There is nothing like following the darkest day-tax day-with a little good news; hell, great news!  On April 16, just one day after the government raped our pocket books once again, the news of John Madden’s retirement took center stage on the ESPN ticker, and with a BOOM! THAWAP! BOINK! the career of a (cough, cough) legendary announcer faded faster than the turducken on Thanksgiving Day.  Halla-freakin-lu-yah!

There were three things that I just couldn’t stand about John Madden.  First of all, it is getting harder and harder to understand what the man is saying due to the enormous amount of food in his mouth.  I swear during most Sunday Night Football broadcasts he had a few Iowa State Fair turkey legs nestled deep in his cheeks, and yet he continued to yammer on about the most random things–which leads me to my second point.

He often said the most inane things.

“Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”

What the hell does that mean?  Does anyone know?  Seriously!

“He feels the pressure real and pressure imagined.”

Uh, OK?  I think I might could maybe understand what you might be alluding to, or not?

But what is even better is when he follows up a statement that no one has a clue what he just said with a statement that just makes you want to bow down and pay homage to the “Master of the Obvious”.

“Hey, the offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they’re bigger than everybody else, and that’s what makes them the biggest guys on the field.”

No, Really?  That’s effing brilliant!

“When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.”

I just might have learned that in the second grade, but then again I was a slow kid.  Next thing you are going to tell me is that if I get tackled, I am going to end up on the ground.  OR, better yet, if someone kicks me in the balls, it is going to hurt.  Thanks for the in-depth analysis.

Here is my all time favorite though because this, no doubt, was said before the game even began.

“They got to Joey Harrington physically and they got to him mentally.”

Wow.  Really?  And this whole time I thought Joey Harrington was just a head case.

The final thing that annoyed me about Madden, or at least the final thing I will mention in this post, was when he called Packer games.  He was so enamored by his man-crush Favre that the whole world stopped and he rarely even thought of food … well, maybe just dessert.  He cried during Favre’s retirement and pulled a boner when he came back to the Jets, although Madden still believe Favre was playing for the Packers.

“They say Brett Favre has an ‘S’ on underneath his jersey and he is going to go and be Superman every week, … You can’t. I don’t think he has lost anything, though. I study Brett Favre a lot and watch everything. You see that he’s older now. Can he still move? Yes, he can still move. Can he still throw the ball with the same velocity? Yes, he can still throw the ball with the same velocity. So the Packers’ lack of success is not about Brett Favre. He doesn’t have a lot of guys around him right now.”

Just as annoying as those three things are, what is more infuriating is that a person, Frank Caliendo, became a (cough, cough) star by imitating Madden.  Well, how great is it that we kill two birds with one stone and see Caliendo fall by the wayside also?  How much does he hate life right now?  Not only the economy in the shitter, but also the signature celeb you imitate has decided to call it quits … that is one bad week (oh yeah, and taxes were due the day before).  Someone put an APB out of Frankie-boy because he has surely taken a header off some bridge.

So Mr. Madden, you can keep making your excellent games but just know that I will finally sit down on a Sunday night and turn up the volume on my television and enjoy the superior announcing of … hmmmm, who is it going to be? … oh … what … Chris Collinsworth … ah, hell no!  Come back John Madden.  Come back!  You can’t leave us with that bozo!

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J.David has never won an award for his writing, but he is a former collegiate athlete for a small college where everyone makes the team.  Currently, he is a grad student at the University of Southern California studying the archaic form called, Print Journalism.  J.David points to watching Barry Sanders catlike moves as the birth of his love for the NFL, and LT’s hit on Joe Theisman as the last day he ever wanted to play quarterback.

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