Coast-to-coast in style/ Madden Cruiser is luxurious way to go to

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Aug 12, 2000 | by John Branch

GREELEY - The full-size refrigerator inside the Outback Madden Cruiser isn't filled with Miller Lite and buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's packed with bottled water, orange juice and a case of Diet Dr Pepper.

On the marble countertop in the kitchen - maybe it's a kitchenette, but it has a tile floor - is a bag of bagels, a loaf of bread, a bunch of red grapes, some Tostito's and several bananas.

Safe to say that John Madden, Willie Yarbrough and Joe Mitchell, the three residents of the Madden Cruiser, don't do a whole lot of whooping it up in the Cruiser, a bus on the outside, a recreational vehicle on the inside. Put a pack of frat boys in it, hand them a map, and there would be mayhem and the makings of a bad movie script.

"I've never seen him take a drink," said Yarbrough, who has been driving Madden around the country since 1987. Madden, the Fox football analyst and former Oakland coach, has a fear of flying. So Yarbrough and Mitchell, both longtime Greyhound drivers, shuttle the garishly painted bus (it looks like a Crocodile Dundee movie poster) up to 60,000 miles each year for Madden's broadcasts and special events.

This week's stop: Denver, for Sunday's game against Green Bay.

The three men spend more time together in a confined space than the cast of "Big Brother." They know each other's bathroom habits, sleeping habits and eating habits. But they never run out of things to say.

"With John? You've got to be kidding," Mitchell said, choosing his words carefully. "John has a lot of energy."

Yarbrough won a driving contest among Greyhound drivers 13 years ago, when Madden stopped taking the train, and Madden chose him as one of his two companions after interviewing finalists. Mitchell, a longtime friend of Yarbrough's and still a Greyhound driver in the spring, has been driving the Cruiser for five years.

The two switch off every few hours, driving straight through between destinations.

"We're never in a great-big hurry to get anywhere," Yarbrough said. "We can get coast-to-coast in 48 or 50 hours."

Madden goes to bed at midnight, no matter where the Cruiser is, and the two drivers continue switching places between the driver's seat and lounging or sleeping in the living area in the front half of the Cruiser.

That's the part with two large televisions mounted overhead like in a sports bar, a table flanked by two leather-covered benches. Opposite is a leather sofa that converts to a bed. There are two leather recliners, one angled toward a television, the other next to the door facing the vast landscape the bus passes through.

The back half of the bus, beyond the kitchen and bathroom, is Madden's. There's a double bed (Madden and his drivers stay in hotels once they reach their final destination), another built-in TV (the Cruiser has DirecTV), and a desk with high tech-looking tape equipment, where Madden spends time reviewing game tape for upcoming broadcasts. Above the bed hangs a phone, one of six on the bus. The air-conditioner, set on "Siberian Winter," never stops.

The bus gets pulled over by state troopers on occasion, but the drivers never seem to get tickets.

"We tell them that John Madden is in here," Yarbrough said. "They usually go, '(Golly!)' and call their partner over."

Added Mitchell: "I think that's the reason they pull us over sometimes."

- John Branch may be reached at jbranch@gazette.com