Madden legacy lives on
Corner Thomas recalls playing famous coach, broadcaster’s video game
Back in Detroit, back when Tavierre Thomas was a kid, his mother once saved up money to buy him Madden NFL 2005 for Christmas.
She was the one who always pressed Thomas to play football. Not his tall, strong, older brothers. Little, slight, him.
She’d always dressed Thomas in football jerseys. Buying Madden as a Christmas present was just the next step of encouragement. To this day, Thomas still doesn’t know what made his mother want him to play football so badly. Maybe it was to make her little son stronger. Maybe the video game would help unlock the imagination of a child who didn’t believe he could play.
He’d play the game all day long. He created his own player. There he’d be — a nearly invincible digital quarterback programmed to “99” on all possible player ratings from 1-99 — torching secondaries and plowing over defenders while the video game’s namesake commentated over the action.
Boom!
“When I was playing, I’m like, ‘I just want to do it,’ ” Thomas said.
That was the gift John Madden gave millions of kids. The legendary NFL coach, the gold standard of broadcast color commentary, the man who died at 85 on Tuesday, lent his likeness, his voice and his energy to a video game franchise that exploded into a cultural mammoth and influenced an entire generation of sports fans.
Yes, Madden was a Super Bowl winning coach, the owner of a .763 regular season winning percentage that’s still tops in NFL history. Yes, he spent three decades as the league’s most recognizable voice in the American living room, the gregarious TV analyst who traveled in a touring bus and championed the turducken on Thanksgivings.
But “Madden” is how most of this generation of NFL players knew Madden.
Vocabulary and references associated with the video game are ingrained in football’s lexicon.
The guy’s got video game numbers! Hit stick! You couldn’t even do that in Madden!
Players often gripe or needle teammates about their player ratings.
“Tell Madden to stop playing with my speed,” cornerback Lonnie Johnson said as he left the interview podium after the Texans’ 20-14 preseason victory over the Cowboys, in which he dashed for a 53yard pick-six.
Johnson had an 89-rated speed at the time. He still has an 89-rated speed.
Former Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph referenced the video game franchise when asked about wide receiver Andre Johnson’s credentials to be voted into the Hall of Fame.
“Obviously, we all know he’s a Hall of Famer,” Joseph said. “He ran the state of Texas forever. It was always the Cowboys, but when I was younger, before I got to the NFL, you put on Madden and the one guy you always hear is Andre Johnson, Andre Johnson, Andre Johnson.”
The virtual world has absorbed even the athletes who’ve reached the pinnacle of their sport. Thomas and cornerback Desmond King, Detroit natives and childhood friends, still play each other in Madden almost every other day.
The video game fed the dreams of kids who desperately wanted to reach the NFL.
It created a vicarious experience for the ones who didn’t make it.
It created a surreal one for those who did.
“Just to see myself now actually in the game — it’s an amazing feeling,” Thomas said.