THE GREAT NFL HEIST: HOW FOX PAID FOR AND CHANGED FOOTBALL FOREVER.
Hill: Rupert, God bless him, he knew sport was key. He knew the NFL was key. But Chase understood that in terms of developing the business, the NFC gave him the main metropolitan markets. I’ve always said this on many occasions. The architect of Fox Sports is Chase Carey.
Padden: The finance people and the salespeople at the network got together and said, “OK, how much can we pay for these rights?” They did an analysis of what kind of advertising they could sell and came up with the maximum break-even number. Then Mr. Murdoch came bounding into the room and said, “What do we have to bid?” We told him. He said, “That’s not enough. The NFL doesn’t really want their games on our network. They’re just using us to bid up CBS. I’ve got to bid CBS away from the table.”
Carey: You had to have a number that — I don’t have a better word for it — made them choke.
Murdoch eventually came up with the choking point: four years, $1.6 billion for the NFC rights. In 1993, it was an astonishing figure. It was half a billion dollars more than CBS had paid under their old deal, and 60 percent more than CBS was offering on the current one.
Krieger: When he does a deal, Rupert’s thinking about, “What’s this going to look like 10 years out, 20 years out? Will this help me build a network?” The other guys are trying to manage financials for the next quarterly financial report.
Ebersol: Did I ever think in my wildest dreams that there wasn’t going to be $400 million coming in on the other side? No.
Carey: It was fairly late Thursday night when we went over to make the offer.
Jones: I’ll never forget when we were sitting right beside each other there in New York — Pat [Bowlen] and I. The number came in for the NFC package. And underneath the table, we were kickin’ the living shit out of each other. He kept a straight face and I kept a straight face. We just kicked each other.
Tagliabue: To come in with a “4” instead of a “3” was pretty startling.
Roger Headrick, Minnesota Vikings president and CEO: We had no idea that the TV rights could escalate to that kind of a level.
Jones: It was aggressive enough that one of the biggest questions was, “Can they pay this?” As a matter of fact, there were several owners who said, “We need to get some lines of credit here to back this up.”
Because the next four Super Bowls would be split among three networks and Fox would get only one of them, Fox’s bid was lowered slightly, to $395 million.
Carey: The part I remember is, after I said [the $400 million number], Jerry Jones came up and said, “You guys are players.” That was Jerry’s response.
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Madden, who’d worked at CBS since 1979, had a place in American pop culture that was akin to Santa Claus, one colleague observed. He seemed eternally peppy, and his Madden Cruiser bus carried him around him the country. Madden had a video game (then in its fifth edition) and commercials for tough-actin’ Tinactin. But his genius was that he simultaneously made the TV analyst’s job more complex and more accessible than it had ever been before. Madden could explain the fine points of line play and then wax about the lineman’s belly and cut of his pants. Boom!
Madden’s regular-guyness belied just what a sought-after TV star he’d become. Early in 1994, his suitors included Fox’s Rupert Murdoch, ABC’s Bob Iger, and General Electric’s Jack Welch, who controlled NBC. Joe Buck later called Madden the “ultimate free agent.” Lesley Visser compared him to Moby Dick. At the end of the negotiations, Madden didn’t just get more money than any sports announcer ever had. He got a contract that paid him more per year than any player in the NFL.
Richie Zyontz, CBS producer: [Murdoch] came to one of our early seminars. I remember what he said: “If I have to introduce someone new to our country to one person who is uniquely American, it would be John Madden.”
Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports president: He was the first crossover football media star. He wasn’t just men. He was women.
Joe Buck, St. Louis Cardinals announcer: He was — to me at least, because it’s what I do for a living — larger than the game. Even though he said he wasn’t. “I’m just an everyman. I’m just the guy at the bar that you nuzzle up against and you’re elbowing during a big play.” But he wasn’t that. … He was larger than life.
Artie Kempner, CBS director: To this day, John Madden is the best analyst in the business. Here’s why: No matter who you are — Troy Aikman, Jon Gruden, Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth — we’re not the reason you tune in to watch games. You watch games or events because of the game or event. But what John Madden did better than anybody is take a shitty event and make it interesting or engaging. You could have a 31–3 game, and John could keep your attention.
Neal Pilson, CBS Sports president: He’s one of the very, very few guys in the history of our business that brought a rating himself. I can give you at least one other, and that was Howard Cosell.
Eric Shanks, CBS broadcast associate: He’s a great observer of people. A guy would walk through the lobby and if his shoelace was tied over here or over here, he’d be like, “Watch out for that guy. He doesn’t do his job very well. If his shoelace is tied in the middle, that’s a guy you want to do business with.” That’s a pretty good rule.
Pete Macheska, CBS associate director: I’ll tell you a story. The Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, their lobby was on the 12th floor. He’d sit in the lobby for hours just watching people. I remember one time we were waiting to go to dinner, and the Rolling Stones were staying there. One guy goes, “Hey, there’s Mick Jagger.” John had no idea who Mick Jagger was. None.
Matt Millen, CBS analyst: Here’s the thing people don’t know about John. John is probably the brightest guy in the room. He just doesn’t want you to know it. He wants you to think he’s this big, lovable dog you can pet.
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Zyontz: John was football for Fox. He set the tone. He put us on the map. That’s obviously what Murdoch wanted, and he paid a ton of money. John was worth every penny because he gave us instant credibility.
Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner: If you make that kind of commitment [for the NFC rights], you’ll go after and get the best. That’s peanuts. That’s arguing about the price of the seasoning after you’ve paid a fortune for the steak.
RIP to the best.