Post by TheShadow on Jul 4, 2009 11:33:11 GMT -5
www.sanluisobispo.com/
Teammates could tell early that former Poly football player would become a head coach
By Donovan Aird
John Madden got his first chance roaming the sidelines in the spring of 1960 as an interim head coach at San Luis Obispo High, where he was student teaching.
“You could tell that’s what John wanted to do,” says former Cal Poly quarterback Bobby Beathard, who played with Madden, a two-way Mustangs lineman, in 1957 and 1958. “Some guys want to be a head coach but have that one thing missing — leadership. You either have it or you don’t.”
Early in 1958, Tom Klosterman, then a junior quarterback, got a glimpse of Madden’s future when he had to replace an injured Beathard.
“I remember going into the huddle in practice, and (Madden) said, ‘Look, you’re taking over the show. You have all the ability to do the job for us,’ ” Klosterman remembers. “John was a real leader.”
Al Baldock, then the head coach at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, got the same sense when a man walked into his office in 1960 saying he was a former Cal Poly player wanting to get into college coaching.
“He was a positive, low-key type of coach, which I prefer,” Baldock says. “I don’t like screamers and hollerers and pushers, and John wasn’t one of those.”
Madden directed the Bulldogs’ lines in 1960 and 1961 before becoming their head coach for two years in 1962. An 8-1 campaign in 1963 was enough to turn the head of San Diego State head coach Don Coryell, who brought him on as his defensive coordinator. Before long, less than a decade removed from being drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, Madden was back to impressing the pros, as Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis discovered him toward the end of the Aztecs’ undefeated 1966 season.
“When Al Davis went down to San Diego State, he was looking at another coach but saw John,” says Al Moriarty, a Cal Poly defensive end and offensive tackle from 1953 to 1956. Moriarty’s wife, Patty, is a niece of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney. At the 50th birthday party of current Steelers owner Dan Rooney, Art’s son, Moriarty met Davis and heard about his first encounter with Madden.
“(Madden) had the whistle around his neck like (Knute) Rockne, high shoes and everything. There was nothing fancy. (Davis) looked at (Madden), and he turned his head and said, ‘Jeez, who’s this guy?’ He wasn’t a phony. What you saw is what you got.”
After two years as the Raiders’ linebackers coach, Madden became Oakland’s head coach in 1969. He held the position through 1978, winning Super XI in 1977, as his unassuming style meshed perfectly with the renegade Raiders’ fabled cast of free spirits in the 1970s.
“He was the type of coach who would talk to someone rather than curse,” Baldock says. “John would rather instruct than scream. He could take a technique and explain it to you without pushing or wearing on you.”
Becoming an icon
Such an instructive demeanor translated to an unmatched announcing career during which he collected a record 16 Emmys for Most Outstanding Sports Analyst Personality. As if that weren’t enough, his endorsements ranged from Tough-Actin’ Tinactin to Outback Steakhouse, making him a ubiquitously visible pitchman.
“The last time I saw (Madden’s wife) Virginia, she said, ‘You know, this thing is absolutely overwhelming,’ ” former Cal Poly tight end Pat Lovell says. “ ‘We can’t go any place, we can’t get dinner or go to a movie. People just flock to John when they see him. It’s so uncomfortable. It’s just absolutely overwhelming how much of an icon he’s become.’ ”
While his astuteness for football was never in doubt, his natural presence speaking to millions wasn’t as immediately apparent. “He was quiet,” Baldock remembers. “At one banquet (at Hancock), when I had to get up there and speak, he said to my wife, ‘I don’t see how he does that.’ Obviously, he overcame that.”
At Cal Poly, where the mostly male enrollment was only about 5,000 in the 1950s, the gregarious Madden was shy enough that he dropped a required speech class, former Cal Poly center Rich Max says. Klosterman also recalls him worrying about passing the same course out of a slight fear of public speaking.
“I don’t think anyone envisioned (such a public career) when he was playing,” adds Dick Mannini, a former Cal Poly fullback. “He was not as outgoing as his persona is now.”
In class, Beathard recalls, the conspicuously towering redhead usually sat in the back, typically losing himself in the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports section.
“He really knew football,” Beathard says. “You could tell that was probably John’s only interest.”
Although Madden also played for the Mustangs baseball team, he didn’t take so kindly to more unconventional sports, including skim boarding, which Beathard remembers once trying to get him to enjoy at Avila Beach.
“He threw the skim board,” Beathard chuckles. “That was the last time he tried to skim board. John didn’t have many hobbies. Everything was football.”
Moriarty, who began selling insurance to graduated players in the late 1950s, got the same impression when he put Madden on his first program in 1960 — the paperwork of which he still cherishes in a personal scrapbook.
“Virginia said, ‘That John, he can’t even hang a picture straight. All he knows is football, football, football,’ ” Moriarty remembers. “Well, it paid off pretty well for him. I don’t think he had to hang a picture straight.”
True to his roots
Despite his vast fame, Madden stayed so down-to-earth he was able to spot former teammates amongst crowds more than four decades after their playing days.
In 2002, Lovell was on vacation in Chicago, and while waiting for a “Monday Night Football” game between the Bears and the Green Bay Packers, he remembered an old friend who’d also be on his way to the game.
“I saw all these (TV) trucks, and I said, ‘Hey, what time does Madden get here?’ ” Lovell recalls. “They said, ‘Oh, he’ll be here pretty soon now.’ The parking lot was filling up, and pretty quickly, we hear this big roar of people all running down the street. We hustle over there, and here comes the Madden Cruiser. As the bus gets closer and closer, I step off the curb and start waving my arms, because I see his silhouette in the window.”
At Madden’s behest, the driver slammed on the brake and opened the door.
“Then, just he and I, we sat there and talked for a half-hour,” Lovell says.
Four years later, Madden personally invited both Lovell and Mannini to his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“I have nothing but great memories,” Madden says of his time on the Central Coast. “That’s where it all started.”