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.'Collection: Thanksgiving
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.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Chance
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.Collection: Thanksgiving
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.Collection: Computers
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?Collection: Travel
I'm sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Best
The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Legal
The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.Collection: Sports
That's the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.Collection: Sports
Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.
Don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.
The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.
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.
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.
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.
Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.
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.
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.
The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn't smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.
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.'
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.'
You wouldn't do something for a receiver to catch the ball if the quarterback couldn't throw it.
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.
I was a coach, and I put a lot of education and experience into coaching.
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.
It's a lot easier to get a suit than it is to get a coach.
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.
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.
I think comparisons are odious.
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.
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.'
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.
If a guy doesn't work hard and doesn't play well, he can't lead anything. All he is, is a talker.
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.
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.
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.
When people watch football, they're looking for fun things.
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.
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.
If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they've had a bad day.
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.
Nothing jazzes me up like football. I've acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn't make sense.
To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.
I've never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.
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.
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.