All Madden: Life and Coaching Advice from the Life of John Madden

The life of John Madden, who died on December 28, 2021, is a compelling story of a quintessential teacher and coach. It leaves us some clear lessons though to be drawn from his long, good, and unique life.

Madden was of course an NFL Hall of Fame coach and a famed broadcaster. That, a pioneering and wildly popular NFL video game, often simply known as “Madden,” continues to share his name and distinctive style to generations born well after he coached his last game in 1979, means his fame will continue.

Like most of us saddened by his passing, at the age of 85, just days after he celebrated his 62nd wedding anniversary and after a loving retrospective documentary called “All Madden,” aired on Fox Sports, I didn’t know Madden. But he certainly knew us. He knew the fans, both the people who grew up playing football and those who didn’t but who loved it just the same.

Madden often moved in elite circles in his years after coaching the Raiders. He called an apartment in New York City’s famed Dakota Building, where Beatle John Lennon lived his last years, home for a part of many seasons. He earned millions of dollars broadcasting and in his endorsement deals. His two sons, Mike and Joe, attended an exclusive prep school, Choate, where John F. Kennedy had gone many years earlier. They went onto college at Harvard (Mike) and Brown (Joe), where not surprisingly, they also played football. But Madden never lost his common touch no matter how rarified the air around him became. His fear of flying pushed him travel by train. He later turned those train adventures into a bus- the specially outfitted Madden Cruiser- that became both a rolling advertisement and a method of staying connected to people in “flyover country.”

We can talk a lot about his being grounded, but perhaps the first life and coaching lesson from John Madden’s life is to always be authentic. Our time on earth is far too short to spend pretending to be something, or someone, we aren’t. Also, like Madden, we can reach more people through our authenticity than in any disguise or costume we can put on. Think of it this way, Madden made much of his income in his later years as a pitch man selling a variety of products on air, but even though he was shilling us to buy, was he every anything but authentic? In a time so many talk about having or being a brand, isn’t it amazing when one’s brand is authenticity.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reacted to Madden’s passing by saying, “Madden was football.” ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweeted asking, if is there anyone who was more the face of football than Madden? Both are correct. Madden to the public over five decades, became the face of America’s most powerful sports league.

There are and were more decorated coaches and broadcasters as beloved. It is the next two qualities along with that authenticity that made a man, who last coached a game 43 years ago, and last broadcast a game 12 years ago, come to embody the sport.

The first of these was to stay relevant by relating to others. Madden was not afraid to appeal to people outside his core fanbase. His decision to endorse and be involved with EA Sports in the creation of a video game, that has sold more than $4 Billion dollar’s worth of copies since its release, is the one that kept his name and persona out there long after he retired and will be the one keep it out there for generations to come. Teaching and coaching can, if you stay open to the differences between generations without condemnation or judgment, keep you young. Madden who was always a coach, always teaching, always remained relevant through reaching out to others, even as he reached old age.

The final life lesson from Madden is to always lead with kindness. Madden became such an icon because he was authentic and because he worked to remain relevant by relating his passions to the people he was reaching out to. Those are the intrinsic skills of excellent coaches and teachers.

But in always leading with kindness, you make the bridges we build more permanent and make bonds stronger. Madden’s authenticity, his ability to relate and his kindness made him the only person who was trusted enough by the NFL owners and players to lead Commissioner Goodell’s efforts to make the game safer in the last decade. It is ironic to note the man famous for leading the Raiders, a team that led the league annually in penalties, was the one trusted by all sides to make the game safer and more sustainable. It was his last assignment to the sport that provided him with so much. It was his kindness that made him an honest broker in a critical time.

While I didn’t know Madden, I’ll share my two interactions with him. Now, I’ve met both his sons through football and was on a field with each, although we all played offense. But the first was his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2006, along with my own father, who sparked my love of football, we were sitting in the audience as guests of the league when Madden gave his acceptance speech. He did what any authentic, relatable, and kind person would, he reflected on the shared journey and the many others that brought him to enshrinement in Canton. And my last, at some point, in the early part of the 2010s, I was at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, going down an escalator in the Westin Hotel. As I got on and headed down, Madden who was working for the Commissioner as chair of the safety group, got on headed up. We were both alone, two ex-lineman types, going in different directions on an escalator. One of us famous, the other, me. Madden smiled and nodded, acknowledging me, just like everybody else in Indianapolis that weekend, as another guy who played or loved the game. In that moment and brief bit recognition, where I obviously knew him, he also knew me and that was his gift and legacy, reaching millions by knowing them.