unreachable standard. tell me what that means. the thing with madden was as a communicator, the ability to do it in a conversational tone while also be informative and never be condescending is just really, really hard to do. for all these people who do the color commentary job on football, nobody really has a really high over i.q. rating. it s hard for anybody else to live up to that. when you start talking about jerry rice of the greatest wide receiver of all time or jim brown is the greatest running back of all time, those are things nobody argues with you about. john madden is the greatest sports broadcaster on television of all time, you re not going to get anyone to argue with you about that either. people will miss the enthusiasm he brings to the game, his phrasing, things like wham and boom and doink and i think about john mad general,