Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 22, 1994 TAG: 9401220163
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"We'll do the same thing we always do," Summerall said. "I'm a football guy. John's a football guy. It's a big game."
The San Francisco-Dallas game (4 p.m., WDBJ) also will be their last as a team for CBS Sports. That network's loss of NFL rights until at least 1998 finally will sink in as the sport's best announcing team finishes a 13-year run at CBS.
But published reports Friday indicated Summerall and Madden will be reunited as the No. 1 team for the Fox Network. If they hadn't joined the NFL's rookie network, live television would have lost its most prominent team since Huntley and Brinkley.
Summerall's contract with CBS - where he also has anchored golf and tennis telecasts - included an escape clause if CBS didn't have pro football. Despite the apparent move to Fox, Summerall said Thursday he wanted to keep his other CBS assignments. However, CBS Sports President Neal Pilson said Wednesday the network would be reluctant to allow that to happen.
Before the reports that Summerall had signed with Fox, he said, if given the choice of staying at CBS for golf and tennis or working football for Fox, he wanted "to stay with football."
Madden knows where he's headed on his bus. After listening to lucrative offers from ABC and NBC, he reportedly has agreed to a four-year, $30 million deal with Fox to easily become the highest-paid sportscaster in history. He'll be getting a $5 million raise from the $2.5 million a year he was paid by CBS.
Asked about football on Fox this week, Madden said, "Wherever you go, you go there to do a game. It's not a show; it's a game. You call the game. You watch the game. You don't turn the camera sideways or something."
That's precisely why the presence of Summerall and Madden has made big games seem huge. Despite their talent, teamwork and stardom, they've never tried to be the show.
"This is a championship game," Madden said of the Dallas-San Francisco matchup. "Someone is going to get a trophy and somebody's going to the Super Bowl. There will be winners and losers. That's what this is really about. I don't think Pat and I will change."
That's during the game. The postgame show could become emotional. After all, Summerall broke into tears in 1986 when "The NFL Today" did a tribute to his 25 years of broadcasting. When Ben Crenshaw won the Masters in '84, Summerall was so emotional he had to turn over the 18th-hole microphone to analyst Ken Venturi.
"I would imagine that at the end of the telecast, I'll say something," Summerall said Thursday from his home in Dallas. "I haven't planned anything, nothing written. It will just happen. It's been fun for us a lot of years. We've always considered it a privilege to be doing what we're doing."
Those emotions will flow into the CBS production truck, too. The Summerall-Madden team has been guided since 1981 by producer Bob Stenner and director Sandy Grossman. For the foursome, there's always been more than one game each weekend. The Friday night poker game has been big, too.
"Those are the memories, the poker games, riding the bus together, things like that," Madden said. "Earlier this season, we did a game in Dallas. Pat lives there now, and one night we decided to go from the hotel to a Mexican restaurant. So, we all get in Pat's pickup truck - in the back of the truck, with Pat in front driving.
"I kind of thought that's how it should be - in the back of Pat's truck. It doesn't get a whole lot better than that, and I wasn't even down inside the bed. I was hanging out the back of Pat's truck."
Summerall, 63, and Madden, 57, first worked a telecast together in 1979. It was a game at Tampa Stadium on a weekend when Tom Brookshier - then Summerall's regular partner - was off because his debutante daughter was making her debut. That was the rookie season in the booth for Madden, and the former coach of the Oakland Raiders worked with Lindsey Nelson, Dick Stockton, Bob Costas and the late Frank Glieber, among others.
In '80, Madden and Gary Bender were teamed. The next season, Madden and Vin Scully were paired for the first four weeks, while Summerall worked with Hank Stram. Then partners were exchanged, and Summerall and Madden became the lead team with Stenner and Grossman in the truck.
"It's more than business now; it's a friendship," Summerall said. "I think all four of us, in different ways, are probably as different as any four people could be. But one thing brings us together. We're professionals. We try to do the best job we can, not because we're trying to outdo one another, but because each of us wants to hold up our end of the deal. Each of us just doesn't want to let the other guy down."
Madden's the star, with nine Emmys for his game analysis. Summerall is the classy voice of authority and understated wit. He calls the play and hands off to Madden.
"Pat is so professional," Madden said. "He's always under control. He never lets on, no matter what is said. He doesn't laugh or anything. I'm a guy who kind of overkills things, and Pat just sits and listens. And then he tells a story, and it's so good I forget what I'm talking about.
"He always brings it back and puts a period on things. He can say in three, four or five words what it takes me to say in three, four or five paragraphs. Or three, four or five days."
After Sunday's game and the All-Madden Team telecast on Jan. 29, the Summerall-Madden team will be history at CBS. Even with the two apparently moving together to Fox, one thing is sure to sound very different.
Without Summerall's voice, those Sunday night "60 Minutes" and "Murder, She Wrote" promos won't sound quite as compelling, either.
by CNB