Scott Howard-Cooper is the author of the new book BAM!: John Madden, the NFL Explosion, and the Video Game That Changed Sports. His other books include Kingdom on Fire. Also a journalist, he lives in Northern California.
Q: What inspired you to write this book about football coach and broadcaster John Madden (1936-2021)?
A: I turned on the TV on Thanksgiving a few years ago. The
NFL Network, the first on the air to celebrate the football holiday, had a
segment on John Madden on its morning show.
The game that followed included a logo of Madden painted on
a sideline or behind the end zone. (I can’t remember which.) Same thing with
the pre-game show on whatever network broadcast the next game, and then with
the field tribute in the game itself. And then the two other networks and the
two other games followed.
This was obviously a coordinated effort from the highest
levels of the league office. I thought that was the ultimate perspective, that
the NFL still wanted to attach itself to the Madden mystique even years after
his passing. Now that’s popularity.
Intrigued by the statement on his legacy and his value to
the No. 1 sport in America, I began calling people who knew Madden or could
speak to his impact and found that few people knew the real John Madden, that
no one had put his true impact in perspective in book form, and, most of all,
that there was a new story to tell. Now I was inspired.
Q: The author Jack McCallum said of the book, “Scott
Howard-Cooper picks the perfect subject to examine the evolution of pro
football and sports media--a seemingly traditional coach-turned-announcer who,
along his eventful journey, became a revolutionary.” What do you think of that
description?
A: I love it because that’s what we were going for. My
original pitch to Diversion Books was a traditional Madden biography, but the
bosses there, Scott Waxman and Keith Wallman, saw BAM! as the chance to do
exactly what Jack McCallum said, to put a microscope on Madden after he retired
from coaching to examine the big picture.
Readers can take it a step further and say, yes, we see the
evolution of the NFL and sports broadcasting through Madden in stunning ways,
but keep going and they see a similar impact in sports computer gaming and
maybe even in train and bus travel for a few years.
This is a guy who reached the greatest heights of his dream
job as a football coach, winning a Super Bowl as the ultimate team achievement
and making the Hall of Fame as the highest individual tribute, and yet his real
legacy is what came next. What a fascinating journey.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything
that especially surprised you?
A: The research process was pretty typical — a lot of
conversations, a lot of reading documents from the time, a lot of watching old
football broadcasts.
(I suppose that last layer is atypical based on the topic,
but biographers will always search out videos, if available. And if some of
those documents from the time happen to be portions of John Madden’s Raiders
playbook, it’s not traditional digging either.)
It all introduced me to a different Madden than most people
knew existed, obviously a positive for a book on someone who spent decades in
the public eye. There is a lot of new and surprising in BAM! and I know this
became I am among the surprised.
I was shocked to learn John’s impact on building the Fox
entertainment empire. It is amazing to say, but also accurate, that the Fox we
know today may not exist if not for him. And I don’t just mean Fox in sports
broadcasting. Connected to that, the story of how Fox landed the NFL rights in
the first place is fascinating.
I was also surprised to learn about the business side of
Madden. He was very demanding behind the scenes on broadcasts, to the point
that a lot of people feared his wrath.
Not because he would raise his voice, not because he was 6
foot 4 and often around 300 pounds, and not because he had the star power to
get people fired. It was because he set very high standards for himself and
expected the same of others. No one wanted to disappoint him.
Similarly, there is a scene detailed in the book of Madden
meeting three members of the Electronic Arts team during a train ride to
discuss what would become the amazingly successful home-computer football game.
The three guys were shocked at how Madden controlled the
conversations in the dining car as the antithesis to the fun goofball they had
only known from watching him on the air. In short, to use delicate language,
Madden could be a real son of a gun, but in a good way.
I was also surprised at the people who are part of the
story. I didn’t have to stretch to get Bruce Springsteen, Richard Nixon, Don
Rickles, Yoko Ono, and others on the pages. Not just football people. John
Madden was a series of surprises.
Q: What would you say are some of the most common
perceptions and misconceptions about John Madden?
A: Madden promoted the image of himself as a bumbling
loudmouth broadcaster — Homer Simpson with a headset — because it was good for
business. It led to millions in commercial endorsements, and to hosting
Saturday Night Live and appearing in music videos for U2 and Paul Simon.
It was not inaccurate in that he was an unpolished network
analyst with a wonderful sense of humor. But it was a caricature because Madden
was actually the farthest thing from a comically brutish knucklehead who
crashed through fake walls to sell beer and diagrammed on the screen how steam
rose off the head of a Dallas Cowboys player on the sideline.
The story about how he first joined forces with Electronic
Arts on the train ride fits as well. Big misconception. Madden was not there to
play their fool, no matter what his image said. He was about preparation. He
was a great success because he had a big brain, and that point is often
overlooked. Hopefully BAM! shows the truth.
His struggles with air travel is one of the biggest
misconceptions. Madden did not have a fear of flying. He had anxiety, and at
times severe anxiety as the book details in showing his case was more severe
than most knew. It was the claustrophobia of not being able to get on and off
whenever he needed, one of the primary selling points that led him to permanent
bus travel.
He hated being on elevators when necessary to get to the
press box at a stadium or his room at a hotel. ("Big bed, low floor,” the
assistant booking the room was told repeatedly as Madden priorities.) It was
about being confined. His friend and broadcast partner Pat Summerall even
suggested it was the reason Madden often left his shoelaces untied, to feel
less confined.
The common perception that he was approachable and fun-loving
was, thankfully, accurate. (John Madden didn’t do phony.)
He loved people and his interactions with people he met in
roadside dive joints for meals and the dining car on long Amtrak rides, to the
point that Madden would often initiate conversations or make sure they
continued if the other person left him alone to give the famous traveler his
privacy. Where do you live? What do people there do for fun on weekends? Tell
me about life as a farmer, as a salesman, as a cop, or whatever.
That the sincerity came through on NFL broadcasts is one of
the main reasons he became a network and commercial superstar.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am all BAM! all the time now. I am excited about the
potential of a few ideas for a next project, but have not developed any of them
very far.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I loved doing BAM! and hope that energy comes through on
the pages. It sounds strange, but having John Madden in my head every day for a
couple years was fun. His family, friends, and colleagues were generous in
sharing their memories because it was a chance for them to spend time around
him again. I get it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
