Mark Madden sits in the ground-floor lobby of the iHeartRadio studios, high atop Green Tree Hill, and discusses his own mortality. The silver-tongued provocateur of Pittsburgh sports talk radio is approaching two milestones. He turns 60 on Dec. 29. A few days later, he will begin his 25th year on air.
But as Madden has known since the spring of 1975, when the Penguins blew a 3-0 series lead against the Islanders, life offers no guarantees. Especially now when all of us are filling out lineup cards and schedules in pencil. Everything is TBD.
“I’m 59 and I feel ancient,” Madden said. “I wonder if I’m going to outlive the pandemic, and I mean that very sincerely. I’ve given thought to the possibility that I have seen my last hockey game in person. My last concert in person.”
He’s wearing a gray Liverpool FC t-shirt on this August afternoon, minutes after wrapping up his popular drive-time show on 105.9 The X. Twelve months ago, Madden was among 54,000 fans in attendance at Anfield to see his beloved Liverpool win its first game of a season that would end a 30-year title drought and conclude behind closed doors because of the coronavirus.
Madden makes a living engaging the public in an entertaining and confrontational manner — sometimes treating the boundaries of good taste like the Raiders and Steelers of the 70s. Everything is in play when he’s trying to get a message across. So imagine filling a three-hour show each weekday for more than four months without live sports. His job is his life. There’s no family at home to take his mind off what’s transpiring in the world outside his studio window. His love of travel has been temporarily idled.
There is vulnerability and complexity to Madden that some don’t consider when hearing him flaming a caller or ranting about JuJu Smith-Schuster’s latest TikTok video. He understands the toll the virus has taken on so many people, and it’s why he occasionally broaches the subject with listeners.
“I’m miserable right now, and you can probably tell on the air,” he said. “Because my show has never been about hiding anything. I hesitate to say it’s hard work because I’m not unloading trucks, but those months were very demanding.”
And yet, there’s no circumstance in which Madden cannot find humor.
“I was supposed to see three Aerosmith shows in five days in Vegas,” he said. “Never mind me outliving the pandemic. What about Steven Tyler and Joe Perry? I’m surprised they outlived the '70s.”
Much like one of his favorite bands, Madden is a survivor.
The only child of a single-parent household, he endured a turbulent North Side upbringing. He reinvented himself in his 30s while trapped in what he perceived a dead-end newspaper job. He rebounded from a 2006 heart attack. He recovered from a crass joke about a dying U.S. Senator that would have wrecked the careers of shock jocks with less talent and marketability.
Loud and proud, Madden is 350 pounds of swagger. Big Sexy. The Super Genius. Only Shaquille O'Neal has more self-given nicknames. Whether on radio, television or Twitter, Madden has been informing, infuriating and antagonizing followers for nearly a quarter century. In those 24 years, his program has never finished behind another Pittsburgh sports talk show in the ratings.
That's in part because no media figure has taken more of the city’s sports icons to task. In Madden's world view, sacred cows make the best hamburger.
“I hate it when I get tormented on Twitter by the below-the-line guys who couldn’t draw money if you dipped them in super glue and dragged them through a bank vault,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re not credible. You don’t have knowledge.’ Knowledge is mostly memory. Anyone can memorize stats and trivia. I think I do have credibility, and if you don’t believe that I don’t care.
“My whole operation is based on charisma. Charisma and humor and getting people engaged. Now, whether I get that through negative vibes because I’m pretty much a pro wrestling, Ric Flair-style heel, that’s for others to judge. It’s my experience that if you polarize the audience, you will hold that audience. They either love you or they hate you. If they're ambivalent, they're going to flip the dial.”
TOWERING INFLUENCE
Madden ambles through life with few unexpressed thoughts. The white-haired raconteur knows amusing details breathe life into any story — even ones involving heart ailments.
Fourteen years ago, Madden felt nauseous while at a DekHockey tournament in Reading, Pa. He thought his condition was serious enough to seek medical attention.
“There’s a famous gentlemen’s club in Reading called Al’s Diamond Cabaret,” he said. “As I was driving to the hospital, I thought maybe it’s time to give Al’s Diamond Cabaret a chance.”
Fortunately for Madden, he kept driving. What he thought was indigestion turned out to be a heart attack.
