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Split Personalities Posted: Tuesday September 24, 2002 5:54 PM
But what about the guy who helped nail up his star? The guy who put his own light in a shoebox for 21 years so Madden's could blaze? You know where 72-year-old Pat Summerall is? He's out there somewhere with the world-famous analyst Brian Baldinger, broadcasting Fox's fourth or fifth best game to 4% of the country. It's not right, is all. Would Madden be the No. 1 broadcaster in sports without Summerall? "He saved my bacon all the time," Madden says. "He had this way of taking all my babbling and making sense out of it." Summerall knew where Madden was going even when Madden didn't, helped him get there and brought him back. Madden was the box of 64 Crayolas and Summerall the lines in the coloring book. Together they drew America's favorite NFL picture. Yet Fox figured their success was all due to Madden. The network kicked Summerall to the curb, left him for dead and/or Brian Baldinger. And Fox had help from writers like USA Today's unaccountably powerful Rudy Martzke, who made a point of enumerating Summerall's mistakes in print. Summerall believes it was ageism. "If I weren't 72 years old, I don't think they'd be counting mistakes," he says. "If I weren't 72, they wouldn't have broken up John and me. We'd have stayed another three or four years." Madden, 66, looked around, saw Al Michaels sitting in the train wreck of the Monday Night Football booth and signed a $20 million, confetti-strewn deal. Next on Fox: World's Stupidest Ideas! Summerall had to make a choice: a) quit, or b) start covering games in Palookaville. Summerall chose Palookaville. "I knew he wouldn't quit," says Madden. "Pat can't even say the word retire. The only place he's going to retire is to bed. He's a football guy. He's had a football game every week for 60 years. I don't think he can live without it." There were times when you were sure he couldn't live with it. A bleeding ulcer in 1990. A hitch at the Betty Ford Center for alcohol rehab in '92. A bum knee that became excruciating in 1998. A staph infection around his artificial knee in late 2001 that forced him to charter flights because he couldn't walk through airports. And a bleeding vein near his stomach wall in August -- "probably from my battles with alcohol," he says -- that kept him in the hospital for a week. My Lord, how could he not quit? "I guess I've seen too many friends in football who hung it up and then got tired of playing golf, got tired of being around the house, had wives who got tired of them being around the house," Summerall says. "They ended up with an existence, not a life." So, in his 50th NFL year he's limping to fourth-class games -- Sinatra plays Branson, Mo. -- because, "I still have a passion for the game. There's still magic in it for me." And he is still great. He still gives you more goose bumps per syllable than any other play-by-play man alive. Perhaps because he's the only one who doesn't think he's getting paid by the word. Remember? "Montana ... Rice ... touchdown!" "Don't feel sorry for Pat," says his agent, Sandy Montag. "He's happy. He's still got his games." No, feel sad for us. We don't get to hear him anymore. Instead, we flip on the TV to see Madden working with Al Michaels, and it's like watching Bewitched with the wrong Darrin. Madden just isn't right at night. He's Sunday afternoon and a Dagwood sandwich on your lap. It's as if half of him is missing. "I watch them," Summerall says of the new MNF team. "They just don't seem comfortable." It's Ebert without Siskel. Starsky without Hutch. Trinidad and no Tobago. Worse, for the first time in 21 years, Madden and Summerall won't be coming over for Thanksgiving. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do," Madden says of spending the holiday at home. "I don't know where I sit, and I sure don't know how to carve the turkey." For Summerall, it will be worse. "I live 20 minutes from Texas Stadium," he says. "Maybe I'll wander over there and watch the game." Pat Summerall sitting in the stands, watching mutely as the Cowboys play on Thanksgiving Day? You talk about heartburn. Issue date: September 30, 2002 Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available at bookstores everywhere.
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