NEW YORK - John Madden, Hall of Fame coach and the most honored broadcaster in sports television history, has decided to retire from broadcasting… Madden, who has won an unprecedented 16 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sports Analyst/Personality, is renowned by football fans nationwide for his ability to analyze the details of the game with wit, candor and an inimitable style. Madden has been an NFL broadcaster for 30 years… The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has honored Madden with 16 Outstanding Sports Analyst/Personality Emmy Awards, the most recent from this past season.

In a related story, Frank Caliendo has been put on 24 hour suicide watch. First he lost George W. Bush, and now this. Anyway, I won’t go as far as the NBC press release does in honking on Madden’s bone, but I will give him some credit. I don’t know about “wit” or “candor,” but I have to admit Madden was having a bit of a renaissance since he went to NBC. In his last years at Fox, he’d become a caricature of himself, all “BOOM!” and “Right THERE!” and honestly wasn’t doing any more than describing what we could see for ourselves on the replay. Watch the tape of Adam Vinatier’s game-winner against the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, and I swear to you Madden nodded off as the ball was halfway to the goalposts.

But the last few seasons, he came back. He actually saw stuff live you missed at home. He was familiar with the players. He kept up with line play and what was happening away from the ball. I don’t know what the reason for his resurgence was, though I suspected he’d been replaced with the EA Sports software while he just sat in the booth with his mic off eating chicken wings. Of course he could still be counted on for some self-parody as he’d fawn over Brettfavre and Peyton Manning like a 14 year old emo girl looking at Edward Cullen, but I’ve got to hand it to the old buffoon, he was getting he job done. But no matter what, I’ll always give him credit for being the only member of the Raiders organization who gave a goddamn about Daryl Stingley when he got paralyzed by the loathesome Jack Tatum, staying by Stingley’s bedside and eventually retiring from coaching over it. For that I’ll always wish him godspeed.