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John Madden Working Morning Radio Stan Bunger Brings It Back To Life In Mornings With Madden

"What a joy to read Stan Bunger's book. Bunger captures a complex John Madden who is, of course, hilarious, but also poignant and introspective. For 18 years at 8:15 a.m. on KCBS, Bunger was the perfect straight man teeing up Madden. You can hear Madden on the pages of "Mornings with Madden,'' unspooling one engaging tale after another. He was a truly gifted storyteller. And so, as I've learned, is Stan Bunger. I challenge anyone who picks up this book to stop turning the pages."An intimate and freewheeling portrait of John Madden through the NFL legend's own words" - Joan Ryan, author of "Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry" John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation's most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach. Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with his hometown radio station: a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his own brand of wit and wisdom. In Mornings With Madden, Stan Bunger-the man most often on the other side of the mic-illuminates this larger-than-life figure, drawing upon memories of more than fifteen years of daily broadcasts, backed up by thousands of recordings of those conversations. Readers who adored Madden's football acumen and quirky personality on NFL broadcasts will get to know the father, husband, bad golfer, dog owner, lover of roadside diners, and philosopher whose personality dominated our radio chats. Featuring moving reflections alongside Madden's own words, this is a treasure trove of wry observations, self-deprecating humor, clear-eyed thinking about sports and society, and the "Maddenisms" that endeared the legendary coach to millions.

Broadcast on:: 19 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

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Ready to talk with you because, I mean, morning's with Madden. I know morning radio. I know what goes on inside that studio, and I'm anxious to swap some stuff here with you. It'd be fun. I look forward to it. You know, I'm just glad that normally I'm not getting up at 3.30 in the morning to do morning radio anymore, but I respect those who do so, although I suspect their intelligence might be lacking a bit. You know, a lot of listeners don't understand that my biggest fear of driving in for the morning show was the fact that it wasn't because I was tired. It was because I had a fear of drunk drivers, because I was driving in at 3 o'clock in the morning. You know it. You get down on the road and you're sharing it with a few people who go on to their early jobs as delivery people, the guys from the bakeries delivering bread, and a bunch of people closing out the night before, which is not a good mix. Wow. So when you're with Madden in the morning, does he come in there with all of that energy ready to rock? No, here's the crazy thing. All of these years. Now let me back up just a little bit. John Madden at the height of his fame, he is now becoming the biggest name in the NFL. He's with Pat Summer all of his CBS broadcast in the early 80s. He starts doing a morning radio bit every morning, Monday through Friday with a guy named Gene Nelson on a station in San Francisco that goes on for 12 years. Gene retires. John, at one point in there, is making more every year than any player in the NFL. Imagine that. That's how big he is. And he still sticks with the Daily Radio Show on a different Bay Area Station. He eventually winds up on KCBS, the station I worked on for over 30 years. And I inherit John Madden. And no, in all of that time, John never came to the radio station once. It was always over the phone from wherever he was. There was no pre-planning, no preparation, no agenda, no script, no topic. It was just, Madden's on the line, punch up the line, say good morning coach, good morning Stan, and off we go. How did you prepare for something like that? I mean, was it like just handing off the ball? Yeah, kind of. I mean, the one thing I tried to do was stay on top of whatever, because I'm a sports fan. And so I'm trying to stay on top of whatever was going on in the world of sports, particularly a game that John would have done the day before or was going to be doing that coming weekend. So we did have a framework, something to fall back on, which was football. But John was fascinated. He loved the US Open Tennis tournament. He quite often would go out to watch matches. Imagine John Madden sitting still for a tennis match. He loved golf, both as a not very good player, but also as a spectator. He developed friendships with Davis Love the Third and some of the other tour pros of that era. Baseball, basketball, not so much hockey or soccer. I never got him overboard with soccer. And the one he really never got on board with was one of my favorites for its bike racing. This whole Tour de France thing, he just could never get me. Oh, every year would say, why do you call it the Tour de France, isn't the country France? And that kind of stuff went on every day. See, I think he would make a great pickleball announcer right now. He did do early in his career. You know, so when he signed with CBS back in the early 80s, they wanted to use it because they saw they had lightning in a bottle. This guy was selling to An Acton and ACE hardware, light beer on television, and people just responded to him. So they thought, well, we got to do more than just have him in the booth for three hours on Sundays. So they had him doing, I think it was called CBS Sports Sunday back then, and it was sort of