that if you don't give a shit about football whatsoever, it is worth knowing about John Madden.

I think one of the reasons football is the most popular sport in America is because of what John Madden did and speaks to your number one, what an explainer he was. Mm-hmm. , I don't know, should we talk about this in terms of, you know, why should you care about John Madden if you don't give a shit about football?

Yeah. I mean, football's kind of important,

[00:10:07] Amit: right? Certainly much of this country revolves around it at least five months a year, if not more. There is

[00:10:12] Michael: something to me, very compelling about the sport itself, the strategy, the athleticism, and maybe the metaphors, the bigger story there, the kind of grand battle of it.

The reason I'm bringing all of this up is that when you talk about him being a great explainer, I mean, he would bring people into the strategy of the game and point to athletic excellence. But I also think that like whatever else is compelling to everybody else, like John Madden embodies that in

[00:10:40] Amit: being a great explainer.

Right? His motivation and being a great explainer is because he loved the game so much. Yeah. He wanted everyone else to find a reason to. If not love it, at least find it very interesting. Yeah.

[00:10:51] Michael: I have a funny, I relate to this quality moment that I don't know, maybe we'll use, maybe not, but I'm just gonna share it please.

Allison used to say this about me when it came to geology, that geology is something that most people do not give a fuck about, which is totally understandable, but there was a time in my life where I. Really, really, really into rocks and explaining art history through rocks and what it meant in a way that I prodded myself on.

And I think Alison would say I had a good explainer quality, sort of in this same sort of spirits of so into it and really wanted

[00:11:27] Amit: to simplify it. Yeah, that could have been you, you could have been the Madden of

[00:11:30] Michael: rocks. Yeah. Well, there's still time too. I mean, there's plenty of time. This is what this podcast is all about, finding the desirable, you know, this, the

[00:11:37] Amit: decisions that is the point, right?

Whether it's you or somebody else listen to this. Like, okay, here's something that I explained very well. There's a trait I can take. What do I know better than anybody else? What can I articulate simpler than anybody else? And boom, there's, uh, an option for my life.

[00:11:52] Michael: I like the boom there. Very mad. Mike. Yes.

All right. I'm gonna take number two and I'm gonna build off something you said, but I'm gonna kind of carve it out a little bit more. Okay. Simplicity. I don't think you and I have talked enough about simplicity as a virtue, you know, and I think Madden is like all but endowed with him. Like I think he was a hard worker.

This isn't about work ethic, but there's nothing about him that strikes me as all that complicated. You know, I remember broadcast with him where I just felt like, thank you again for being captain obvious and pointing out very obvious things to us. John Madden, there'd be a rainbow, you know, on the backdrop over the Golden Gate bridge or something, and he'd draw a little arc with the pin on the screen, like there's a rainbow right there, right?

And like there's five colors, right? . Exactly. It's just if they were aton, it'd be down here, bottom left. Let draw a little hat. I see in this guy a simplicity in who he is and what he's about and everything he's doing that I really admire. Sometimes I just wish I simplified everything as much as possible because I'm more prone to making decisions or events or the world complicated.

So I'm, I'm going with simplicity as my number two.

[00:13:02] Amit: Okay. I, I, I think we fall into a celebrating complexity trap. Yes. A lot here, and maybe we give some people the wrong impression, but I think it's, uh, it's u-shaped, right? We value simplicity as much as complexity. They're both mm-hmm. paths to understanding, and neither of them is right and neither of them is wrong, but they're equally valued, at least in my book.

And what I'm getting from you is, is the same. And

[00:13:28] Michael: it's also something I just admire in other people. The people who I feel like, I don't know, kind of come across as virtuous in their day-to-day lives. Usually it's for fairly simple reasons. They're just not complicating. Anyway, that's my number two. You take number

[00:13:43] Amit: three.

Okay. Just cause I'm worried this isn't gonna get in. It's gonna be the planes, trains, and automobiles. A lot of people know John Madden had a fear of flying, so he was a coach of the Raiders, like 72 to 79, something like that. He actually flew, then he flew with the team at two games towards the end, I believe in his last season of coaching the Raiders, which was his last season of coaching, period.

There was a very turbulent flight and he had a panic attack, and he'd experienced this before and he was like, no more. I'm not flying again.

[00:14:20] Michael: And I said, I fully land and I was still alive. I'll never get on an airplane again. And I didn't. That was in 1980,

[00:14:30] Amit: right? And the man lived until 2021. And so we have 41 years of not stepping on an airplane.

Initially, he rode on trains for a while in his early part as an announcer, and then the network had an idea to try a bus. And so they loan a bus from Dolly Parton cuz she was not on tour. So they borrowed Dolly Parton's tour bus, give it to Madden for a couple weeks and he can ride around and go to games.

It's a little more efficient than relying on Amtrak and he loved it and instantly commissioned one for himself, which became known throughout the rest of his career as the Madden Cruiser. He would go from game to game in. A bus and he'd have a bit of an entourage with him. He'd have his crew, his production crew.

Occasionally he'd have interns or other commentators. A lot of journalists wanted to come along. Sometimes his kids would get to go on it. Some celebrities. Yeah, yeah. Other celebrities just wanted to tag along and he literally crisscrossed the country. For about 40 years. So I love ground travel. You know this about me.

I don't like, like going five miles, but I don't mind going like 500 miles. But, you know, there's a couple of clues that we've talked about in this one. I, I did that for a living for a year and a half. Yeah. When I, when I drove the W Rome course, uh, on my 40th birthday, I went around the country in the Amtrak to sort of celebrate my victory lap.

So why I like it is that you don't miss the details in between and you see a lot of people and meet a lot of people in between. You know, there's a reason that they use the term flyover states, because in a sense that's assimilate for ignoring, which is how you get the word ignorance, right? Is that you skip things.

The way Madden described it is, With his bus journey and by traveling that way, he said, if you go out there, you feel better about America. Which is absolutely 100% true in my experience, of spending long extended periods on the roads or on the rails.

[00:16:18] Michael: Mine as well. Yeah, mine as well. What I've learned traveling

[00:16:22] Amit: around is this,

[00:16:23] Michael: people are nice.

