John Madden: A Class Act

I'm deeply saddened that John Madden has decided to retire.  John Madden has reached the one word status of pop culture. He was on the same level as Madonna, Cher, Jordan, Tiger, OJ, well you get the picture. All you had to say was Madden.

Tuesday through Saturday, Madden simply meant a festive evening with a few of your closest male buddies, a lot of curse words, and sometimes hurt feelings and pockets. Madden has ended friendships and started new ones. Madden might be more responsible for bad grades and fist fights than rap music.

On Sunday, Madden was the preacher after church. He was the football gospel like never before. For that, Madden will truly be missed. Mostly, for the great words that he has added to our vocabulary. 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4073253

Here's to the man that brought us the word "cankle," the phrase "No No Go Go", and excited us with "Boom!"

Top John Madden quotes:

"When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to."

"I think perhaps it's a relationship that's not marked by a great need to interfere with each other all the time,"

"They got to Joey Harrington physically and they got to him mentally."

"If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they've had a bad day."

"The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break."

"Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear."

Cankle Defined:

An ankle of a fat person in which the the ankle and the calf appear seamless.

No No Go Go Defined:

The term referring to when a football coach initially tells his playmaker player to not do anything stupid (the "no no" part) but when the player does not listen, and ends up making a huge play, the coaches new words are "go go!"

Defined as by John Madden, 11-12-06:

*player catches ball in the middle of the endzone on a kickoff, starts to run towards the other end of the field*
Coach: Jackson.. NO NO!
*player reaches the 50 yard mark running full speed with two opponents behind him*
Coach: GO! GO!
*player scores touchdown*
Coach: I knew he would do that all along, good play call, 'eh? The ol' No No Go Go trick.