John Madden

His success in helping to build the San Diego State defense was noticed by Raiders owner Al Davis, who brought Madden to Oakland as the linebackers coach in 1967. Two years later Raiders head coach John Rauch resigned to take the same position with the Buffalo Bills, and Davis promoted Madden to the top job, making him what was then the youngest head coach in the NFL at age 32.

When Madden took over, it didn't take long for him to cut a distinctive figure on the sideline, with his hair usually disheveled as he paced back and forth, often arguing with the officials. He sometimes seemed as out of control on the sideline as his players were reputed to be on Saturday nights, but in reality he was in complete control. He didn't allow his players or assistants to argue with referees. "He'd say, 'Get back, I'll do the screaming and yelling around here,'" says former offensive lineman Art Shell, now the Raiders' head coach. "And he would, too. He would be yelling at the refs, yelling at his assistants, yelling at the players, yet he was always two or three plays ahead in his mind. He was one of the best I've ever seen in terms of clock management at the end of a game or a half, and you don't do that unless you're totally aware of everything that's going on."

Madden took the strategic part of the game quite seriously. He wouldn't let his players, not even Stabler, in whom he otherwise placed great trust, call timeouts on their own. On Friday nights he would attend high school football games and use them to practice his game management skills, thinking about when he would call timeouts and what he would say to his team in the situations that arose in the game.

That's the kind of thing that a man who has coaching in his blood will do. It's not so unlike what he does as a broadcaster, taking his audience inside the minds of the coaches. Madden loves to think like a coach, which is part of the reason that when he left the profession 28 years ago, everyone believed his "retirement" would be temporary. Madden was too young and too successful, the thinking went, to walk away from coaching for good. But what they didn't realize was that even though he doesn't run a team any longer, even though he has gone on to make a bigger name for himself in other areas, Madden will always remain a coach.