Yes­ter­day I some­how found myself look­ing at the Wikipedia page for John Madden. I was trying to figure out if he had ever actu­ally played pro foot­ball or not (the answer is no).

There was one part of the Wikipedia entry that really made me laugh. You see, he’s always driven me crazy when­ever I watch foot­ball games that he’s announc­ing for. He never says any­thing enlight­en­ing and has the annoy­ing habit of over­stat­ing the obvi­ous. Appar­ently I’m not the only one who noticed:

Madden some­times ends up the butt of jokes, as occa­sion­ally his com­men­tary bor­ders on the rhetor­i­cal and bla­tantly obvi­ous. This ten­dency may have increased since his final years of work­ing with Pat Sum­mer­all. It’s not uncom­mon for some­one to rib on Madden’s “Maddenisms” by saying some­thing like “You can’t win a game if you don’t score any points.” or “If the quar­ter­back com­pletes a pass in the end­zone, it’s a touchdown.” In Novem­ber 2006, The Onion ran a sports brief head­lined, “John Madden Reminds View­ers Of Impor­tance Of Quar­ter­back To NFL Teams.” Madden has also been made the butt of jokes for his fre­quent “BOOM” com­ments, such as when a player hits another player hard. [Wikipedia]

That arti­cle in The Onion that the entry men­tions is actu­ally pretty funny. The Wikipedia entry also men­tions come­dian Frank Caliendo doing Madden impres­sions. So I looked them up and was laugh­ing pretty hard in no time at all.

Last but not least, the famous John Madden Pop­corn Popper skit from Mad TV. Make sure to watch the whole thing because the ending is priceless.