Former Raiders coach and long-time football broadcaster John Madden passed away unexpectedly at age 85.
It’s hard to be as good as anything as Madden was at broadcasting, where he cast a shadow that football commentators of today are struggling to live up to. It’s also hard to be as good as anything as Madden was at coaching, where he finished his career 103-32-7 with the Raiders and won Super Bowl XI. And yet those two things alone don’t adequately describe what he meant to the football world, because he transcended them with his incredibly accurate -- per his insistence -- video games, and a persona that only loomed larger in retrospect. It’s a devastating loss for the sport.
