PS-OCT13-BOOKS1-MADDEN

When John Madden began calling his local San Francisco radio station in 1997, it signaled the start of nearly 20 years of conversations between the football legend and morning-show host Stan Bunger, as the presenter writes in “Mornings With Madden: My Radio Life with an American Legend’ (Triumph Books, out Tuesday).

What made the discussions on KCBS all the more remarkable was not only that Madden did it five days a week, at 8.15 a.m. sharp, but that it came at a time when the Super Bowl-winning coach was at the peak of his glittering broadcasting career and, thanks to the video game that bore his name, was making more money each year than any NFL player.

“You’d have to have missed about 40 years of American culture to not know who John Madden was,” Bunger writes.

“John Madden was a Big Damned Deal, but not too big to show up every day, ready to shine on local radio.”

Simply put, Madden is synonymous with football. 

Not only was he the television face and voice of the nation’s most popular sport, broadcasting with CBS, Fox, NBC and on ABC’s “Monday Night Football” from 1979 to 2009, his name also adorned the best-selling sports video game, and he was the man who led the Oakland Raiders to Super Bowl victory in 1977 and had the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach.

‘Mornings With Madden’ grew out of the huge sense of loss Stan Bunger felt when Madden passed away in December 2021, a loss also felt by friends, family, colleagues and millions of fans across the United States. “The sense of duty came from my belief that this story needed to be told,” adds Bunger, “and there really no one other than me to tell it.”

However, Bunger is keen to point out that his book isn’t another biography or ghost-written memoir. “Here’s what it is: the inside story of an underreported part of the life of a remarkable man,” he writes. 

For Madden, their chats were an opportunity to engage with his hometown radio station. “[They were] a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his own brand of wit and wisdom.”

But they were also a chance to keep in touch with his legions of fans in the country.

“John used to marvel at the fact that he had three audiences and each called him by a different name,” adds Bunger. “People who knew him from his days with the Oakland Raiders called him ‘Coach.’ The millions who watched him on all those NFL telecasts called him ‘John.’ 

“And the mostly youthful crowd that played the “Madden NFL” video game called him ‘Madden.’ He answered to all of them.”

For Stan Bunger, though, they were not only radio gold but a treasured friendship conducted over the airwaves where the two men put the world to rights. “The truth is, we were just playing it one day at a time, carrying on a long-running conversation,” writes Bunger. “Only occasionally did we realize the depth of the connection between John and KCBS listeners.”

It wasn’t just football they discussed. 

From family life to roadside diners, philosophy to health, wealth and wisdom, the two men covered the full gamut of topics. 

Inevitably, though, Madden addressed sports more generally, like, for instance, his love/hate relationship with golf. “It’s great, except I can’t play,’ he told Bunger. “I’m just terrible. And you get to a point, if you’re terrible and you care, then that equals frustration. 

“So the key is you have to not care.”

On the rare occasions he did hit a good shot, he would say: “Blind squirrel finds an acorn.”

Food was his favorite subject. “Coach loved to eat, loved to think about eating, loved to talk about eating,” writes Bunger. Just don’t get him started on grits. “I’ve never gotten grits,” he said. “Grits is like mush. Two things as a kid I didn’t like: I didn’t like liver and I didn’t like mush. 

“And then I was an adult. I still don’t like liver and I still don’t like mush.” 

Madden tackled each subject with typical gusto, leaving in his wake an endless list of what Bunger calls “Maddenisms,” such as “Don’t let the hose out until you know where the fire is” or “Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”

Another of Bunger’s personal favorites was: “If you’re going to eat cherries in the orchard, make sure they are worth the stomachache.”

As the author explains, it’s typical of the way in which John Madden’s mind worked. “Taken literally, Coach is talking about what happens if you can’t wait to dig into a bag of freshly picked cherries, something he loved to do when he’d take the grandkids to the orchard he owned,” he writes.

“But scratch a bit deeper and you have a classic Maddenism: a reminder that short-term gains sometimes bring long-term pains.”

In fact, there were so many memorable phrases that Bunger regrets, albeit jokingly, never monetizing Madden’s lyrical flourishes. “I suppose that if we’d been clever, we’d have created a ‘Madden Quote of the Day’ calendar or sold T-shirts with some of his wisdom imprinted on them,” he writes. 

Madden was particularly vocal when it came to medical matters, invariably prefacing his responses with the words “I’m not a doctor, but…”

On one show, for instance, Bunger mentioned that he had a frog in his throat and wondered if the Coach had any remedies. “Yeah,” replied Madden. “What you do is you stick your hand down your mouth to your elbow. Don’t put it in any deeper than your elbow and then bend your knees and turn your toes out. 

“And then put your head between your knees and pull everything out. That’ll work.” 

Even when Coach Madden took time out from phoning in, he made sure he returned as soon as he could. In 2015, for example, he underwent open heart surgery and was visited in hospital by Bunger’s friend Jim Ghielmetti who asked him how he was feeling at which point Madden ripped open his robe to expose where the surgeons had cut him open. 

“How the f–k do you think I feel?’ he responded.

By 2018, however, Madden’s declining health prevented him from calling in but KCBS always held his spot open for him, awarding him the new title of “Senior Investigative At-Large Correspondent” in the hope he might one day return to the show.

But he never did.

John Madden died on December 28, 2021. He was 85.

“In the same way some people save voicemails after loved ones die, I’ve kept my text message string with Coach,” writes Bunger. “I just looked back at the message I sent him two months before my own planned retirement date, letting him know of my plans.” 

“His reply, verbatim: “When you say you are going to retire, you have.” 

Fittingly, the foreword to “Mornings With Madden” is written by legendary quarterback Peyton Manning, who keeps a photograph of himself with Coach Madden on his office wall in Denver, Colo.

“John became somebody we all felt we knew. He had that special ability to just be himself in a world full of folks who seem to be trying too hard,” he writes.

“I know from my own relationship with John that he was wise, funny, and loyal. 

“He was the kind of guy you wished you could hang out with every day.”