Madden sucked. He sounds almost as obnoxious as Vitale on college hoops.

You won't like this:
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BTW, Aikman is #14
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The 25 Greatest NFL Announcers of All Time | Bleacher Report
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Edit: Oh hell, can't help myself. :D
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#1.
John Madden is one of the most important men, not just announcers, in the history of the NFL.

Madden has done more for the game of football than any one man should ever be able to do, and much of his reach and impact is because of his work as a television commentator after retiring from coaching.

Madden is one of the great television characters of all time, and yet, he was as real as they come. What you saw was what you got with Madden: an honest, learned and excitable analysis of professional football.

From Lead Writer Will Carroll: "While he got to be a caricature at the end, Madden changed how a lot of people looked at the game by giving an angle we weren't used to seeing. Color went from telling stories like Gifford and Meredith to analyzing the game because of Madden."

Sure, Madden had a tendency to get worked up in his own exuberance, but that was part of what made him so affable. Madden made watching football fun, from his outlandish use of the telestrator to his sound effects when replaying a tackle to the Turducken on Thanksgiving.

His All-Madden teams changed the way fans looked at the game's best players—the dirtier the player got, the better he was—and the video game franchise that bears his name changed the way young fans connected to the game.

In how many ways do I owe my fandom to John Madden? Too many to count.

Let's look at it this way. In 2010, the Indy Colts were 10-6 with Manning and won the division. In 2011, with no Manning and no good QBs, they were 2-14. In 2012, with Andrew Luck, another very good QB, they were 11-5.

As for Denver, they were 8-8 without Manning in 2011, then 13-3 in 2012 with Manning.

Good points. The fact that Manning could get the Broncos to 13-3 in his first season and then the SB in just his second year is a testament to his greatness. The Broncos hadn't gone this far in a season since '98 when they won it all. Actually, they haven't really sniffed at any real success since then.

While I find both Madden and Vitale to be annoying, both have done a huge amount to benefit the games that they love. They are also charitable and by all accounts genuinely good people. I don't care for their style, but definitely respect their positive impact.

dumb old list.


Marv Albert #11 makes the voices angry. I don't like it when the voices get angry.
Keith Jackson wasn't even on that list.
OK, he didn't do the NFL thing but the voices still ain't cool with it.

Keith Jackson's too-often comment: "He's a big ole boy!"
But I liked his style.

I think Madden is one of those love um or hate um kind of guys... personally I loved listening to him... yes he is/was loud, obnoxious, bombastic... but somehow that seemed to fit nicely with the NFL.

Just MHO.

I heard that when Madden walked into the dressing rooms of the teams prior to the games, the players all swarmed him. Lots of love and respect, I guess.

Peyton as the best ever? He's good but I don't think I would call him the best there ever was at QB. Here are a few that have not been mentioned that I feel deserve a little more adulation in my opinion:

Roger Staubach, Fran Tarkenton, Bart Starr, Ken Stabler, Ken Anderson, Dan Fouts and Jim Plunkett.

Peyton is on par with Aikman and Bradshaw. Good in their time but not the end all be all.

Heard a Manning interview on ESPN this morning. He thinks he has not yet reached his full potential, that he is still learning how to play the QB position. He shows no inclination to retire, and says he still really enjoys the prepartation. With an O-Line that gave up the fewest sacks in the league, and a perspective that he has yet to peak.....hmmm

Decker probably gets the "Franchise" tag this off season to keep the offensive skill position talent in place, just like they did with Clady this year. Reasonable chance the Broncos are in position to contend for a couple more years.

"Best of all time" debate might need to be revisited after Manning reaches his potential.

I hope I can find a clip of that recent guest appearance he did. he's very old, and has obviously slowed his speech a little, but his whit is still sharp as a tack. He was telling stories about learning from Pop Warner etc, and he COMMANDED the direct attention of everyone in the room.
He talked about the day he was told to do the announcing/play by play for olympic ice skating or some other obscure "sport". His last minute partner asked, do you know anything about ice skating?
And he replied in the deep booming voice, No but I know television!

The other sportcasters in that room were all in awe. When they switched back to the ESPN desk back east or wherever, the commentator stood up and walked out saying jokingly, I can't follow that.

It was a very special and memorable experience.
Kinda reminded me of Chick Hearn, another man I never met but admired a great deal and who I miss.



wiki


BTW, I did not realize it but Jackson did the very first monday night football broadcast September 21, 1970.

Wasn't espn, it was fox sports network.



Keith Jackson on Fox College Saturday : Outkick The Coverage


Keith Jackson celebrates 85th birthday with FOX | Video County

From the Grandland piece that I linked to earlier today:

"At this stage in his late career, really for the whole season-plus he’s been with Denver, Manning makes being a midlevel IT manager look like a form of ruthless conquest. It’s as if he wrote a script to install automatic PC updates, and somehow it made him the god-emperor of hell. This is how he plays football: He goes out every week with a graphing calculator and a stack of forms, and he just audits teams to death.

III.
George Orwell wrote that by the age of 50, everyone has the face he deserves. Manning is 37, well past 50 in football years, and his face increasingly looks like something that was squeezed from a tube of Crest. But watching him this past month, I couldn’t shake the feeling that his whole career has been pointing toward this moment — that somehow, this is the first time we’ve truly been able to see him. Which is strange to say, since, of course, he played in Indianapolis for over a decade, won four MVPs and a Super Bowl, broke half the passing records in the NFL, and will always be more associated with the Colts than with the Broncos. But still. Some athletes get old and become faded copies of themselves, diminished versions of what they once were. Think of David Beckham before he retired, or of Tiger Woods now, to name two athletes around his age. But Manning has become, if anything, an intensified version of himself. And not just because he’s playing next-level-even-for-him football right now — his whole temperament resonates in middle age in a way that it never did when he was 22. He doesn’t seem old, because he never seemed young in the first place."

RIP to one of the greatest game callers ever.

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Okay, so not quite all accounts ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/woman-reiterates-sexually-harassed-peyton-manning-article-1.3600171

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Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times.

...and everybody knows that Joe Montana is the greatest QB of all time:
Montana holds postseason records for most games with a passer rating over 100.0 (12) and is second in career postseason touchdown passes (45), passing yards (5,772) and games with 300+ passing yards (6, tied with Kurt Warner). In his four Super Bowls, Montana completed 83 of 122 passes for 1,142 yards and 11 touchdowns with no interceptions, earning him a passer rating of 127.8. Montana led his team to victory in each game, and was the first player ever to win three Super Bowl MVP awards. Montana also held the record for most Super Bowl pass completions (83) and still holds the record for pass attempts (122) without throwing an interception.
In his four Super Bowls, Montana completed 83 of 122 passes for 1,142 yards and 11 touchdowns with no interceptions, earning him a passer rating of 127.8. Montana led his team to victory in each game, and was the first player ever to win three Super Bowl MVP awards. Wikipedia

Tom Brady is an excellent QB, no doubt. But nobody performed in the post season like Mr. Montana. It looks like Mr. Brady's Superbowl win percentage is 71%. Mr. Montana's is......let's see here....

.....oh yeah, 100%.

Finally, something we can agree on.

One Keith Jackson comment I remember...at a Cal game, camera shots of "deadbeat hill", a hill overlooking the stadium. People atop it watching the game for free.

Jackson: "That hill has been there since the stadium was built."

Fouts: "Probably since before the stadium was built, Keith."

Score one for Dan Fouts. Not many did against Keith...

Agree. It's biting.