Wakeup call?
“If it was, would I still weigh 350?” said Madden, who had two stents inserted. “I’ve never thought about it much. I’m just a fat guy and always have been. That’s how it goes.”
Though outspoken on many topics, he is guarded when discussing his personal life. Madden was bullied as a child.
“I was fat, shy and smart,” he said.” That was the era — and maybe it’s always been this way — but it reaches a point in grade school where being cool is more important than being smart, and I wasn’t cool. It was mostly words, but some physical. It just kind of stopped. I always hesitate to say I fought back because I didn’t actually, but there was an element of that, too.”
Madden grew up without ever knowing his father. His love of sports comes in part from his late grandmother, Irene, who introduced him to studio wrestling, and his late mother, Peggy Ann Madden, who worked multiple jobs in education to afford season tickets to the Penguins in the 1970s.
Peggy Ann, a longtime North Hills High speech and debate teacher, died in 2006 from interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, a disease characterized by chronic inflammation and scarring of the lungs. She remains a towering influence in her son’s life. She coached North Hills forensics teams and speakers to multiple championships. She was former chairman of the National Forensic League, and a 1993 member of its Hall of Fame.
Even as the disease forced her into retirement, Madden recalls his mother inviting students to their home for private tutoring.
“It affects me to this day,” he said of her death. “Any person raised by a single parent who says they're over the loss is lying.”
Words mattered in the Madden household and Peggy Ann was proud of her son’s decision to pursue a career in writing. Madden graduated from Duquesne University with a journalism degree.
“She didn’t push me to talk for a living,” Madden said. “What I learned from her was composure. I also learned grace, if I possess any at all. People have tried to shame me by saying, ‘What would your mother have thought about what you said on the air?’ I say, ‘She would have loved it.’ She supported me unconditionally.”
Peggy Ann enjoyed reading her son’s stories in the Post-Gazette, but understood his frustrations with a newspaper career that spanned the 1980s and early 1990s. Over the years, he served as a high school reporter, a backup Penguins beat writer, a sports features writer and a zone editor. He aspired to have a greater voice, but couldn’t convince bosses to give him the opportunity.
“They underused me criminally,” Madden said. “Looking back, that was a terrible time for me.”
Madden’s favorite role at the paper involved writing an “Ask Mark Anything” column. The premise was straightforward enough. Readers supplied questions and Madden answered them, often in witty fashion.
Except Madden didn’t use any of the readers’ questions. He invented his own as an homage to the work of the late Doug Kenney at National Lampoon.
“Our editor asked me about it,” Madden recalled. “She said, ‘Why don’t you use real letters?’ I said, “Because the real letters won’t be funny. This is designed to be funny. You feed yourself the straight line.’ She said, ‘Well, why don’t we just make the whole paper phony, then? Why don’t we report on games and scores that didn’t happen?’ My response was, ‘Reading some of our game coverage, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.’ ”
In his mid-30s, Madden left the Post-Gazette to write for the independent Penguins Report. He also was given the chance to fill in as a sports talk show host from 6-9 p.m. at WTAE, while also writing for wrestling publications and doing some internet broadcasting of WCW events.
Madden wasn’t sure where his career would lead him, only that he wanted one thing out of life: He wanted to be famous.
‘WOO!’
Madden’s cell phone is ringing on the air. He’s in the middle of a Steelers riff, but interrupts it to take a personal call.
It’s the Nature Boy. Listeners hear Madden tell Flair that he will call him back on a commercial break.
“See, I do know Ric Flair,” Madden tells the audience. “Could you hear that? Couldn’t hear it? Well, it was Ric Flair.
‘(Imitating a caller) That wasn’t Ric Flair, fat ass. You made that up, fat ass.’”
Madden’s professional influences include National Lampoon, Creem magazine, former pitcher and “Ball Four” author Jim Bouton and former WTAE talk show host Doug Hoerth. But none is apparent to Madden’s followers as Flair, the 71-year-old pro wrestling legend whose flamboyance and attitude transcended the sport.
Flair and Madden have been friends for more than three decades. The relationship dates to Madden’s time at the Post-Gazette.
