The Voice of America

NEW ORLEANS —  When a 71-year-old man wants to keep working at his job, working the way he always has, working because his passion for the work is strong, his desire for the work still immense and his confidence in himself still high, there is not a graceful way for the boss to tell the 71-year-old that a change is going to happen.

So here sits Pat Summerall, wearing a blue track suit and very sad eyes, using an economy of words that are hiding overflowing emotion. “The game,” Summerall says, “is the thing.”

Close your eyes. If you are an NFL fan, if you have watched NFL games on Sundays for the last 21 years, you can certainly make yourself hear Summerall say those words. “The game is the thing.” The voice is deep but not in a fake, “I’m a TV announcer” way. The voice is so smooth. Each word flows into the next.

It sounds simple and easy. It is safe and familiar, a voice that makes the world sound OK, the game sound homey.

Sitting next to Summerall is John Madden, 65. Madden has been Summerall’s TV broadcast partner for 21 years. The game Summerall speaks of as being “the thing” is Super Bowl XXXVI, between the St. Louis Rams and the New England Patriots. It will be the last game Summerall and Madden broadcast together.

Summerall made the announcement two weeks ago that today’s Super Bowl broadcast would be his last on Fox with Madden.

It was not his choice, Summerall said then and says now. When someone asked Summerall this week if making the announcement, a badly kept secret for almost a year, was a relief, Summerall looked up and his voice changed tone. It was not a smooth and comforting voice. It was a louder voice, an angry voice.

“It is not necessarily a relief,” Summerall said, “not to have a job.”

In Los Angeles we aren’t used to our announcers being put out to pasture. Chick Hearn, estimated age 85, will be welcomed back to the Laker broadcast booth as soon as he has recovered from heart surgery. Keith Jackson is still the TV voice of Pacific 10 football. Vin Scully wouldn’t dare leave the Dodgers. The Dodgers wouldn’t dare suggest he should. Both Jackson and Scully are in their 70s.

In his interviews lately, Summerall has affirmed that he is healthy, that he still is madly in love with the game, with the grinding preparations and the weekly travel involved in doing television.

“I want to work somewhere,” Summerall says. “I plan to find other employment.”

Summerall has indicated he’d enjoy a return to tennis broadcasting. When he worked for CBS, Summerall had been the voice of the U.S. Open.

The Dallas Morning News reported this week that Summerall might become the TV voice of the Dallas Cowboys for Fox, doing only his hometown Cowboy broadcasts every week. Summerall told the newspaper he would be very happy in that role.

Today will be the last time Madden starts from way over here to make a point and finally gets to the point way over there, and gets to the point only because Summerall, with that voice acting as a calming, steadying hand, leads Madden to it.

“Sometimes I take a while to get where I’m going,” Madden says. “Sometimes I don’t even know where I’m going. I’m talking and talking and time is running out and Pat breaks in and he gets me to the point. Just in time.”

Madden looks at Summerall. Summerall turns his head sideways.

This is an uncomfortable time for these two big men.

Madden doesn’t want to say goodbye either. Madden doesn’t want to break in a new partner. Madden is not going to change his way. He is not suddenly going to speak in simple sentences and express simple thoughts.

Whomever Fox gives to Madden as his partner next year--Joe Buck, a talented 32-year-old, the son of broadcasting legend Jack Buck, a vibrant, verbal, on-the-fast-track go-getter who will be able to promote the Barenaked Ladies or “Ally McBeal” and not sound 71 and uptight about it, is the reported Summerall replacement--Madden doesn’t care.

“I want to work and I am what I am,” Madden says. And he makes it clear he is not enthusiastic about Summerall’s forced departure.

“I hope,” Madden says, “that Pat is happy whatever he does. I am a passionate traditionalist. You run into some people in life who are national treasures and Pat Summerall is a national treasure for the NFL. We shouldn’t fight it when we have a national treasure. “I wonder why we’re fighting it.”

It was at a New York Giant-Tampa Bay Buccaneer game in 1980 that Madden and Summerall were pushed together.

Summerall had been partnered on CBS with Tom Brookshier. Summerall remembers that Brookshier needed the weekend off.

“His daughter,” Summerall says, “was making her debut in Philadelphia that weekend.”

Madden had retired from coaching the Raiders after the 1978 season. He had done six games for CBS in 1979, sort of a tryout, and was working full-time in 1980. Madden was the rotating announcer, the rookie moving from partner to partner.

When he saw Madden on that hot, Florida afternoon, Summerall remembers: “John was sweating so profusely, I thought he must have been nervous about being on the air and that maybe he should find another business.

“But it turned out that the booth was up high and John was afraid of heights. That’s why he was sweating. I didn’t know about his fear of flying then either.

“And once we started the broadcast, I saw what a great concept of the game John had. Unlike so many analysts who only know their own positions, John saw the offensive and defensive concepts and could articulate them in a limited period of time.”

Since that first day in Tampa, Madden and Summerall have broadcast an estimated 450 games together. They have gone to practices together, gone to dinner hundreds of times, celebrated happy times, helped each other in hard times.

Madden says Summerall was the perfect complement.

“Pat made it easy for me,” Madden says. “He was very smooth and knowledgeable. Pat was a lot of things I was not and that made us pretty good. I could go on and on. I could use 300 words and Pat could make sense of my 300 words in one word.”

Madden struggles to find 300 words, or three, to describe how he will feel today.

“To say there’s a word or a lot of words would be an injustice. To say I’m going to miss him sounds stupid. It sounds trite.

“It’s 21 years. At some point it hits me that this is final. It’s an emotional week. Everything will be the last.”

Summerall doesn’t allow himself to think that way. If he starts thinking about the end, then, he says, “I’m not sure how I’d get through the week. I imagine I will have some emotion [today]. I don’t know if I will say anything. I imagine I might. But I don’t know what.”

Smoothly, then, Summerall turned the conversation away from goodbye. He had a funny story about him and Madden and their first Super Bowl together. It was in 1982, San Francisco against Cincinnati.

“I was asking John questions before kickoff,” Summerall says. “The camera moved in tight on John. That was when I would walk over and put my headset on so I could listen to the coin toss on the field. Except I couldn’t find the headset.

“There’s an unwritten rule that if you can’t find what you’re looking for, follow the cable. So I did. I kept pulling and pulling, following the cable until it came up against John’s rear end.”

Madden was sitting on the head set. When Summerall pulled the headset out, the earpiece was on top of Summerall’s head, the microphone bent out of shape.

That headset was all disheveled, going in every direction. Kind of like Madden. But Summerall got things straightened out in time to get on the air. As usual.

As this broadcast team evolved, Madden got less frantic, less sweaty, less prone to wandering aimlessly with his stories. Summerall became more and more spare with his words so he could allow Madden the space to tell his stories, to wander a little but not too much.

When Fox took the NFL from CBS in 1994, the bosses made Madden and Summerall their big hire even though there were rumors that Madden and Summerall were a bad fit for the young network, which aimed for an audience more in tune with “The Simpsons” and “The X-Files” and less in tune with national treasures.

Joe Buck is Fox’s future. Fox hopes Buck becomes the voice of the big event, like Dick Enberg or Bob Costas or Jim Nantz.

Summerall will walk into the Super Bowl booth today determined to keep his feelings out of it.

“The game,” he says, “is the story of the utmost importance. That’s what we’re here to do.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at [email protected].