Madden’s broadcasting career took detour to Springfield for Wittenberg game in 1982

CBS also aired a game between San Diego and Occidental on the same day, sending Dick Stockton and Hank Stram to that game. Its contract with the NCAA required it to periodically air Division II and III games.

The idea to call games at the lower levels that fall came about because Madden and Summerall were tired of sitting around the studio talking about the strike, which started after the Week 2 games on Sept. 19 and lasted 57 days, reducing the 16-game season to nine games.

“All our lives in September and October and November, I’ve been playing, coaching or broadcasting,” Madden said, “then there’s no game.”

CBS decided on the Tuesday before the game to go to Springfield. Wittenberg and B-W agreed to move the game from Saturday to Sunday.

“My reaction was that I don’t fly, and I thought to myself, ‘Does a train go to Springfield?’” Madden told Marla Ridenour, of the Dayton Daily News. “I didn’t know where it was, so I started looking for places that trains did go in Ohio. We found Toledo, and on my map, it was about two inches from Springfield. I didn’t know if two inches would be 100 miles or 200 miles.”

Madden took a 14-hour train ride from Grand Central State in New York to Toledo and then rented a car for the three-hour ride to Springfield.

Wittenberg was then coached by future College Football Hall of Famer Dave Maurer, who not only talked that week to CBS’s first-team announcing crew but a writer from the New York Times.

“We’ve been on television before but never had exposure of this magnitude,” Maurer said. “All this hoopla is a distraction. But talking to John Madden and Pat Summerall and finding out that they’re nice guys is a thrill in itself for our kids. This experience is something they’ll look back on for the rest of their lives.”

Wittenberg and Baldwin Wallace dominated the OAC at that time. Baldwin Wallace beat Wittenberg 7-0 in the regular season the previous year but then lost 10-7 to Wittenberg in the conference championship game. The teams entered the game in 1982 with 3-0 records.

Wittenberg reconfigured its press box to make room for the larger crew, removing a window where Madden and Summerall would sit, according to a report by Bucky Albers, of the Journal Herald.

“We’ve never had this kind of attention for our school and program before,” Wittenberg’s director of public information Don Perkins told Albers. “We’ve been on TV (six times) before but always as a regional game.”

As for the game itself, Baldwin Wallace won 16-14 in front of a crowd of 5,438. Wittenberg ran 36 more plays and gained 151 more yards but had a punt blocked, committed two turnovers and twice failed to gain a first down on fourth-and-short, once at the Baldwin Wallace 1-yard line. Wittenberg finished 7-2 that season. Baldwin Wallace finished 10-1 and beat Ohio Northern 24-0 in the OAC championship game.

“The only thing that disappointed me from a coaching standpoint — other than losing, of course — was the number of mistakes we made,” Maurer said. “We had our opportunities but didn’t execute properly, and we lost our poise. You do that against a great team like B-W and you lose.”