The Wednesday edition of “NFL Live” will look differently. The same host and analysts will be there. What’s changing is the in-studio graphics, which will instead be the hand drawings of Madden Orlovsky, son of the ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, in honor of World Autism Awareness Day.
During the show, all of the monitors viewers at home can see of the Bristol, Connecticut studio are filled with graphics – specific to show or teams and topics being discussed. On Wednesday, every monitor will be filled by collages of Madden’s drawings.
“No matter what you’re seeing on the air, his drawings will be in the background,” “NFL Live” director Tim Farrell told USA TODAY Sports.
A topic of discussion will obviously be the upcoming draft. A New York Giants logo will be imposed over Madden’s work, for example.
“There won’t be one graphic in the entire studio that is what we would normally use on our show,” Farrell said.
The idea came about last year after Farrell saw Orlovsky post one of Madden’s creations based on a “Toy Story” scene featuring Woody and Buzz Lightyear, a comic-strip-esque series of drawings. Orlovsky remembers Madden showing it to him while he was playing catch with his two other sons, Hunter and Noah, whom along with Madden form 13-year-old triplets of Orlovsky boys.
Autism is his superpower, what’s yours?
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) June 5, 2024
We have a 12 year old son with Autism and he out of the blue created this ♥️♥️@toystory@Pixar@tomhankspic.twitter.com/lIAamIINn3
In Orlovsky’s social media post, he overlayed it with the audio from the scene Madden recreated.
“I was like ‘Holy smokes, Madden, this is sick,’” Orlovsky told USA TODAY Sports.
Madden, 13, was diagnosed with autism more than a decade ago. It wasn’t long after Orlovsky and his wife Tiffany realized Madden’s passion for drawing. Art is an outlet for him, Tiffany said, because although he is verbal, he’s not overly talkative.
“He expresses himself that way,” Tiffany told USA TODAY Sports. “Also, we get to see some more interests that we might not have known he had and that will spark conversations. Sometimes, even his emotions are shown in it. He's very creative with his characters’ facial expressions, so that’s neat to see, how intuitive he is with emotions and other people’s emotions. Honestly, it just creates a conversation or a starter for us to kind of relate to him.”
Farrell approached Orlovsky with the idea in the second half of the 2024 NFL season with the goal of doing it sometime in April, which is Autism Awareness Month.
“I lost it,” Orlovsky recalled. “I looked at him – I didn’t even know him that well – and I looked at him like ‘You have no concept of what you just did’ in an unbelievably kind way.”
Characters from Disney movies or Nickelodeon shows are Madden’s favorite subject to draw. And he’s always working on something. The boxes of drawings in the Orlovsky family’s basement are the Madden archives.
“Probably every day, there’s at least three new drawings or cartoons,” Tiffany said.
Farrell sent Orlovsky home with a drawing pad from Staples. Madden opted for his own canvas – sheets of printer paper – but judging by the amount of drawings Farrell received, he took the assignment seriously. Some drawings unfortunately couldn’t make the air because of intellectual property ...
