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About the fourth college Madden sampled was Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where, he unfailingly tells people, he first encountered his wife of 28 years, Virginia. (Her story is that they met at a bar in Pismo Beach.) At Cal Poly, his love of football deepened. In conversation with a beachboy down the hall, Bobby Beathard, Madden started to consider the game a sophisticated study. Beathard, an undrafted quarterback, failed a trial with the Washington Redskins in 1959 and is now their general manager. Madden, an offensive lineman, was drafted in the 21st round by the Philadelphia Eagles. The year after Madden was graduated, an airplane carting the Cal Poly football team crashed in Ohio, killing 16 players. But he shrugs off this clue to the terror of flying that so complicates his life and schedule. "It wasn't the crash. I flew for a long while after that -- not comfortably, but I flew. I just got claustrophobia."
A knee came undone during his first training camp with Philadelphia in 1959, and his professional playing career was finished before it began. But by a happy chance, the whirlpool room adjoined the projection room, where Eagles Quarterback Norm Van Brocklin customarily sat alone in the dark with his game films. Those who remember Van Brocklin as a hot-tempered player and coach might be surprised to hear how quietly accommodating the "Dutchman" was to a weak-kneed rookie who would never play another down but still craved more knowledge of the game. Football coaches are known too easily by their sideline demeanor, like the "Plastic Man," Tom Landry, in Dallas, or the "Ice Man," Bud Grant, in Minnesota. Vince Lombardi's sadistic way with the Green Bay Packers seemed as plain as the icicles in his jack-o'-lantern grin. Last November Earle Bruce lost the Ohio State job in some part because of the unstylish cut of his jib on the sideline. "That's all television," Madden says wearily.
His own sideline persona, once he made his coaching way from Allan Hancock junior college in Santa Maria, Calif., to San Diego State and, eventually, to the now Los Angeles Raiders, was that of a disheveled clown, grievously overweight, flapping his arms hysterically. Maybe this attracted the Miller Lite people, but something else draws his audience. Madden's two volumes of football stories -- gerunds furnished by New York Timesman Dave Anderson -- are filled with gentle insights and sweet qualities of understanding. The prototype of the menacing Raiders, self-proclaimed villains of the league, was a large, mustachioed defensive end named Ben Davidson. One afternoon, in his first season as head coach, Madden screamed at the other end, Ike Lassiter, for garroting the quarterback during practice. "He's our quarterback, Ike," he reminded Lassiter. Two plays later, Davidson hit the quarterback. "Only two plays later!" Madden berated him afterward. "How could you do the same thing only two plays later?" Davidson looked at him meekly. "You got mad at Ike," he said, "and I wanted you to get mad at me."