Oakland later this month is hosting one last Monday Night event for the late legendary Raiders head coach and longtime KCBS Radio personality John Madden.
The day after the Super Bowl, Feb. 14, football royalty will arrive at the Oakland Coliseum for a night of memories and laughs in honor of Madden, who died on Dec. 28 at the age of 85.
Tickets are on sale now for $32.14 — the score of the Raiders' first Superbowl win against the Vikings, 32 to 14.
"We had a private Catholic burial a couple of weeks ago and we just wanted to do something for the public," Mike Madden, John's son, told KCBS Radio. "There's no more fitting building and city to celebrate dad's life than Oakland and the Oakland Coliseum."
The event will serve both as a public memorial and fundraiser to help Oakland kids.
Mike said that his Hall of Fame dad left coaching in 1979 but Oakland always stayed with him, all the way up to a recent high school football game between Bishop O'Dowd, where his grandson played, and Oakland's Castlemont High School. After the game, instead of commenting on what happened on the field, Madden remarked on the condition of the facilities at Castlemont High’s East Oakland campus.
That prompted Madden, whose philanthropy included hosting an annual bocce tournament to raise money for the Special Olympics and diabetes research, to find a way he could help.
"He started to put together a scholarship program for schools in Oakland and then he wanted to cast a wider web so we picked up about two dozen East Bay high schools on a list and six kids started at Cal Poly in September on scholarships that weren’t there before dad and mom visited Castlemont High School that day,” Mike said.
Proceeds from this month's public memorial will go to the Madden Foundation to support educational opportunities for underserved kids — which includes scholarships for those in Oakland and the East Bay.
People can purchase tickets for the Madden's memorial on Ticketmaster here.
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