In 1991, as Flair was beginning a European swing for the WWE, he asked Madden to safeguard some of his wrestling gear he couldn’t take with him on the trip. The excess baggage included five full-length robes valued at $10,000 apiece.
[caption id="attachment_1015995" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Mark Madden in one of Ric Flair's robes, 1991,[/caption]
Madden wore them to work, to DekHockey practices and to bars around Pittsburgh. He recently chronicled the story for his blog.
“Nobody gives a shit about what people who ride the fence in life have to say,” Flair told DK Pittsburgh Sports. “One of the things I like about Mark is he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks. I respect that. He’s a knowledgeable guy, not only about wrestling but other sports. That’s why every time I come to Pittsburgh I hang out with him.”
Madden has no story of survival to rival that of Flair, who in 1975 broke his back in three places in a plane crash in Wilmington, N.C. Flair not only returned to wrestling, but reinvented himself as the sport’s most successful and outlandish bad boy.
As Madden’s radio career gained traction at 1250-ESPN, he incorporated tough talk that was partially influenced from his days working at WCW. He helped make a name for himself with takedowns of Pittsburgh stars past and present such as Arnold Palmer, Myron Cope, Franco Harris, Hines Ward, Jerome Bettis, Antonio Brown and Smith-Schuster. Pirates owner Bob Nutting, who Madden dubs the “Hillbilly Prince,” is a frequent target for not investing more in the team’s payroll.
“Nothing should be beyond reproach, whether it’s an organization, a league, a person,” he said. “We shouldn’t overlook flaws. And, we shouldn’t overlook the good, either, but the flaws are more fun to talk about. It’s not about this phony-baloney ‘root, root, root for the home team’ nonsense that so many purvey in this town and elsewhere. Not that everyone is guilty of that, but they know who they are.”
Madden isn’t in the business of being right or wrong, he said, but providing entertaining analysis and allowing listeners to form conclusions. Over time, he’s gained a greater appreciation for Ward, the receiver who won two Super Bowls with the Steelers.
“I gave Hines Ward a hard time, but at least he wanted to win,” Madden said. “He didn’t brand. As egotistical as he was, he put that aside because he wanted to win. He gave maximum effort to make sure he was focused on winning and a lot of Steelers since have not been that way.”
Madden’s brash style and withering critiques have earned him plenty of enemies in town. (Have you scrolled through the man’s Twitter mentions?)
Retired Post-Gazette sports columnist Bob Smizik said stirring the pot is an age-old device for talk-show hosts. But what troubled Smizik about Madden is that he infrequently granted air time to celebrities he ripped, and didn’t make appearances in pro locker rooms other than the Penguins'.
Madden said Nutting has a standing offer to appear on his show. He added that Bettis had once planned to join the program only to bow out due to a scheduling conflict.
Smizik recalls talking to Harris about Madden’s barbs and that the former Steelers running back was bothered by them.
“If you're going to go after people like that, you’ve got to show your face,” said Smizik, who late in his newspaper career wrote sports media columns for the Post-Gazette. “If he was going to go after Arnold Palmer, he should have had him on his show. Then, let’s see if he had the guts to attack him when he’s on the other end of a phone line.
“Overall, it’s not easy to do what (Madden) does. You have to be a special kind of person to level that kind of criticism at people and take some of the blowback you are going to get. That’s the way (he’s done) things and he’s (been) very successful at it.”
[caption id="attachment_1015999" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Ric Flair, Mark Madden and Charlotte Flair.[/caption]
EXOTIC DANCERS, FRESH START
R.J. Umberger listened to Madden’s program growing up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Plum. He knew the talk show host was plugged into the Penguins, but had no idea his interest in hockey extended to the youth levels.
“I was like 14 years old and Mark was showing up at my games, talking to my dad,” said Umberger, who played 11 NHL seasons and in 2001 became the first local to be drafted in the first round. “He always stayed in touch and would have me on the show and go out to dinner when I came to town. Hockey is his No. 1 passion, and I think he’s one of the most educated people out there in that market.”
It was Madden’s knowledge of the game that longtime iHeartRadio program director John Moschitta coveted when deciding to hire him in 2008. The Penguins had just moved their radio home to 105.9 the X and the alt-rock station wanted a sports talk show to lead into games.
Moschitta’s decision was not without risk. Months earlier, Madden had made national news for disparaging remarks made about dying U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show.
