Review of "One Size Doesn’t Fit All," by John Madden with Dave Anderson

Review of

One Size Doesn’t Fit All, by John Madden with Dave Anderson ISBN 0394563131


Five out of five stars

 Madden at his stream of consciousness best

 In my opinion, there will never be a football broadcast pair that will be able to equal Pat Summerall and John Madden. Both of them were football experts, but in many ways, they had the persona of regular guys. In this book, John Madden goes from topic to topic, sometimes with no real thread between two in sequence.

 He talks about his life, on and off the road, as well as his approach to things. He is not one to adopt the appearance of a dandy and he often talks about his simple tastes in food. When he reached the point where his claustrophobia was too great to allow him to fly, he began taking trains. However, since the trains do not provide complete coverage of all locations where football is played, a bus was modified to be his traveling motel room.

 Part of Madden’s broadcast persona was to be humorous when you were not sure if he actually meant it to be. He was folksy, yet you never doubted that he was an expert on football. Many people that watched games that he called did not know that his winning percentage as a coach was 0.759, the highest in the modern era. Even better than that of the storied Bill Belicheck. He drafted and molded many hall of fame players, some of which were rejected by other teams.

 This book is not full of deep thoughts, just those of a guy that loved what he did, on the field, in the broadcast booth and everywhere else.