John Madden retired last week. Madden began his career as a pro football player, then became a coach who won a Super Bowl and went 103-32-7 by the time he was 42. For the last 30 years, he worked in the role for which he is best known: a commentator and caricature. He is a Hall of Famer who might even be the face of the NFL. How does his moving on impact the rest of the world? With apologies to Jon Stewart, let's go all Jim Cramer with this.
Sell: Frank Caliendo. Madden was the impressionist's go-to voice. First Bush, now Madden? What's next? It's a good thing Charles Barkley was allowed to return to TNT after his … incident, for Caliendo's sake. And comedy's sake. Sure, his Bill Walton and Jim Rome are great, but they're esoteric. Frank TV is on its last legs.
Sell: Brett Favre. Oh, Favre will continue to have his apologists in the media. Essentially everyone at ESPN would take a bullet for him. He is, after all, a gunslinger. He just loves playing football. Like a kid. But now that the two most relevant football personalities in the media are Cris Collinsworth and Jay Glazer, who don't hold their punches to say the least, I don't think Favre will be the focus of every NFL storyline. Favre clearly fell victim to the Madden Curse.
Buy: Cris Collinsworth. He is undisputedly the top analyst of the National Football League. He's been known to watch as much game tape as Ron Jaworski and his voice is smoother than mahogany. Now, as he readies to take the booth for Sunday Night Football, he's been given one of the top play-by-play men in the business in Al Michaels, and he'll be calling the best games every week thanks to NBC's "flex schedule," broadcasting in front of America's largest audience most weekends.
Sell: Exxon-Mobil. John Madden hasn't taken a flight since 1979. Instead, he travels by way of the Madden Cruiser, an $800,000 bus with its own sponsor that travels 80,000 miles annually. With that gas-guzzling monstrosity out of commission, the Madden Cruiser will be retired as well.
Buy: "The Wrestler." Really good movie. Came out on DVD today. Do yourself a favor.
Sell: EA Sports. Let's be honest here. When it came to Madden NFL, the namesake of the game was the X receiver. You could always count on him when in doubt. Every "Boom," no matter how canned, was sheer genius. And what fun would it be going for it on fourth and 32 if the old, fat man didn't so strongly oppose your decision? At least Ethan Albright will be happy.
Buy: AARP. I guess.
Buy: Al Davis. The final remaining face of the old Raiders' dynasty. A very haunting and disturbing face at that.
Sell: The telestrator. Nobody works the yellow pen like Madden. Now, right here, I'm going to write this paragraph as if it was being telestrated. See it's developing, and you can see right there that he kind of lost track of where he was going with it. And then — boom! He writes a punchline. Right there. It wasn't very well executed, but it got the job done.
Buy: Yogiisms. Maddenisms were fun and all, but I prefer my incoherent thoughts presented in oxymorons and redundancies rather than merely circular reasoning. Berra is better.
Sell: Tough Actin' Tinactin, Horse Trailer and Turducken. I have never seen nor heard of any of these things outside of Madden references. I've never seen a Sonic, either. I am convinced that they do not exist.
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Jeremy Greenhouse is a sophomore majoring in English. He can be reached at Jeremy.Greenhouse@tufts.edu.