“I'm very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor,” Madden said in the show’s opening segment. “I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated. I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”
The decision to jettison Madden came from the ESPN corporate office.
Moschitta recognized Madden’s talent and the fact he was a ratings driver, especially with younger audiences. His station also had previous experience with shock jocks having been the local home to Howard Stern’s show.
The station’s management met with Madden and laid out ground rules, emphasizing they could have no repeat of the Kennedy remarks.
Moschitta admits the host “can push the envelope,” but the station has been pleased with the 12-year relationship. The program director’s one serious suggestion came years ago: Stop having exotic dancers as guests.
“I didn’t think interviewing strippers made for compelling radio,” Moschitta said.
Madden’s local ratings are routinely near the top for the coveted 25-to-54 male demographic in drive-time hours. His biggest time-slot rival is traditionally classic-rock giant WDVE. In June, he ranked second to only WDVE, according to Nielsen Audio ratings. Keep in mind there were no major team sports being played that month unless Korean baseball is your thing. Madden tied for second in May.
The host admits it’s becoming more challenging to relate to the younger end of the money demographic. Translation: Don’t look for Madden on TikTok.
“I don’t know if I’m yelling at clouds, but I am yelling,” he said.
While full-throttle commentary fuels the show, Moschitta believes Madden’s interviewing technique is strong. Any host can ask Sidney Crosby about hockey strategy and the state of the Penguins, the program director said, but Madden can draw the captain into interesting conversation about his native Nova Scotia.
“There’s a real depth there that I don’t know a lot other hosts have,” Moschitta said. “Mark has a lot of interests, and he’s willing to share them on the air. I know those months without sports were hard, but I thought he did a great job of engaging listeners, who were going through a lot of the same emotions as Mark.”
‘I’LL DIE IN OFFICE’
Dave MacKenzie offers one bit of advice for people wanting to approach Madden in a pub or restaurant.
“Mark is willing to talk with almost anyone,” MacKenzie said. “Just don’t come up looking for a selfie when the Penguins are in overtime or Liverpool are in extra time.”
What’s it like hanging out with the city’s most controversial media personality? MacKenzie said it’s a lot of laughs and eclectic conversation. And rarely a cross word from fellow patrons who recognize Madden.
MacKenzie and Madden have known each other for almost 40 years, dating to the soccer player’s time as a member of the city’s long-defunct indoor pro team, the Spirit. They reconnected about 15 years ago and have formed a friendship around weekend trips to Piper’s Pub for English soccer games and the occasional Wednesday nights out for drinks.
In that span, MacKenzie said he’s witnessed Madden in just two or three verbal confrontations with folks unhappy with the talk-show host’s takes or on-air persona.
“I wish more people would get to know him away from the show,” MacKenzie said. “He’s not just what you hear on the radio. He’s an intelligent guy who can talk about a lot of things. Not that we don’t have to sort him out once in a while. He might be the Super Genius, but he’s not always right.”
Near the end of “Bull Durham,” Annie Savoy supplies one of the movie’s most memorable lines in describing Nuke Laloosh, the pitching prospect with the million-dollar arm and 10-cent head: “The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.”
For all of the bluster and Twitter spats, Madden believes this line of thinking represents one misconception about him.
“At age 59, I have more self-awareness than I ever thought possible,” he said. “I think that’s a good thing. There are people out there with zero self-awareness. I know there are people who think I am totally narcissistic and unaware. That’s not true.”
Milestones aside, Madden has given no thought to retirement. He loves what he does and feels blessed to have found his true calling in life’s second act. Nothing will dull his enthusiasm — not even the potential for a Stanley Cup parade in Philadelphia.
He just needs the world to rid itself of this damned pandemic. Another trip to Anfield. Another late-night Aerosmith encore.
But Madden is under no illusions how it all ends for him. He’s a realist, one who knows how the business operates and how so few in his position get to write themselves out of the script.
“I don’t know how my last show is going to go, right?" he said. "If I die on the air, that will be exciting. If I die at home and don’t come in the next day, they'll figure that out, too. You never get a last show. They just call and say, ‘We don’t want you here tomorrow.’
"If they let me, I’ll die in office. I have nothing else to do.”
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