You go to a big city and you hear the world is going to hell, but it's not true. Small parts of it are

[00:16:32] Amit: the hole isn't. You get out

[00:16:35] Michael: there and it makes you feel better about America.

[00:16:40] Amit: The thing works. You connect on values more than you just instantly antagonize. There's more similarity than you realize.

Yeah. When you're watching on news or reading the newspaper or extracting it into whatever political hot topic there is, you're not connecting on values. You're finding what is the disconnecting value. But if you step on a bus and you go into a gas station, or you go into a diner, or go into a restaurant or a bar, you are immediately connecting on values.

You're not finding the things that you are opposing to. And that's the beauty of, you know, just stepping out, going in somewhere, sitting down next to someone, and shaking hands, as you will find that immediately. And this idea of. There being two Americas, if there being a urban America or rural America or a Red America and a blue America, you'll realize quickly that that is not as polar as you think, and I think John Madden firsthand got to experience that more than anybody else in the periods from say, 1980 to 2020.

[00:17:33] Michael: I will say, for what it's worth, this is one of the reasons I en enjoy football, because football is also a connective force. You can have all kinds of disagreements with people, but one of the reasons I've become such a fan of the sport is that I want to be able to have a good conversation with anybody about it.

And it's certainly a way I connect with other dudes who I might not otherwise have a lot to talk about with. There you go. Yeah. Well that actually bleeds pretty well into my number four. I just wrote down friendly. Okay. This is more of a personality thing because I mean it, it's kind of a contradiction in a way that he has this every man quality that is really sort of next level, that he's both the lion in the room, but he's also got this like normalizing every man quality to him that I think everybody kind of feels connected to him in a way.

I mean, he is the quintessential, have a beer with him kind of guy. And I wrote down friendly neighbor in part because I really like my neighbor. I have old neighbors on either side of my house and they're just like, great. We don't have big, deep conversations, but there's a lot of like smiling, waving and like, ah, what are you guys up to?

Ah, yeah, that sounds good. Well, good to see ya. It's meaningful. Small talk is how I would put it. And I think. Madden, uh, exemplifies that as well. So, friendly neighbor.

[00:18:50] Amit: Okay. I'm torn between the last one and the number five, but I think I've got a very good segue from the friendly neighbor. So one of those neighbors in which he may have been friendly to was Yoko Oho.

Uh, so he didn't see that. Really? Yeah. So John Madden had a place as wasn't his primary residence in the Dakota building in New York City, which is on the Upper West Side. Very prestigious, very elite building. There's a lot of just private wealth there. But people like Paul Simon have lived there, Connie Chung has lived there.

Um, there's, there's a huge roster. There's a great Wikipedia article that we will show notes. It's got a cool factor to it. And John Madden sort of made it into that culture. And so my number five in a word was renegade and misfit. And I've kind of backed into it, into the fact that he has a place where John Lennon lived.

You know, that he plays that aspect of cool. But you go all the way back to Coach John Madden in the seventies, and he was a renegade and a misfit. His long, floppy hair was not the standard. Like they contrast him a lot to Tom Landry, who was, you know, the other, one of the other most successful coaches of the seventies who was tie and top hat and all serious.

John Madden had his floppy hair like whisking about, he had this like too tight pelo shirt tucked, Dan, he, he had these like a fr

[00:20:03] Michael: body, I mean large

[00:20:04] Amit: oversized, but like the, the pants were so tight but still bell bottomed, . And he was just like, he really looked like, he really looked like Chris Farley playing an announcer.

[00:20:13] Michael: One of the. Commentators said one time that I looked like an unmade bed, and I kinda . I didn't take that as a front. I thought, well, that's not bad .

[00:20:25] Amit: And that was the physical appearance. But that was also part of the theatrics. That was the renegade of John Madden, the way he motivated people, the way he argued with refs.

He was by no means a demure individual. And the way that he changed the game of broadcasting was also bringing that renegade spirit and that misfit spirit into it. You had people that were all suit and tied and coming up and calling plays and describing what was going on, but you had John Madden bringing every emotion under the sun into the broadcasting booth.

And lo and behold, like that, that seems like just

[00:20:59] Michael: such, it's almost like a childlike

[00:21:01] Amit: playfulness to it. Yeah. And so you're bringing this, this kind of misfit playfulness quality into. and you change the game of broadcasting and become possibly the best and most celebrated of all time in the game of football.

And so you can be the best at something by being perfect at it like a Tom Brady, right? Or you can perfect your craft by doing it completely different than anyone else by being

[00:21:22] Michael: you and being really great in it. Yeah. And sort of individualistic though way. Yeah. And I love the latter part of perfection.

That's interesting. I heard Roger Goodell, the N F L Commissioner says John Madden is to the N F L, what Elvis Presley is to rock and roll. Like there, there is no other, and I think that actually sort of speaks to what you're talking about, right? There is this sort of template, but then there's the personality overlaid on it.

And I don't know the unique qualities of that individual. Okay. Recap. Shall we recap? Yep. Okay, let's do it. Number one, you said explainer. What'd you say? I said great. Explainer number two. I went simplicity number

[00:21:58] Amit: three. Uh, planes, trains, and automobiles with planes crossed out. That's

[00:22:02] Michael: right. . Uh, number four.

I said friendly neighbor. And number five,

[00:22:07] Amit: misfit and renegade.

[00:22:08] Michael: The hell of a list. All right, let's move on. Category three, Malkovich Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people can take a little portal into John Malkovich mind and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

I wanna ask

[00:22:25] Amit: you, what year did your malkovich take place?

[00:22:28] Michael: Late eighties, I think it's 87

[00:22:30] Amit: or 88. Okay. I'm, I'm a 1982, so I'll go first. So 1982 is Super Bowl 16, the Cincinnati Bengals. First, the San Francisco 49ers, John Madden as a broadcaster. This is his first Super Bowl to ever cover. Also in this game was the first time an invention was release.

into the broadcast booth called a telestrator. I don't think anyone knows it by that name. So the telestrator is that instrument that you see where you draw X's and o's all over the screen, or you draw whatever, or in your analogy, you're circling the rainbow. Um, yeah, as, as Madden gave it. So this tool.

