NFL to honor John Madden on Thanksgiving

As a part of tomorrow’s Thanksgiving tripleheader, the National Football League will be honoring the late John Madden, who may be more synonymous with Thanksgiving football than any other individual.

Each of the three networks involved with broadcasting tomorrow’s games (CBS, FOX, and NBC) will be creating their own tribute segments to the Hall of Famer, and those segments will be shown throughout the game. There will also be a recording of Madden discussion the relationship between Thanksgiving and football that will serve as the lead-in to each of the three Thanksgiving day games.

There will also be a special “John Madden Thanksgiving” logo painted at the 25-yard lines of each host stadium, including U.S. Bank Stadium, and all of the players in the Thanksgiving games will have a Madden sticker on the back of their helmets.

In addition, at the end of each game each network will pick a “Madden Player of the Game.” That player will have a $10,000 donation made in their name to the youth or high school football program of their choice, courtesy of the NFL Foundation.

With the Minnesota Vikings playing on Thanksgiving for the ninth time in franchise history, and hosting a Thanksgiving game for the first time ever, it’s pretty awesome that they’re going to be a part of all of this. It will be interesting to see how everything goes for the tripleheader tomorrow.