Madden hanging it up

Somewhere kicking around my basement I have a videotape of the 1981-82 Super Bowl between San Francisco and Cincinnati. John Madden and Pat Summerall called that game from the Silverdome in Detroit.

Both were quite a bit younger then … 27 years younger, I guess, as I do the math. And I believe it was their first Super Bowl as the announcing tandem – the first one I had seen them do, anyway.

While broadcasting teams come and go, Madden and Summerall from their early days remain the best duo I can recall. Summerall had this quiet, understated approach to play-by-play that perfectly complemented Madden’s enthusiastic color, which was often accompanied by a “BOOM!!!” or a telestrator pen marking up the screen in 32 different directions.

Summerall mostly hung up his microphone several years ago. Madden, 73, announced today, according to USA Today, that he’s now retiring as well.

Madden, a Super Bowl winning coach and Hall of Famer for both his commentary and his coaching, had slipped in recent years. He wasn’t as sharp and he sometimes seemed to be seeing different things than I was seeing on the television (not that he hasn’t forgotten more about the sport than I will ever know). But his legendary enthusiasm for the sport and for telling stories about the players and the coaches who partook in the NFL never disappeared.

Troy Aikman, Phil Simms, Cris Collinsworth – all of them have good points as analysts on NFL broadcasts and all will likely do credible work into the distant future. But even in the end Madden remained my favorite broadcaster.

I wish him a happy retirement.