For the remainder of John Madden's career became his light saber , like this was his signature. So the time that I want to be behind his eyes is broadcasting that very first game with the Telestrator in front of me for the first time. Yeah. And I think he's go to an Amit getting play with it, and he is discovering the convergence of his talents at once, that wild childlike overexuberance needing to explain it.

But now he has a pen in his hand and he can circle things and point things out and explain them in only the way John Madden can, but in a new, articulate way where he becomes both a cartoon artist in a sense and an announcer. And this was the synergy of what would become John Madden for the rest of his broadcasting career.

Damn. That is perfect. Beautiful. But then you can, good one, you combine it with this comic simplicity of John Madden and it's also an etching sketch for you just to screw around, which he did a quarter of the time. Oh. I

[00:24:08] Michael: mean, there's like when he circle the fricking Gatorade and he is like, this is a father bucket, this is a mother bucket.

And since the last game they had a

[00:24:16] Amit: baby bucket, there was one that he was like picking on Troy Aikman when Troy Aikman was 29 years old and analyzing his lack of facial

[00:24:23] Michael: hair. See, I mean, I mean he got a little in. And a little up there here, but he doesn't have anything here at all. Watch when you take it off.

He doesn't have anything going up in there. He

[00:24:33] Amit: loved it. He loved it. He drew like a third grader withdraw on a book cover, and it just, it made his craft so much better. You know, I, I know you like signs, Michael, you like to look for signs? I do, I do. So here are the signs that came outta that one, that 1982 Super Bowl 16 had a Nielsen rating of 49, which to this day is the highest rated Super Bowl.

Is that right? Yes. So tell me, damn, that's good trivia. Yeah. John Madden with a, uh, telestrator is perhaps the perfect formula for popularizing

[00:25:03] Michael: worldwide football. Amazing. Beautiful Malkovich Ahmed Bravo, sir. Mine is not nearly as exciting. So my malkovich, I was curious about whether John Madden ever stopped to watch high school football on his road trips cuz he is in this bus all the time and you know, he is gotta sleep somewhere.

So I spent a little bit of time searching for John Madden, west Texas, wondering if he'd ever, you know, seen the Permian Panthers or I didn't find anything there. But what I did find is that there's a. From 1987 where he is trying to watch Monday Night Football cuz he is gotta watch all the games and the reception goes out and he's like fumbling all over the place trying to find a place with a TV and ends up in Vanhorn, Texas, which is the middle of nowhere, that part of Texas where you have to drive a hundred miles to the next gas station.

They pull the bus off in Vanhorn, see this Mexican restaurant that is advertising a television. And he goes in and he is like, I gotta watch the game. And they can't believe that he's shown up. And that restaurant and it's a little bit of local knowledge, was Chewy's same chewies that now is open here in Austin.

And this restaurant has now become famous because John Madden enjoyed the Mexican food so much that he started showing up there once a year. Got to know the, uh, staff and the owner even called the family when the owner was second in the hospital and gave his regards. I mean, this was just one of many people he met along the road and to this day, they still honor John Madden's seat in Vanhorn, Texas at Chewy's.

It is a malov moment for no reason other than I like the restaurant . Uh, and uh, I want to know how he felt about their salsa. I should say though, I also saw in other places that people complained about Madden's choice of food on the road. That he would say, oh, let's just stop here. And, and there were some people on the bus.

Apparently he is like, he's got the worst fucking taste in food. Do not let him decide where we're going to dinner tonight.

[00:27:04] Amit: Was this the simplicity that you also revere?

[00:27:07] Michael: Uh, no. I don't revere this one. I think making the right decision on a road trip about where you're gonna eat, there's an art to it, and I don't think you can just pull in anywhere.

I admire other things about Madden. I normally do not admire his restaurant decisions, but I like this one. Okay. And that's it. That's my malkovich. All right. All right. Then let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

[00:27:30] Amit: Michael, you know, when we go to restaurants and I don't know what to order, then ultimately I'll just ask the server, well, what should I order next?

Yeah. And I wish a similar thing existed for other things I consume, like, like books did you say? For

[00:27:45] Michael: books? For books. Oh. Well that's easy if you go to half Price books. There are all kinds of people who work in the store who are excellent at recommending books. Have you ever done this?

[00:27:57] Amit: No, I've never known to ask them.

I thought they were just, they are

[00:28:01] Michael: knowledge keepers. They are readers and they're there to say, Hey, how can I help you? What are you reading

[00:28:07] Amit: these days? What are you into? What are you

[00:28:08] Michael: looking for? I mean, every time I've gotten into a conversation with one of the half Price Books employees, I've always walked out of there with something new.

That was excellent.

[00:28:17] Amit: So you're saying I can go ask a half-Price Books book seller if I don't know what to read next, or I'm looking for

[00:28:24] Michael: a gift idea? I think that's exactly right. You don't need to know what you're gonna buy when you walk into half-price books. And if you just need a book, these people are there to help.

And you know what? Half Price Books is the nation's largest new and used book seller with 120 stores in 19 states. And Half Price Books is also online@hpb.com.

Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages? Also how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? So this is pretty simple one. Marriage, Virginia. They met in 1959. John was 23 years old. They celebrated their 62nd anniversary two days before his death. In 2021, he had two sons, Mike and Joe.

Is that what it's I believe so. One played football at Brown, the other played football at Harvard. I saw. And then a number of grandchild.

[00:29:24] Amit: And they both have his body type, like tremendously.

[00:29:27] Michael: They both have his body type. Yes. He and Virginia met at Cal Poly. And it sounds like overall, A great marriage. I mean, PE certainly she spoke at his memorial and she had nothing but positive things to say about him.

The sons were exuberant about what a great guy their father was. So, you know, first glance, everything looks really great here and I didn't see any evidence. To the contrary, well,

[00:29:51] Amit: first, lemme compliment Virginia. I, I really liked. The way that she spoke of them as a couple, as a team, even just her as a supporter of his teams.

