“If you win a Super Bowl before you’re fired, you’re a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.”
― John Madden
“Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.”
― John Madden
“The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.”
― John Madden
“Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”
― John Madden
“When the going gets tough, I’m not always sure what you do. I’m not saying that I know how to fix everything when the going gets tough, but I do know this: when the going goes tough, you don’t quit. And you don’t fold up. And you don’t go in the other direction.”
― John Madden
“I’ve often said, ‘If I had one drive to win a game to this day, and I had a quarterback to pick, I would pick Kenny.’ Snake was a lot cooler than I was. He was a perfect quarterback and a perfect Raider. When you think about the Raiders, you think about Ken Stabler.”
― John Madden
“I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I never really had a job. I was a football player, then a football coach, then a football broadcaster. It’s been my life. Pro football has been my life since 1967. I’ve enjoyed every part of it. Never once did it ever feel like work.”
― John Madden
“The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.”
― John Madden
“A consulting position might work in another profession, but not in pro football. There’s no such thing. They give a guy a parking spot and put his name up as a consultant, and in six months, they erase the name.”
― John Madden
“You wouldn’t do something for a receiver to catch the ball if the quarterback couldn’t throw it.”
― John Madden
“Trip Hawkins – and this was the early 1980s – was saying there’s going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they’re going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.”
― John Madden
“If you look at tailgating, everyone does it. It’s for everyone who likes to cook outdoors. It could be a 4th of July picnic.”
― John Madden
“Any defensive coordinator is worried about two things: a running quarterback and a deep ball. You know, don’t get beat deep and don’t let the quarterback run, because a big part of your defense can’t account for the quarterback as a runner, so he gets a free run.”
― John Madden
“I have this set-up at my house where I have one big movie theater screen that’s 9 ft. by 16 ft. Then, I have nine 63-inch monitors around it; four on either side and one underneath. So I get all nine one o’clock games, and I can switch them onto the big screen. That’s what I do on the Sundays during the season.”
― John Madden
“Nothing jazzes me up like football. I’ve acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn’t make sense.”
― John Madden
“Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.”
― John Madden
“Justin Smith was one of the most underrated players in the NFL for what he did. He would sacrifice and do the dirty work, then someone else would clean up off it.”
― John Madden
“There’s so many kids who only know me from the video game. And they want to know if I’m home – and if I have a video game I can give them on Halloween. And sometimes they’re surprised to learn there actually is a ‘Madden.’”
― John Madden
“Knowing his coach likes him is more important to a player than anything else. To me, it was important to be able to chew out a player for screwing up and for him to accept it because he knew I liked him anyway.”
― John Madden
“In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.”
― John Madden
“Even when I was a little kid, I hated to dress up. I hated to put on regular shoes. I wanted to play all the time. I hate to wear any kind of coat or sweater. I’ve never liked hot. I’ve never liked to be warm.”
― John Madden
“The quarterback has to get rid of the ball quickly, so there’s not a lot of time to make moves to gain separation.”
― John Madden
“One of the biggest gaps in sports is the difference between the winning and losing teams of the Super Bowl. They don’t invite the losing team to the White House. They don’t have parades for them. They don’t throw confetti on them.”
― John Madden
“The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.”
― John Madden
“Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to a football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback’s idea.”
― John Madden
“If a guy doesn’t work hard and doesn’t play well, he can’t lead anything. All he is, is a talker.”
― John Madden
“I’ve always said winning’s the great deodorant, and conversely, when you have a bad record, everything stinks, and everything starts to unravel, and everything falls apart.”
― John Madden
“I was introduced to the Turducken in New Orleans. And it wasn’t Thanksgiving. Glenn at the Gourmet Butcher Block brought it by, and I had never heard of it or had seen one, and they put it in the booth, and it smelled so good that I had to taste it. And it was good. Then Thanksgiving came, and we got one in addition to the traditional turkey.”
― John Madden
“That’s the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.”
― John Madden
“We need the quarterbacks. It’s a passing league and a quarterback-driven league. We need the Peyton Mannings in football uniforms out there playing – the Tom Bradys, the Drew Breeses, the Philip Riverses – we need those guys instead of them standing on the sideline.”
