When he announced his All-Madden team at the end of every season, Madden also made sure food was a theme of the show - his favorite players were often big, forgotten linemen with big appetites, so he thought the perfect all-star awards should be meat and gravy, not trophies and plaques. He invented a six-legged turkey soon after, and Madden started handing them out the next year. The next year, he handed one to Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith and made an offhand comment that he wished he had a six-legged turkey so the Cowboys linemen could get in on the action.Įnter Joe Pat Fieseler, a barbecue owner in Texas. In 1989, Madden presented his first Turkey Leg Award to the best player from that year's game, Reggie White. He and Pat Summerall did 22 straight Thanksgiving broadcasts starting in 1981, and Madden's everyman appeal came through via food more than anywhere else. It's impossible to overestimate the impact that food had on Madden's rise. On his 85th birthday, 23 tales of the true John Madden.If Jake from State Farm had been around in 1996, chances are he'd have been talking insurance rates with Madden instead of Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes. He had become the voice of football, earning more per year than any NFL player, and he had emerged as a video game visionary and an A-list product endorser. Mistich wasn't a sports fan, but he knew Madden, who was then at the peak of his powers. So that's how Mistich and his family found themselves walking into the Superdome that day. Once DelGiorno assured him the turducken was real, Madden was all-in. Madden's friends call him a "fork man," which is a kind way of saying the guy can crush some food. It was a deboned duck stuffed inside a deboned chicken stuffed inside a deboned turkey, with a generous mix of cornbread and sausage dressings slathered throughout. DelGiorno had been doing on-air Saints game days for long enough to have become friendly with John Madden, and he had told the former coach-turned-broadcasting legend about a delicious vegetarian's nightmare for which Mistich had become well-known in the New Orleans area. His wife, Leah, and three young kids bounced alongside him.Ī friend, New Orleans radio personality Bob DelGiorno, was also walking with him to the Rams-Saints game on Dec. His hands shook inside the gloves he wore to carry a monstrous 17-pound dish covered in foil.
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