One of my favorite quotes that she gave is she said, well, I

[00:30:05] Michael: never saw any reason why the Raiders should ever lose a game. And I used to get so upset with coach's wives who said, well, you can't win 'em all. And I said, why

[00:30:15] Amit: the hell can't you ? Yeah. So I wanted to highlight that cuz fierceness to her. Yeah.

So here, here's the debate. So when he resigned from coaching the Raiders, he did it pretty young and he did it as. Peaking almost young. Yeah. We should say he

[00:30:28] Michael: was hired young too at the time. The youngest coach that had ever been hired. Thank you.

[00:30:31] Amit: Yeah. He was 32 years old when he was hired to coach the Raider became the youngest winning Super Bowl coach.

Um, yeah. To

[00:30:36] Michael: this day, has the most winning record, uh, for anybody who's coached, uh, a hundred games or more. Correct. So

[00:30:42] Amit: one of the reasons that he cited was to be there more for his sons. And I think it was also just extremely stressful and he was starting to feel sort of the mental impact of that. But then a couple years later, he goes and becomes an announcer and decides, okay, I'm gonna live in this bus as well for five months year.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, how do we feel about this parenting? I know, I understand. Now, 40, 50 years later, they're saying We love our dad. He's a hall of famer. But this, this seems confusing to me when these are the kids in junior high high school, these years when they probably need Dad most and he seems to be away most.

[00:31:20] Michael: I had the same reaction. Cuz I think what you're talking about is sort of like, how much time is he really able to dedicate to the family? And he claims in 1979 when he retires, or whenever it was late seventies or the eighties, that's what I'm gonna go do. And then next thing you know, he's broadcasting kind of the rest is history.

But your point, your question is at what cost on the family front. And Virginia, his wife says in that documentary, the compromise we made was his time. Yeah. She said,

[00:31:49] Amit: and then they said, what did you gain? And she said, which she paused for a while. And she said, we gained fun. Yeah. Right. But that's, to me, that's a, that's a sword.

That's not a, that's not a trophy.

[00:32:00] Michael: I think I have the same reaction. I mean, you know, this. came up very early on in our show, I think in the Kenny Rogers episode of, you know, what it means to be a touring and performing act more than anything with the children crave is, you know, focused attention. And when you're away, you can't give that, no matter how many phone calls or whatever kind of FaceTiming you're doing or whatever.

And I think it's really hard because our attention is often divided. I, and I was certainly like listening to the interviews with his sons wondering, are they just saying what a great guy he is because everybody says that, you know, dad, I've been proud of everything you've ever done and all of your careers have been Hall of Fame careers.

And uh, and even, even in your role as father, you're a hall of fame. I, I, I don't know, ahed, I mean, something about me wanted to give John Madden a little bit more grace than usual on that past, only because of the nature of his personality. I mean, he's, he is a big presence in so many ways that yes, I do feel like parenting should often be measured around how much time are you devoting to the family, to the, you know, to your home life, to your children.

But I also think that there's something to be said for quality of attention, and I get the sense from him that he's a very present guy. The testimonials from his wife and children felt authentic to me. They didn't sound bitter. This didn't feel like I'm being dragged to the SPN cameras to talk about what a great person this was.

I agree with that in a way that sometimes you can kind of read between the lines and see that. So, I don't know. The longevity of the marriage I think is important and needs to be applauded. And 62 years from, you know, age 23 to age 85. Wow, that's incredible. Overall, I feel pretty good about the home life.

Not great about it. Your point about being on the road all the time is, An important one to draw

[00:34:13] Amit: attention to. Maybe it's gonna take us a few more dozen episodes for me to come to grips with this, but I don't understand how a public life is certainly one that requires a lot of travel. I, I just don't see how you can be a good parent that way.

I just don't, and this is no demerit on the character of John Madden or any of those people. It's just I don't see how the setup

[00:34:35] Michael: works. I basically agree with you and I don't see it either. I don't see how anybody strike that balance and I'm not sure we've yet come across somebody who I think nailed it.

I will say though, and this I think is an maybe an important point, I also think that there's something to be said for not putting. Your life on hold while you're raising children, even if you can support them financially. A big part of parenting is modeling a big part of parenting. Maybe the most important thing is following your own dreams and following your passion, and setting an example for what it means to live a meaningful, full rich life.

And maybe that gets tangled up in rationalization sometimes. But I do see John Madden as being vital in being, you know, fully alive and fully present and fully passionate about what he's doing and therefore setting a great example for children at the expense of attention at home. Absolutely. But it's not escapism or it doesn't look to me to be escapism from the home life in a way that that is like obviously un.

Does that make sense?

[00:35:42] Amit: Uh, I just don't think we've figured it out at all in the Western world. You don't want having children to be the end of your professional endeavors and your dreams. Um, but we haven't figured out that balance

[00:35:53] Michael: yet. I I don't think that there is a simple answer to that. I think you and I are largely in agreement about this and I think that overall the best we can do on this show is say, you know, how do we feel about the balance?

I think you and I, when in the case of Madden are agreed, there does seem to be an imbalance here and an excessive attention to professional pursuits at the expensive family. Overall. It's not a disgusting attention cuz I don't think

[00:36:17] Amit: he's greedy. God no. I mean, I, I think we're talking about the state of the profession, not the state of John Madden, but that's an equally worthy conversation when we're talking about desirable lives.

[00:36:27] Michael: It is. It. Don't we move on? Yes. Okay. Well this dovetails next net worth. You see what I saw? 200 million, 200, give or take. 50 million, I assume. 200

[00:36:39] Amit: million. Same as we said for Dick Clark. Just the episode before last. Huge

[00:36:44] Michael: Wealthy, wealthy Act. Unbelievable. I not surprising though. So you couple the ambassador of the most popular sport in the wealthiest country in the world.

And the royalties from the video game alone, I think are stacking up, not to mention commercials. Yes. I mean he's, you know, tough acting to Acton and Miller Light and all that stuff. Now there's lots of light beers out there saying they're less spelling. Heck, that was the easy part. The hard part is brewing a light beer that tastes great.