― John Madden
“I’m a firm believer that there’s no way that a six-year-old should have a helmet on and learn a tackling drill.”
― John Madden
“If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they’ve had a bad day.”
― John Madden
“If you go back to the history of the ‘Madden’ game, I was probably on the cover of it half the time. So if I was to believe there was a curse, I would also have to believe I’d been cursed. And I’ve never had that feeling.”
― John Madden
“The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn’t smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.”
― John Madden
“To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.”
― John Madden
“I’ve never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.”
― John Madden
“I would never bet against Peyton Manning. You know about the age and the neck and the strength. But I had George Blanda, and as he got older, he got smarter, and he just got rid of the ball quicker. I watch Peyton, and I see George Blanda.”
― John Madden
“They’re on the right road, but there’s a long way to go on concussions, not only in the NFL, but college football, high school football and all football.”
― John Madden
“If someone remembers me as a coach, they still call me ‘Coach,’ but if they know me for the video game, they just call me ‘Madden.’”
― John Madden
“Football isn’t nuclear physics, but it’s not so simple that you can make it simple. It takes some explaining to get it across.”
― John Madden
“Both of my sons used to coach high school football. When they started, I’d say things I shouldn’t have. So I learned my lesson.”
― John Madden
“Some day we’re gonna have interactive television where you can pick the shot that you want. You can watch defense, or you can watch the end-zone shot, or you can watch an isolated shot of Terance Mathis or whoever you want to. Because right now, the only thing that you watch is what the producer or director decides to show you.”
― John Madden
“I’m sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.”
― John Madden
“People say, ‘Is broadcasting the same as coaching?’ I say, ‘Hell, no.’ Coaching, you win and lose. Broadcasting, you don’t win and lose. Coaching was a lot bigger than broadcasting.”
― John Madden
“If you play the video game, you become more interested and you want to know more about it. You want to read as much about it as you can, see it live and watch as many games as you can. If you’re the type who wants to be as involved as you can in the sport, you’re probably going to want to play ‘Madden NFL.’”
― John Madden
“Baseball has better opening days and All-Star Games than the N.F.L. does. Ours stink.”
― John Madden
“I like to hear about what people do. That’s more interesting than talking about what the hell I do.”
― John Madden
“Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to the football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback’s idea.”
― John Madden
“Any time you get a new running back, whether it’s a rookie or hasn’t played a lot, that’s the first thing you test, is their pass protection. That’s big.”
― John Madden
“It takes about three times as long to explain to someone why you won’t give them an autograph as it does to actually give them an autograph.”
― John Madden
“The thing that I always respected about Bruce Arians was, when he was at Pittsburgh, he let Ben Roethlisberger decide what he liked. I used to do that. You can put something in and force-feed it to a quarterback. But if he doesn’t like it and have his heart in it, it’s not going to be as good as when he really likes something.”
― John Madden
“I think comparisons are odious.”
― John Madden
“When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.”
― John Madden
“Every time I go to the theater, there’s something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can’t get out of your system.”
― John Madden
“If you think about it, I’ve never held a job in my life. I went from being an NFL player to a coach to a broadcaster. I haven’t worked a day in my life.”
― John Madden
“I’d like to work with kids in special education – younger kids.”
― John Madden
“I get a certain feeling when I go to Lambeau field in Green Bay. Soldier field in Chicago is special to me. Those are the places that I really like. The stadiums.”
― John Madden
“Sports has always been a pass-through. You pay for something, and then you pass it through to television, you pass it through to advertisers, or you pass it through to season-ticket holders, luxury boxes and then the fans. Then it all adds up, and you take in more than you pass out.”
― John Madden
“Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.”
― John Madden
“When I got out of coaching, I had taught a class at the University of California, an extension class on football for fans. I was looking for tools. I was showing them films. I was going to write a textbook. Trip Hawkins came to me about making it a game for computers.”
― John Madden
“Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it’s like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.”
