Should Madden's record 11th Super Bowl be his last?
There was a time when the very idea of John Madden doing the Super Bowl was a cause for celebration.
The worst thing about the 1986 Bears' playoff collapse, even beyond Mike Ditka's infatuation with Doug Flutie and his getting outcoached by Joe Gibbs, was it deprived the Bears of a chance to be in a Super Bowl done by Madden and Pat Summerall on CBS. It left Bear fans to stand pat with our old videocassettes of Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen doing Super Bowl XX the previous year on NBC.
In their prime, Summerall and Madden were just maybe the best football duo ever (although perhaps I should clarify that as best NFL announcers and leave college football to Keith Jackson). But Summerall is now long past his prime, and Madden has been catching up with him in recent years.
It happens to all athletes, slowing down with age, and it happens to sports announcers as well, only the progress is slower over more seasons. But it's happened to Madden, just as it happened to Summerall and Jackson, and it's left his latest partner, Al Michaels, unprotected as an increasingly insufferable "broadcast legend."
You'd think Michaels had invented sportscasting with his "Do you believe in miracles?" call at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
This is Madden's record 11th Super Bowl. It's Michaels' seventh, his third with Madden and their first on NBC since moving to "Sunday Night Football."
NBC is back in the now three-year rotation after being out of the game since 1998, and on a media conference call this week both announcers were insisting they intended to stick around for more.
"I'd like to be back in three, six, nine, 12, 15 years," Michaels said. "You can't do enough of these. This is the essence of why any of us get into the business and - God willing everyone stays healthy - there is more to come."
"It doesn't get any better than this," Madden said. "These are always the biggest years you do when you end up with a Super Bowl. This has been a very special year working with Al. This is our third one, and a fourth sounds pretty good."
Yet you don't have to have been on the call to hear the weariness in that quote.
In a first in my experience, most of the questions on the call were addressed to NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol and game producer Fred Gaudelli. Few asked Michaels or Madden to break down the game in advance, and that was always one of the high points of past Madden Super Bowl calls, to hear the unequaled passion in his voice and the astute way he'd dissect line play and blitz schemes.
Here, all he had was to analyze how both teams were dealing with the Super pressure. "I'm impressed how both these teams are handling media day," he said. "There are two important things you have to remember about the Super Bowl. When you win your (conference) championship game, it's not the end. You haven't done anything yet." Hear that, Lovie Smith? "It's not to get to the Super Bowl, it's to win the Super Bowl, and I think both teams understand that.
"The other thing is, don't take these things as distractions. Just enjoy it. You're going to look back on your life and say, 'That was the best time of my life.' If it's going to be a highlight, act like it and enjoy it. These teams are handling it that way, and the teams that enjoy this usually win. The teams that fought it are the teams that usually lose the Super Bowl."
There is something very sage in that analysis, and as ever Madden looks beyond the mere X's and O's and talent and tactics to get to a very human level. Yet what does he actually add to the game? Nothing. He hasn't detected an edge in that comfort zone in either team.
Yet, I'm not going to nitpick, not during the actual game, either. Madden, like Harry Caray and other greats before him, long ago earned the right to stick around as long as he likes.
In fact, I do hope he goes another three years to make it an even dozen Super Bowls.
He might not be what he was, but any Super Bowl he does is better than one done by Jim Nantz and Phil Simms.
tcox@dailyherald.com