I do have something I wanna say about this, but why don't you, you seem to have something you wanna say. Yeah, I just

[00:37:17] Amit: wanna talk about the source of it. It is a lot, a lot of video game money. Uh, so he, he signed a deal on early two thousands for 150 million with EA sports to basically sign over his name and license and usage.

And then he got paid a retainer of a couple of million for each subsequent year. And then when he was broadcasting at the peak, peak of his career, I think 8 million was the most he made. Then.

[00:37:41] Michael: Do you wanna comment on how you feel about it? I mean, I don't know. I feel like we more or less, Spoke to this in the previous category in terms of love and marriage, you know, it does skew a little bit more into the, Hey, John, what about the kids at home kind of question?

[00:37:55] Amit: Yeah, I don't think so. If the source of it really is so much of this latent life, video game, income, you know, it wasn't in

[00:38:01] Michael: fact, in fact, so much so that there are people out there who don't know the coaching career, don't know the announcer career, and only know him

[00:38:10] Amit: from the game. I guarantee you right now there are teenagers in Kenya playing that game who know nothing else about American football or can name no players that they're actually playing with other than the fat that they're on Madden.

You can take those couple of teenagers and multiply them probably by tens of millions. That probably describes the the impact of this game. What I'm saying is I don't think that money came at the expense of privacy or of time with family. If so much of it came from that, where he was an advisor in lending his likeness and doing a few voiceovers, that's kind of easy money.

Kind of fun. Yeah. It's kind of jackpot money.

[00:38:42] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. It really is. All right, let's move on. Uh, category six, Simpsons Saturday Night Live or Hall of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations. I'm excited for this one.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible, right? SNL guest hosted in 1982. I think it was an unusual guest hosting in the sense that I don't think they had brought on athletes or certainly sports announcers before this. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Are we on? This is John Madden and I'm standing here in the locker room with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Tough game. Tough, lost. But the fight was fair and real. Are you kidding, man? Did you see that out bounds call at the rev board? Man, that thing was a big payoff, man. I want the country to know it's the mob. The whole other team is run by the mob. That, that Francisco dude, he's in the mob man. I'm telling you man.

He, I buy my pills and stuff from him, man. The Simpsons, he also voiced himself. Yes. The uh, episode is called Sunday Credit Sunday, but it's him and Pat Summerall, um, his longtime, uh, partner in the booth. Well, John, what did you think of tonight's episode? I loved it. The last minute edition of Wally Kogan to the lineup was a bit of a gamble, but it really paid off Marge and Lisa painting eggs.

Did that work for you? Oh, big time. He is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and there's a very wonderful story about when he discovered that because he had been denied the Pro Football Hall of Fame for many years. He was on the ballot and then it looked like he wasn't gonna make it. And then in 2006 he gets in with Troy Aikman and, and somebody else who I'm forgetting.

I also even saw that there are claims on the internet that he does have a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, uh, and then nothing for Arsenio Hall.

[00:40:29] Amit: Yeah, he didn't do the talk show circuit so much.

[00:40:31] Michael: No. And then, okay, so, and then there's other cultural touch points. This is probably the place to mention the Frank Kelly Endo impersonation.

[00:40:39] Amit: Tell, you have to inform

[00:40:40] Michael: me on that. You don't know about the Frank Kelly Endo. I don't even impersonation. I know Frank Kelly. It's uncanny. If you could only have one guy, just one guy that you put in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, that guy, I mean that guy's gonna be Brett Far. He could do things on the field that nobody else

[00:40:57] Amit: could do.

Got it. Yeah. It's normally at this point that I interject and be like, this is where else he influenced pop culture. But I think this is, um, sort of not necessary. Right. It's sort of unnecessary because I think John Madden actually made pop culture more so than possibly anyone else that we've, that we've talked about.

Maybe Dick Clark being an exception that we just did two episodes ago, for example, like the Thanksgiving. Stuff. You know the turducken, right? The turducken. Everyone knows what it is. People would not, if it were not. John Madden introducing that in 1996, the video game started out as being John Madden football, EA Sports, 1996, and now it's just abbreviated to Madden.

It's just Madden. Yeah, just

[00:41:37] Michael: Madden. You wanna go play Madden, right? Exactly. It's like, it's like Google or something. Right. Welcome to Madden n nfl, 2000, the New Millennium of Football. As long as

[00:41:46] Amit: video games live on in the style that, like you can play a football simulation, it may still be called Madden, that very well may outlive the memory of the person.

Yeah.

[00:41:56] Michael: You know, I love these famous en gravy crossover moments. I also saw a picture of John Madden and Nelson Mandela. I have no idea what's going on in that picture. I have no idea why Nelson Mandela was there to meet John Madden, but they're, the two are sitting there smiling at each other. Overall, very famous

[00:42:13] Amit: though.

He's gonna last for a while, I think.

[00:42:15] Michael: All right. Category seven over under. In this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds, and as a measure of grace, John Madden born 1936, the life expectancy for a man and America born in nineteen thirty six, fifty six 0.6 years, he lived to 85, so he'd be here by almost 30 years.

Extraordinary,

[00:42:39] Amit: given his physique and that he celebrated eating like terribly. This

[00:42:44] Michael: guy did not look like somebody who was gonna make it to 85. No way, right? I mean, he was a great candidate for the Dead or Alive app when he was alive, because I think everybody remembers him as a very old, large man in the late 2000 aughts and wasn't sure what happened over the last 10 years.

And then he did die, you know, a year and change ago. Let's just ask this. What do you attribute the longevity to? Because he doesn't, this does not look like a healthy

[00:43:09] Amit: body, right? I'm gonna go gregariousness. I mean, he smiled a lot. He laughed a ton and there was a lot energizing his body through that. And I think that was his medicine.

[00:43:18] Michael: He didn't seem like a high blood pressure guy after he walked away from, uh, head coaching. Like when he was a coach, he, you know, there are ulcers, there are panic attacks, there are football coaches are notorious for being in kind of, you know, high blood pressure individuals,

[00:43:34] Amit: right? Yeah. And he walked away at 42 from

[00:43:35] Michael: that.

