Tailgaters Featured on All-Madden Team : Football: Broadcaster loves the parties as much as the games.

John Madden, as one might imagine, is a tailgating kind of guy. And he likes his tailgating the way he likes his football: down and dirty.

“If you have ribs and chicken, hell, you can’t beat that,” the CBS-TV football analyst and former Raider coach said. “And beans. And a good barbecue sauce. You just go in and leave the stuff hanging on you. Then you know you’ve been to a ballgame.”

Madden recently shared his thoughts on pregame parking-lot repasts by telephone from his office in Oakland. As usual, he was enthusiastic, colorful, Maddenesque. This is clearly a subject near and dear to his ample solar plexus.

“A lot, a lot to eat,” was the first criterion for the All-Madden Tail-gate Lineup. “The worst ones have tablecloths and wine and cheese. Good ones have very little fruit and vegetables. The best ones have big things. Bratwurst and football go together.”

As he crisscrosses America in his customized bus--he does not fly--Madden has seen tailgaters of all types and for all seasons.

“In the East, you get the hearty type,” he said. “They’re used to all kinds of weather. If you’re going to tailgate, you have to tailgate the whole season. You can’t just pick your days.

“There’s a lot of cooking . . . Philly cheese steaks.

“In the Midwest, you get a lot more sausages. You get the shopping bag, the sausages and the cheese. They can either eat it or wear it on their heads,” enthused Madden, really hitting his stride.

“And in California, especially Southern California, that’s where you’ll catch the tablecloths and wine and hors d’oeuvres.”

Zap! Enough said.

Madden, a kind of everyman of the broadcast booth, has won seven Emmy Awards. He has a Super Bowl ring. He has written three best-selling books. He has been a beer commercial fixture and a hardware stores spokesman. And it can now be added, John Madden knows tailgating.

He generally sees the early smoke signals of fans firing up when he arrives at a stadium for a broadcast three hours before kickoff. Sometimes, he discusses tape of tailgaters shown by CBS during the game.

“The guy was a little short on food,” he said of a heavyset man caught on camera earlier this season with a cigar and a jar of Tabasco sauce--and little else.

And occasionally, he’s even been known to join a postgame parking lot party.

A favorite tailgate? Madden recalled a crisp autumn day at Green Bay a year ago when the network showed “a guy with bratwurst and other kinds of sausages and stuff. He had three kinds of meats on three grills and onions on the side. And big sourdough buns. I was looking at that guy cooking and it was making me hungry. You could darn near smell it on the tape. Load ‘em up!”

Indeed, Green Bay’s Lambeau Field is Madden’s choice as tailgate heaven.

“It’s a small town,” he said. “The team is supported by the whole state of Wisconsin. They have a big parking lot. It seems like that whole scene and stadium and place was made to be tailgated.”

As a breed, the tailgaters Madden most admires are those who bundle up and trek out in the cold, wind, rain and snow.

“Caps and scarfs and fires going,” Madden said. “Those are the real tailgaters. Those are the ones who make my team.”

During a game, Madden generally has to settle for a quick bite at halftime--Boom! Down goes whatever they’re serving at the stadium. But through his decades as a player, coach and broadcaster, he says he has long cast covetous glances at the parking lot party-goers.

“I’ve always said that if I was ever a fan, I’d be a tailgater,” Madden said. “They beat the traffic on the way in. They don’t have to worry about finding parking places. They relax and enjoy it. Afterwards, they have a party and they miss the traffic on the way out.”

But he would have one rule so ironclad that not even instant-replay officials could overturn it: No Brie. Real tailgaters don’t eat it; John Madden can’t even pronounce it.

“I don’t think that and football go together,” Madden said solemnly. “I don’t think you should intermingle the two.”