― John Madden
“Sometimes we think videogames are just games for kids, and then once they get out of grammar school or high school, they never play again, but that’s when they really start playing.”
― John Madden
“In all the years that I’ve been in football – I went directly from coaching to broadcasting – I never really had a lot of experience watching it.”
― John Madden
“I tried golf for a while, but I wasn’t very good at it, so I didn’t play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.”
― John Madden
“You’re not going to eliminate concussions. Anytime you hit your head, you have a chance of getting a concussion, in any sport, too. I think we have to learn more about it. Part of it is rules, part of it is equipment, part of it is medical studies, knowing more about the brain.”
― John Madden
“I don’t know that the referee can be watching holding on the offensive line and get back to the quarterback. I think watching the quarterback is a full-time job.”
― John Madden
“We need to let the referee’s sole thing be to protect the quarterback and get those late hits out of there. They even have a stat on television that says ‘knockdowns.’ Knockdowns means that you knock him down after he throws the ball. The assumption is, if it’s legal, we’ll make excuses for them.”
― John Madden
“Discipline is knowing what you’re supposed to do and doing it as best you can… On third down and short yardage, the Raiders don’t jump offside. That’s discipline – not a coat and tie, not a clean shave.”
― John Madden
“It’s been the video game ever since I got out of coaching. Even when I was an announcer, fewer and fewer people remembered me as ‘Coach,’ and as the years went on, people just started knowing me from the game.”
― John Madden
“I’ve got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you’re watching them. But I’ve learned to keep it to myself. I’ve blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.”
― John Madden
“I never watched TV because I was always doing a game. I didn’t have any experience to be home watching games. I didn’t know how to do it. Brent Musburger and those guys could sit and watch every game and know the scores. And I was amazed and said, ‘I’d like to have something like that someday.’”
― John Madden
“When people watch football, they’re looking for fun things.”
― John Madden
“Thursday night football is here to stay. So we’re looking at ways to make it safer. Now they’re playing division games, so you limit travel. Now the question is, should you play Sunday night before a Thursday night?”
― John Madden
“The best thing about getting older is knowing history. The longer you live, the longer you have been in a sport, the more you know, and the more you know where things started.”
― John Madden
“I would never be one to critique the announcers when I watched games. I try to watch the play and listen to the broadcasters and what they are pointing out. I was never one to say this one was good or bad.”
― John Madden
“I was an old tackle riding around talking to people about sports. Like I’ve said to a lot of people over the years, ‘I only go where old tackles go, and if an old tackle does not belong there, I’m not going.’”
― John Madden
“Sometimes you can be one of the best, but you don’t accept that if you don’t get the ring or win the Super Bowl. There’s a lot of good teams between the Super Bowl winner and other teams. Once the Super Bowl is over, we lump everyone into the other 31, and that’s not fair.”
― John Madden
“I never professed to be perfect. I do something wrong or something stupid, I laugh at myself.”
― John Madden
“I’m not afraid of flying; I just fear I’m going to die. I think I’m – vulnerable. I admit it. I don’t fly. I got claustrophobia. I don’t go in high buildings. I don’t do those things. I’m just myself, whatever that is.”
― John Madden
“Since 1981, I’ve spent every Thanksgiving Day broadcasting a game, and it is one of my favorite days. You can say, ‘Woe is me, I never get to be part of the tradition,’ or you can say, ‘Heck, we’ve got our own tradition, and it’s pretty good.’”
― John Madden
“I was in New York on September 11 when those planes hit the World Trade Center. At the time, it seemed like it was a local thing. But three or four days later, by the time we drove across the country in the bus, we realized it wasn’t a local thing. You could really feel the states become united. We became the United States of America.”
― John Madden
“There’s so many kids who only know me from the video game.”
― John Madden
“It’s a lot easier to get a suit than it is to get a coach.”
― John Madden
“Jim Harbaugh has done a great job of coaching in the NFL no matter how you put it.”
― John Madden
“I respect coaches; I respect what good coaches do. I know that you don’t learn to be a coach in an hour and a half.”
― John Madden
“I was a coach, and I put a lot of education and experience into coaching.”
― John Madden
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