So I, I mean, I don't know if anything that speaks to like the power of like positivity and joy in your life. I truly think

[00:43:43] Amit: that's it. Yeah, I do too. And I think the grace actually, I think it was spot on. Yeah. Um, so he left broadcasting in 2009, so Right. So 12 years or he was essentially just gone. It's not like he was returning for guest spots.

He just walked away and retired, spent time with his kids and his grandkids. A lot of it in Northern California, I think it was a pretty. Good definitive exit. And he left on top too. He left on top. He didn't, he wasn't like being wheeled in and withering away in his final, like, broadcasting years. He really walked away as being, you know, still the best n f l broadcaster out there.

They can take me

[00:44:19] Michael: from here standing next to you, which is gonna happen. But one thing they can't take is my feeling for you. The friendship we developed and the memories of 21 years and 21 great years, and not only, you know, 21 years of games, but 21 years of, of being together and, and everything, as you say, those memories will be with us forever and they can never be taken away.

And you are the spirit of the National Football League. You are what the NFL is all about, what pro football is all about, and more important, what a man is all about and what a gentleman is all about. All right, let's pause. Jennifer Flowers. Jennifer Flowers is alive.

[00:45:04] Amit: The rules are simple.

[00:45:06] Michael: Dead are alive.

She is 72 years old. Still with us. Christ. We are so old. John Cougar Mellencamp alive, very alive, still rocking in the free world. Uh, that would be Neil Young think it's still our R O C k N in the USA at 71 years old, Charlton Heston and his cold dead hands. So I'm assuming he's still alive. His hands are actually dead.

Hell, we lost them in 2008. . Test your knowledge. Dead or alive app.com. The first of the introspective categories is Man in the Mirror. What did they think about their own? You know, we've talked about this a little. I'm curious to see where you go. Uh, you know, six four, very big guy. He was an offensive lineman when he played, had those huge hands.

They're like cartoonish. He

[00:45:55] Amit: was so big. He was still a giant at like 85 in

[00:45:59] Michael: that documentary. You know, the, the description of him as like a, an unmade bed really sticks in my mind. And, and he liked that. I said he's got that kind of knucklehead confidence that comes with being a football player. So I'm going.

I think he liked his reflection. I win

[00:46:15] Amit: capital y e s I think there was no question that he liked it and loved it, and he celebrated other people that had, uh, these sort of giant physiques. He did the All Madden team, which was kind of the alternative to the All-Star team. And this was largely celebrating either the really, really tough gritty players or just the enormous ones.

And that was just like, that's what he liked. And I don't think that was just a justification of himself. I think part of the reason that he loved the game of football is he liked giants playing a game and hitting each other. And I think he liked that he was kind of one of these mutants. Uh, all right.

Category nine. Well, one thing that man in the mirror, I just wanna, I wanna point this out. I wrote down the words body

[00:46:53] Michael: positive. Oh, I like that. Ahed. I agree with that. And I think that making it to 85 actually speaks to that. Oh, good call. Good call. category nine. Mm-hmm. , category nine. Outgoing message like man in the mirror.

How do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or an outgoing voicemail? And would they have used the default setting or would they record it themselves on their voicemail?

[00:47:16] Amit: I wrote, fuck yes and fuck yes. Like I

[00:47:18] Michael: say, I need, need to talk about this.

Loved it. Loved it. Okay. Uh, next category regrets. Public or private. What we really wanna know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night? I've got a couple

[00:47:30] Amit: here. I wanna go with an easy one, which is the one that he talks about most

[00:47:33] Michael: publicly. The founder of VA sports offered Madden stock in EA in what, 1987

[00:47:39] Amit: or 88?

Yeah. As they're making the game. And it was like it went up tenfold in a matter of years and no lord knows how many more since then. Yeah. And Madden states that as like his chief regret, but it's

[00:47:51] Michael: a softball. Yeah. That's all I had on public actually. Did you have any more in public? Nope. This segues into a good private, and I wonder if we got the same one here.

I wanted to talk about the Madden curse. No,

[00:48:02] Amit: I actually didn't write that as a regret, but I'm, I had that written down as a topic, so I'm glad that you're ringing it in.

[00:48:07] Michael: For people who are not aware, this is a little bit of superstition, but there is this sort of striking pattern of. Athletes who are featured on the cover of Madden, the football game the following season tend to befall tragedy, whether that's their team failing or injury.

And if you go through the list like it, it's, I mean, everybody

[00:48:32] Amit: and these are some all stars and summer career ending injuries too. Yeah, exactly. And so this is John Madden's

[00:48:38] Michael: regret. Well, he says, I was on the cover for years and I didn't pull a hamstring, but the guy is afraid to fly. And athletes in general, I think are a little bit more vulnerable to superstition.

You know, I, I think I wonder, I mean, sure he is dismissive of it, but the pattern of it, if you actually go through the list, and it's so striking that I have to believe he had moments in the middle of the night where he is like, God is a man curse. Is that

[00:49:07] Amit: a thing? Did I,

[00:49:08] Michael: what did I do here? ? No, no. Can't be real.

Can't be real. But like, eh, maybe it's real. I don't know. And then the last thing, and I suspect you also wanted to talk about this, some of the concussion and player safety, you know, issues that began to emerge really around the time he retired.

[00:49:25] Amit: Right. Uh, be being an ambassador of football, right? Yeah. So I wanna, I wanna take the, let's take the easy road in there, but I wanna get into that discussion.

Okay. So the easy route I want to take is the all Madden team that he did annually, which was basically his own select all-star team. And like I said, it was a lot of the people that were tough or small and had a lot of grit. But another thing he really liked is those that played through injuries. If you had a twisted ankle and you kept playing through, he stopped at concussions.

He was like, if, if you have a concussion, you should stop playing and come out of the game. But everything else he loved and he glorified, you know, that's a pretty bad message. I think it's fucked up at least now in, in 2023.

[00:50:05] Michael: I'm a football fan and I have misgivings about how much of it for exactly this reason, right.

