It was August 12, 1978 and John Madden was at an Oakland hospital, checking on the condition of Darryl Stingley, the New England Patriots
wide receiver who laid motionless on the ground a few hours earlier after being hit by the Raiders’ Jack Tatum in an exhibition game. Madden looked around the waiting room and didn’t see anyone from the Patriots’ organization. He was furious. Madden got on the phone, reached someone of importance at the Oakland Airport and ordered that person to not let the New England team plane take off until a Patriots’ representative deplaned and went to the hospital to stay there and monitor Stingley’s situation. This was the John Madden, The Coach, who you never read about last week, the fuss over his retiring as a sportscaster so pervasive. It was a Raiders team meeting, mid-70s. Madden was in front of his players, using the blackboard, initially to describe plays. But it quickly became more like a launching pad. “Chalk is flying everything and John is waving his hands in every direction and his voice is rising,” said John Vella, a former Raider offensive tackle. “Johnny Carson was big at the time so a bunch of us offensive linemen are in the back of the room giggling and saying to each other, ‘Here’s Johnnnnnny!’ “It’s right in the middle of his speech, and this happened a lot by the way. John stops, looks around and says in front of the entire team: ‘It’s only Tuesday. I’ve got to calm down.’” This was John Madden, The Coach, the portable boom box, known at the time to a few, not a nation. So this is a column about the Madden no one spoke of last week because Madden The Announcer reduced Madden The Hall of Fame Coach to a footnote.
“I was speaking to a bunch of kids at a charity event the other day,” said Morris Bradshaw, who played wide receiver five years for Madden, “and I was telling them when a great coach John was. They just stared at me. They didn’t know what I was talking about. All they knew about John was from his video game.”