a campaign. It's hard to imagine an era before ESPN, right, where everything was on the air all the time. But so they would do thing and they set him up to the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska one time, and John did a piece from up there, and then for years thereafter, when sort of tugging cheek, although many of our listeners didn't get that, claimed to have participated in the Iditarod. And he'd get this fake, well, you know, when you're doing the Iditarod, you know, you've got your dog, then the dogs are always arguing, so you got to get one dog more meat than the other dog. Then you got a situation, you know, he would just roll into this BS John Madden impersonation of a sled dog racer and stuff like that was just magic, you never knew when he was going to do it. Well, didn't you think he was impersonating somebody that he saw inside his imagination? Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think for John, life was just a series of experiences, and you know, imagine being somebody that famous, I was going to say that big because it was physically big too, but that famous for whom the world was always full of people pointing their fingers at you and saying, hey, that's John Madden and still being a curious four year old or eight year old wandering around the world, just trying to figure out why this happens and what's that and why does this smell this way? And that's who he was. And he was able to sort of be both at the same time. I learned something about it. I got to tell you this story really quickly. His, he had these friends who we would, you know, what's your his friend? You were his foil. He would make funny on the radio and tell stories about you. And then this friend Dominic Mercurio, who we just called Dominic, Dominic's a restaurant owner here in California, and Dominic found out years that John would call him if John was in New York and wanted to go for a walk, but it didn't want to have to deal with everybody asking for his autograph. If he wasn't not being nasty, he just wanted to go for a walk. He would all Dominic and say, Don, stay with me on the phone. And so John would walk down the sidewalks of the Upper West Side with his cell phone to his ear, talking to Dominic, and you know, whenever somebody would point to him, John would just give him a wave and then point at the phone like, I'm on the phone. Thanks. I'm kind of busy right now. And when he got to where he was going, he'd say, Okay, thanks, Tom. That's good. See you next time. And he'd hang up and so Dominic would go back to his life. Speaking of restaurants, I mean, I was very shocked and surprised about the roadside diners that you write about in the way that it's like, Whoa, I never thought of that side of John Madden. You know, John loved to eat. There is no doubt about that. I mean, his greatest honor was to call somebody a good forkman as in New York, like to eat. But John was not really thrilled about old cuisine, the notion of having to figure out what this thing on your plate was that somebody put there with tweezers and didn't work for him. So the greasy or the spoon or the more common, the fair, the better for John places all across America where he would stop. And you know, the one project that he talked to me about and he never got off the ground was the Guy Fieri, who John got to know, would have given John a list of places these roadside diners that Guy had scouted out that he said John needed to go. And I think if John had lasted five more years on this planet, he would have gotten on the bus and done another media project of sorts, or maybe just a personal one where he would have visited all these places that Guy had told him he needed to visit. Making news, this one is almost unbelievable. Yeah, it's all about new customers at Bet365 because they get $200 in bonus bets when they bet $5, and even better bonus bets can be used on the spread, totals, and player props. There you have it. Bet $5 to get $200 in bonus bets. And see why. It's never ordinary. At Betbase 6.5, the gambling problem, caller text 1-800-Gampler, 21+ only, must be physically located in Colorado, terms and conditions apply. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC, subject to credit approval, offer subject to change, terms apply. I'm a firm believer because I was in radio before sports radio became what it did. And the thing is, I believe that John Madden was the force behind sports radio becoming what it is today. You know, John, it's interesting you say that because one of the things I don't think John liked very much about what sports radio became, the version where two people kind of get in an argument. Yeah. Yellowy or in the fan calls in and says, "Fire the coach." John, John didn't like the conflict part of it. He really sided with players and coaches because he knew how hard it was to be both. He thought for a minute that he was going to be an NFL player and then an knee injury ended that. He knew what it was like to have that gnawing fear of losing, that being a coach brings to your life. And so when people would casually say, "Replace the quarterback, fire the coach," that really ticked him off. So I think he enjoyed a good conversation. He was just fine with delving into the X's and O's, of course, but the notion that everything had to be an argument, then the other thing he didn't really dig was the influence of gambling on sports. And of course, it's everywhere now. And John worried about it. It wasn't that he was a Puritan in the sense that he didn't gamble. He played poker. But he was concerned that the game itself, the sanctity of the game would be impacted at some point. You