Am I celebrating pain in others and people gritting out pain? And if so, that's fucked up. Yeah. You know, that's not cool.

[00:50:19] Amit: Yeah. So here we go. Let's segue to it. Are we celebrating also the shortening of lives and possibly severe neurological

[00:50:26] Michael: damage? I, I, I mean, my understanding is that it's not just token lip service.

You know, I think that the concussion protocols that have been put in place, the improvements in training at a young age in terms of how you hit somebody and you know what it means to not lead with the head penalties that get thrown for unnecessary roughness and the improvements in helmet safety. I think all of those measures are real.

[00:50:54] Amit: Well, we've talked about Chuck Klosterman before, and did you read what, but what if we're wrong? That book

[00:50:59] Michael: of his Yes, I did, but I don't remember what he said about football. I remember it came up, I forgot.

[00:51:04] Amit: So the premise of the book is like all of these things that we see as normal today could be entirely obsolete in 50 years, a hundred years or more.

An easy one to understand is you could smoke in the delivery room like 50 years, 60 years ago. In the 1930s, bare knuckle boxing was the most popular sport in America. That there could be enough that comes out as more CTE cases come out, if they continue to come out, that eventually we just get to a point that this isn't worth it.

Uh, yeah. And he renders a hypothesis that that's a very, very

[00:51:36] Michael: possible outcome. Yeah. Yeah. As much as I love the game, I don't know that I have a problem with that. If it were to sunset, if it, if we were to reach a kind of collective tipping point where we said, This is not okay, and we cannot put this on television.

We need to quit putting our money into it. And how, how would you

[00:51:53] Amit: feel dedicating your career to a sport with that possibility? And, you know, especially in the, around the year that you're dying is when this news is just continues to Yeah. To make us

[00:52:03] Michael: about Madden. I don't know. I meant, I mean, that's a good question.

I, I don't think it's uncommon. People dedicate themselves to careers and then they come to see those industries as corrupt, as the problems endemic of that industry might become more evident. I mean, thinking about somebody who went into energy, for example, and now you know, they understand climate as this major issue.

Or somebody who, you know, goes into agriculture now has a problem with, I don't know, soil degradation. People who become computer programmers and come to see themselves as complicit in, you know, excessive surveillance in technology industries or whatever. I think this, this happens a lot. Yeah. You know, if you're John Madden, you have to understand in this 1970s you have a front row to the violence of the game.

I don't know. You, you balance that against the relationships that he has as a player, as a coach, and then as a broadcaster with the people who are, you know, in the thick of football culture. And those relationships are no doubt meaningful. I, I have a hard time imagining that it's a deep regret, but you know, I guess the kind of question is how much does John Madden have to know the damage that's being done on a mass scale For it to cross over into a regret?

It would have to be pretty conclusive. I don't think it's enough for a regret for

[00:53:29] Amit: John Madden, so I, I think the conclusion, at least for me is, I don't think it's a regret, but I don't think the thought has entirely escaped his head.

[00:53:37] Michael: I agree with that. All right. Category 11, good dreams, bad dreams. This is not about personal perception, but rather does this person have a haunted look in the eye?

Something that suggests inter turmoil, inner demons, or unresolved. I wrote Good man. Yeah,

[00:53:54] Amit: the look in the eye isn't there, but I don't know.

[00:53:56] Michael: I think this gets back to actually the longevity, the, the grace of, of making it to 85. I think he is mostly having fun from the moment he retires from the coaching the Raiders up until his death.

This is a joyous man and he has a, you know, and, and it every part of his body, including his eyes, betrayed that.

[00:54:19] Amit: So he's asleep within five minutes of the head hitting the pillow.

[00:54:23] Michael: I think his head hits the pillow that floppy hair flops the other way and he's

[00:54:26] Amit: not . That's the time that it moves. I think it's more borderline than perhaps you say, but I do Interesting.

Agree with you that overall good

[00:54:34] Michael: dreams. I'm okay with that. All right. Category 12, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. So maybe a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person, or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to them, a part of them that we're most curious about.

I mean,

[00:54:54] Amit: let's not forget he was a pitch man for Miller Light, so that's, you know, sort of where you would kind of default. Yeah,

[00:55:00] Michael: I, and again, the quintessential have a beer with him type Right,

[00:55:03] Amit: exactly. . But I don't know. The thing is about John Madden is just, we, we know so little beyond football. Yeah. And I just wanna talk about anything but football.

And I have a feeling that drinking a beer is gonna just lead to more football. I think more coffee is not what this man needs, cuz he is so highly caffeinated, quote unquote all the time. So yeah, I think we're gonna smoke some Js and I just wanna get into anything else I wanna assign pre-reading. I wanna sign this Cche Clausman, but what a we're wrong book.

I

[00:55:36] Michael: mean, Al Michaels describes him as a learned guy, uh, uh, somebody who would read books and was smarter than you realized. And it was, it was it that, that had depth. And I think that there is a, you know, you understand America better by crisscrossing it in a bus, you know, aspect to him. I, I bet he is.

Things to say about outside of football.

[00:55:56] Amit: Maybe that's what we're gonna do. I crisscrossed America in a bus. He did it for 40 years. We can get, share some notes from that. And I want to, I guess, learn what it's like to do it for 40 years. What do you see as America? You know, why is it divided? Does it have to be divided?

How do we unite it? Maybe he has an insight into our psyche and our way of thinking and our way of sticking into tribes that, that nobody else knows. Maybe that is the knowledge is those 40 years that he spent on the bus starting with the Dolly Parton week, and maybe that's what I wanna extract from. So maybe, yeah, maybe John Madden with some weed is my, my anthropological

[00:56:31] Michael: go-to.

Get on the bus. What's that? Electric Kool-Aid acid style. You know, Neil Cassidy can drive and John Madden, and you can,

[00:56:38] Amit: I don't want, I don't want the ghost of Neil Cassy driving that bus.

[00:56:42] Michael: Fair enough. That's a good one. I want coffee. You know, this has kind of come up in this conversation. I have a real inner conflict with my own fandom around football.

