Ahead of the Super Bowl, thinking of Broadway Joe

[cartoon id="304348"] I’ve been around long enough to have seen the Super Bowl games since the first one kicked off in 1967. “Seen” is too strong a word. Early on, I watched every play, glued to the television. But for the last several years, the game has been on but just in the background while I do a crossword puzzle. There is an inverse relationship between how seriously I pay attention and the ever-increasing hoopla surrounding the game. Now that the Super Bowl is quasi-national holiday with sports networks speculating for two weeks about the possible outcomes, I find myself less interested in the outcome. Back in 1967, things were different. The big game was called the American Football League versus the National Football League Championship. The Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers faced Hank Stram’s Kansas City Chiefs. The AFL was considered secondary to the NFL’s mighty Packers and the result, an easy 35-10 Green Bay win, confirmed the skeptics’ opinion. Green Bay dominated again the next year, too, beating the Oakland Raiders, 33-14. By 1969, the Super Bowl became the game’s official title. In one of the most memorable of all Super Bowls, the underdog New York Jets handily throttled the Baltimore Colts, 16-7. The result stupefied football fans: Baltimore had a 13-1 record and so-called experts considered the team invincible. Johnny Unitas, substituting for starter Earl Morrall, led the Colts to their only touchdown, in the game’s final minutes. Super Bowl III was the year Jets quarterback Joe “Willie” Namath guaranteed a win. Namath’s prediction infuriated his coach, Weeb Ewbank. Namath recalled Ewbank summoned him the next day, “You know what you’ve done? You know what you’ve done?” He was really upset, “I said, ‘Well, Coach, we’re going to win, aren’t we? You’re the one that’s giving us confidence. You’re the one that made me feel that way. Shucks. I’m just telling them what you told us.’ He said, ‘Get out of here.’ He chased me off, but the guys felt good.” The Jets upset sticks in my mind particularly because, in 1969, I lived in New York and was like most other young male New Yorkers, fascinated by Namath and his girlfriends, his apartment with the mirrored ceiling, his two mink coats, his fancy sports cars, his time spent hanging out with Frank Sinatra at Toots Shor’s and his substantial income. Broadway Joe Namath dined at the 21 Club and famously did a commercial wearing Hanes Beautymist pantyhose. Namath also appeared in television advertisements both during and after his playing career, most notably for Ovaltine milk flavoring, Noxzema shaving cream in which he was shaved by a then-unknown Farrah Fawcett. Namath and I were about the same age so I could not help but compare our social statuses---his lofty and mine, inconsequential. Not everyone loved Namath, however. President Richard Nixon put Namath on his “Enemies List.” Today, Namath is a family man who still loves football. He watches the Alabama Crimson Tide, where he stared as an undergraduate, and the Jets most fall weekends. He picks up his grandkids from school and hangs their drawings on the refrigerator. His walls are not covered with mementos of himself; he reserves that space his loved ones. He thinks about his South Florida restaurant, his Long Island golf outings for the Joe Namath Charitable Foundation or his next soft contact workout to protect his replaced knees and one replaced shoulder. Namath practices transcendental meditation and has adopted a collie/shepherd, Zoie, from a local rescue shelter. The NFL and team owners owe Namath an eternal debt of gratitude for putting the Super Bowl on the map. Before the Jets’ shocking upset, the championship game was a mere curiosity. Super Bowl III had a viewership of 41.6 million, with a 30-second TV advertisement costing $55,000. For Super Bowl LIX last February, a record 127.7 million people tuned in while a 30-second spot cost an average of $8 million. Thank Joe Namath. - Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].