know, he passed away before he saw all of this come to full fruition. And I think the fruition is still fruiting if you can say that. We're not all the way down that road. Yeah. But he didn't enjoy that. Wow. I'd like to know what he would think right now of Tom Brady with the Raiders, with Tom Brady being part of the ownership now. I mean, that's going to change football altogether. Yes. And I think John always was for the players getting everything they could. I mean, you'd think of John as a coach, but he really, you know, when everybody would say, "Oh, somebody's making X million." And John would say, "Well, I don't think anybody put a gun to the owner's head to give it to him." You know, John, John was a, he was a labor man when it came to that. You know, and he really, I know we talked over the years about that the others who got into ownership situations, Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan or some of the illuminaries who began to participate in management, I wish he was still alive today to talk here in the Bay Area about Buster Posey, our great baseball catcher from the Giants, becoming now basically the president of the baseball operations, the man in charge of the San Francisco Giants on the baseball side, because I think John, an old catcher himself would have really appreciated the role that somebody like Buster had earned, you know, a position of authority. Wow. Stan, you got to come back to this show anytime in the future. The door is always going to be open for you. You know where to find me. I'll do it anytime. Yeah. I love talking about John, man. I just love talking in general, so it's good for me. Will you be brilliant? Yes. Arrow. Yes. You know we have to count for a double. Oh, we do. Well, hey, Stan, how have you been? It's been a long time since I've talked with you. Hey, we're back. Good to check in with you. So then what did you learn from somebody as powerful as a personality as John Madden? Because you had to have been a student as well. That's a really great observation and it struck me along the way bit by bit. You know, I'd spent all these years, my career was a success before I met John Madden. You know, I'd had a long time, I earned my awards, had a rating, success, all that stuff. And I knew how to do what I was doing. It was, you know, pretty regular stuff. I did a lot of interviews, read the news, et cetera. But once I get paired up with John Madden for these 10 or 15 minutes every day, I begin to understand that the magic of radio is really around the edges. You know, it's when you can get out to the boundaries and color just outside the boundaries of bit, you know, it's in musical terms. It's, you know, what key we're in, but where are you going to go with that solo or can you, can you turn that around and make something a little bit different out of it without breaking up the structure? And so John taught me that. He never pulled me aside and said, Stan, here's what you've got to do. You've got to, he would never do that. Just by example and just by observation, I thought, wow, and it made me a much better broadcaster and made me more confident. I think it helped our listeners because it allowed us to go places where we had previously limited ourselves. John had no limits, but he also knew that limits were necessary in some way. Does that make sense? It does. And you just gave me one of the biggest flashbacks because I was blessed with the opportunity to work with Roman Gabriel and what you just said is exactly how Roman Gabriel designed his sports packages because you've got to live on the edge. And Roman would always tell me, get out there, arrow, get out there. Make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. Roman Gabriel is a great example. They're a handful of these people. I was talking with John's son, Joe, as we put together this worldwide launch event, which happened last night at their sound stage, which was built by John years ago. So he didn't have to travel to do commercials and the Al Madden show. And he was talking about Merlin Olson, who was a contemporary of Roman Gabriel, an actor. And you think of a great big NFL lineman becoming a sensitive actor. And Joe, John, John, Madison had thought about an acting career and had gotten the same kind of advice from Merlin, which is you've got to push yourself. You've got to go someplace you're not really comfortable and see how it feels. Wow. Wow. John Madden not only knew the game, but I swear there was something inside his heart where he wanted people to understand the game so that everybody could relate with what was happening on that screen or even listening. You know, he at one point taught a course at the University of California Extension. I mean, it's going to sound kind of weird in 2024, but in that time, it was a noble effort, football for wives and women, right? The idea being that he wanted everybody in America, not just the guys to love the sport that he loved and to understand it. And the way he did it, you know, when you watch a lot of games now, you hear a lot of lingo and jargon being thrown around. You know, the excellent that the mike, you know, they're three deep in the cup. That stuff wears people out. If you're on the inside of that conversation, you're nodding your head saying, oh, yeah. But most people are not. Most people just want to know, was that an accurate pass or why did the Patriots do that on third down or whatever? And that was the version of teaching that John brought to the table. And of course, the video game, which of course will be his legacy, turned out to have been a John Madden concept and the concept was not, let's make money selling