I feel like I like it more than I should, and I don't quite know why. I, I know I enjoy watching the strategy of the game and I, I'd be lying if I said, you know, some of the hits, the surprise of 'em when, when a nasty hit comes about is like, oh, you know, there, there is something captivating about it. And I don't like that about myself necessarily.

I don't know why we're also in on this sport, myself included, and I'd be curious to hear his take on what is it about this game that has our attention on it like nothing else. There's something really substantial that happens on the football field that tells us something about our inner nature and who we are as a, as a species, as a society.

And I'd like to have that conversation. And I, I'd actually even like to approach it with a lot of, you know, self-doubt and skepticism on my end. And I think you would be articulate about it. I think he would hear me out and I think he'd have something to say and he'd be probably generous. Uh, is my, is my guess.

I think

so.

[00:57:51] Amit: I think something profound could come out of that.

[00:57:53] Michael: It'd be a good conversation, right? Yes. Final category, the Vander beak named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in the football movie, varsity Blues, I don't want

[00:58:04] Amit: Your Life. This is the first time we're actually doing a football

[00:58:08] Michael: character.

How about that? Yeah. No shit. This one really fits. Yeah. Amit, based on everything we talked about, do you want John Madden's life? I would like

[00:58:16] Amit: you to go first. Okay, Michael. Cause I think I'm still

[00:58:18] Michael: torn. One of the things I love about our show, man, is that the question of do you like this person and would you want their life are two different questions.

No question. I like John Madden, his every man, you know, personality is fucking great. I love that about him and I want that. That's dis It's not just admirable, it's desirable. The long marriage is not just admirable, it's desirable, you know, success in, in multiple chapters of one's life that he playing football ends and he start, goes into coaching and coaching ends and he goes into broadcasting and you know, broadcasting has a certain of upward trajectory that other opportunities like, you know, hanging out in a culture that you love.

I mean, continuing to grow so much that you become an ambassador, to be an ambassador of anything. To me desirable. You represent this culture. I think the questions you've raised and that we talked about, like how good is that culture, how much is that culture? Is this game a service to society versus a, a representation of its corruption or, or of its, you know, nastier qualities.

I think those are good questions and important questions. Not getting on airplanes bums me out a lot cuz I want to travel and I think, you know, you've raised this in other episodes too, sort of being known for one thing. Like there is a sort of bubble that only occasionally crosses outside of football.

It's this and nothing else. I think I'm a yes for the reason I had in my five things about simplicity, that above all else what I see in this life is simplicity. It's not complicating it. I, I love this thing. I'm all about this thing. I'm so much about this thing that I'm bringing other people along to revel in the joy of it and to understand it better.

And I'm gonna do it with some humility and some self-deprecation and, but, but also some real knowledge and expertise and along the way, you know, leave my mark on history. It's not a strong yes, but yeah. I want your life, John

[01:00:33] Amit: Madden. Okay. So yeah, I mean, I, I think you highlighted off the top an excellent point that there's a big difference between liking and wanting that I like the hell out of John Madden.

I, you know, we'd stopped at five things I love about you, but I, I had at least three more that were unstated and I think if we would've gone on, that could have been the whole show. He's a tremendous character, a tremendous trailblazer, charismatic, influential, launched careers, idle to many seemingly wonderful marriage.

I'm gonna take the side of great relationship with his children, but the things that are kind of sticking out to me that I am unsure about. So you said it Plains. I don't wanna live in fear of anything. For my entire life, especially not something that's that crucial to how the world functions. I think to be able to travel by bus and to see every inch of America over and over as he did, and to have that understanding that no one else has, I think there's a lot of value to it, but I don't think my soul wants that, and I think my soul would rather see as much of the world as it could.

It doesn't have to be every inch of a single country. One thing that I really, really love about Madden is how much he loved the game of football, and it really is an infinite knowledge pool, right? Because you have, you have new people entering the game every year. You have. Teams that are good and bad.

You have scouting reports, you can really spend far more than seven days a week. You can create an entire world around that. And I think that's great and I think that's healthy. And I don't think that comes at the expense of anything else. And I severely want that for something. I don't know what that something is, but I'm pretty certain it's not to revolve my life around a single professional sport.

And again, I have to point to the difference between like and want. So a good friend of mine is a football coach. He's a high school football coach. I went to a game of his, they were in a championship about a month ago, and I love the guy and he's got a, like, he's one of the happiest guys I know and has one of the greatest lives I think, of, uh, a group of our friends.

But I just don't want it. So this is a really hard one. And this is really a f pretty close to a 50, 51 for me. But if I'm making a choice right now, I'm gonna say, no, I don't want your life. John Madden. Makes sense. We have a yes and a no. Yes and a no. Okay. Michael, you are John Earl Madden. You are in front of St.

Peter, who is in front of the pearl gates. St. Peter and the pearl gates are the proxy for all things afterlife. Regardless of your religion or belief system, you have the opportunity to make your case to be rewarded in that afterlife. The Florida's yours, St. Peter.

[01:03:24] Michael: I found my thing and my thing was football.

I found it at a young age as a player. I found success on it as a coach, but then maybe most importantly, I found that I was really good at explaining it to people and that people really enjoyed that. They liked understanding and imagining what it was like to be down there, you know, on the football field, running the ball and running plays.

or being a coach and scheming up plays or being part of a team where culture matters and everybody's trying to come together to do something greater than themselves. It was a big life and I was a big guy, but in a way it was simple. And even if you're not into football, I think that everything about my life symbolized simplicity as a virtue.

And I think maybe we'd all be a lot better off. We'd all see our commonalities and shared connection if, if we were just a little bit more simple about it all. Didn't make things so complicated. And I tried to embody that in, uh, the decisions I made while I was on. And I think as a result, I lifted a lot of people up and I gave them something to cheer for every Sunday in a way that made their lives richer and better.

And for that, I hope you let me in.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Famous En Gravy. If you're enjoying this show, please share it with your friends. We're trying to get the word out. You can find us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at Famous En Gravy. We also have a newsletter which you can sign up for. R r website famous en gravy.com.

Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you again for listening. Tell your friends, see you next time.