video games to teenagers. It was, can we use this new computer technology I'm hearing about to better prepare for games each week and perhaps try out things you couldn't even try out on the practice field because you haven't even sketched about yet. And that led to the video game. That was John's active teacher mind in full teacher mode. Wow. And even today, people go, you get that new Madden yet? You get that new Madden? I mean, it is such a part of our lives these days. Yeah. And to the point where there are players in the NFL who will tell you that they learned football by playing Madden, they didn't learn the blocking and tackling part, the physical part, but the strategy, the tactics, game management, clock management, those sorts of things. They learned from the game that John created thinking maybe it would be a way to help coaches better prepare for next week's game, which is just like it boggles the mind to think about that circle. Well, see that right away, I'm thinking of my VR goggles. I wonder how many NFL players are getting their VR goggles and sitting there and playing their football just to make sure that they get their mindset going. You know, it's crazy to think about this stuff, right? And the thing was, John served all of those ways. Here's one for you. Imagine watching an NFL game now without that first down line on the screen. Yeah. And when you go back and look at old tape, you go, Hey, wait, something's weird here. Oh, wait, there's no first down line on the screen. You know, these are the kinds of innovations that at the time, probably seem the radical, but John loved all of them. He championed many of them because what they meant to him was a way to expand our understanding of the game. He thought the game itself was quite pure. He wanted to get as much of the danger out of the game as he could. And he was a huge advocate, very early on for head injury safety. But beyond that, he was willing to do anything that would expand our ability to appreciate the game and make the game more accessible. To me, he was the pioneer of storytelling in football. I mean, I remember watching Joe Nameth, but nobody ever, ever, ever shared the game of football the way that John Madden did. Yeah. And you know, it's fascinating to me because in the process of writing the book, I was, you know, of this trick as I'm pitching the book to my publisher, you know, the question I didn't anticipate since I'd never written a book before was, Oh, who can you get to write the foreword? And I thought, Oh, geez, I mean, I was bad. I may have suggested Peyton Manning saying, boy, they all lit up. That's great. Peyton Manning is awesome. So now I have to deliver. So see, Mary Uchi, who became a friend of mine through John Madden, connects me with Peyton and Peyton is awesome and Peyton writes the foreword. And I realized that what you have here in Peyton is John's heir to the throne, I guess, if you want. In other words, the next guy who loves football so much, wants to expand our appreciation of it is there for the players because he obviously was a pretty good one. And it has that ability to tap into the zeitgeist, into the soul of a generation, Peyton younger than John and younger than me, but, but is able to tap into who we as Americans are right now. And I think that's a remarkable thing. I really honor it and John love Peyton too, which made it super cool to have Peyton take part in the project. One of the experiences that listeners do not get to get to go through is when the before the break and in between the break, if you go to a commercial break. And did you have to ever say save it for the air when it comes to John Madden? No, no, we never did because we never had any off air time. The only time I ever spent with John that wasn't on the radio was we would once a year have a big station barbecue out of his compound and he would, we'd throw in an amazing amount of food on and bring people in so I could hang with him a bit then. And then after he retired from TV broadcasting, he began to every Sunday host a watch party out at his sound stage with all the games that were on the air on on screens at the same time. And that was it. Other than that, no, there was never a moment where we kicked it around and said, Oh, that's great. We should know. It just it came out of the box. Good morning, John. Good morning. Stand off it went. God, I just that type of radio is it's not fair anymore. And it just you take me back to a time where it was like, God, that's that's what it was all about about being live on the spot. And what was the reaction? And he I describe him in the book as a great dance partner, which is kind of funny because he actually taught he actually taught ballroom dance at one point when he was a just hard even imagine. But that's when he was if you, you know, step to the right, John would go there with you. But if he wanted to lead you over this way and maybe do a little twirl, then he'd start the move, you know, and and gosh, it doesn't get any better than having a partner like that who you can just trust to move in any direction and go wherever you want to go or be able to go where he wants to go. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. You just reach out to you. I'll do that. Okay. Because 20 minutes with you is not enough. I hope you will. I did. It's a real honor for me to be with you and talk radio with a radio guy, but more importantly to talk mad with a mad guy and that's that's what this whole thing's been about since the book came out. I'm just thrilled to buy it. Well, you'll be brilliant today. Okay, sir. All right. 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