MIAMI – The last Truly Important Super Bowl – in fact, probably the only Truly Important Super Bowl – took place here 30 years ago this month.
That is before Terrell Davis or Jamal Anderson were born, before John Elway had ever visited an orthodontist, before some genius decided The Game merited Roman numerals, before the NFL had even officially designated its championship game as Super.
It happened at the Orange Bowl, which has since been left for dead by the NFL, and it starred a guy who people these days remember mostly as an actor and TV personality, if they remember him at all.
But if not for what happened on Jan. 12, 1969, the Super Bowl might not have grown to what it has become today, the most-anticipated, most-watched, most-overhyped event in American professional sports.
If the Jets, and Joe Namath, had not beaten the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, well, maybe the Super Bowl would not be quite so Super.
“Back then, the AFL was in a pretty bad position,” Namath said yesterday. “We needed – we NEEDED – to win. Us AFLers, the guys that came before me, there were a lot of nasty things said about us. If we don’t win that game …”
… Maybe no one takes the fledgling AFL very seriously. Maybe Joe Willie Namath never makes it to Canton, nor does Weeb Ewbank. Maybe Al Davis is in a federal prison somewhere and … well, you get the idea.
But Namath guaranteed the Jets would win, then he went out and made sure they did win. The image of him sprinting into the locker room, index finger pointing upward in triumph and admonition, is one of the most powerful sports images of the 1960s.
The Jets victory over the Colts was the turning point not only for a franchise, but for an entire league, a game that proved that not only the guys in crewcuts could play the game, and that the future of football belonged to those who controlled the air as well as the ground.
“It was a period of transition, no question,” Namath said.
He was standing on the field of the Orange Bowl yesterday to tape a Super Bowl retrospective for ESPN Classic Sports along with Dick Schaap, who co-authored his autobiography and came to know Namath – when he was still Broadway Joe – as well as anyone in the media.
“All the time I get a special feeling when I’m here,” Namath said. “So many great things happened to me here.”
In 1962, before he had ever heard of Sonny Werblin or Weeb Ewbank, Namath led Bear Bryant’s Alabama over Oklahoma on that field, spoiling Bud Wilkinson’s final game as the Sooners head coach.
And in 1964, he saw a national championship slip away when Bama lost to Texas in the Orange Bowl on a bad call in the end zone.
“So many memories here,” he said.
On the field, the grounds crew was prepping the grass for a fictional football game in an Oliver Stone movie, and overhead, on the big scoreboard, time was frozen at Jan. 12, 1969.
COLTS 7, JETS 16, the big board read, along with the game clock, 0:00, which could just as well have symbolized the end of an era for the NFL.
At the opposite end of the field, above the entrance to the visiting locker room, stands the section of stands to which Namath made his famous gesture.
“I remember there were a bunch of New York fans, Jets fans, sitting right there,” he said. “I saw them first, so I just started pointing up at them. They were so happy. I know different people can perceive the same event differently, but to me it wasn’t any kind of bragging or boasting. It was kinda like, ‘Finally, we’re here, we’re #1!’ I was just happy.”
Namath and Schaap were reminiscing about that wild Super Bowl week – days at poolside, nights at late, lamented places like Fazio’s and Mike Gordon’s – during a time that was at once more innocent than today and at the same time, much more sophisticated.
Athletes didn’t guarantee victories back then, in fact they hardly spoke except in the most deferential of platitudes.
They didn’t write books extolling their own virtues, they didn’t flaunt their sexuality, heck, they displayed hardly any individuality at all.
They couldn’t wear their hair long and shaggy, or grow Fu Manchu mustaches, or dare to don white football shoes on the field or pantyhose in TV commercials.
Namath came along and said, oh, yes, we can, but he never would have gotten away with the nonsense if he couldn’t produce the goods, too.
He was in the front line of the New Breed of athletes, he and Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, guys who told the world things did not have to be done the same old way, year in and year out.
Namath’s autobiography, “I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow … (Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day)” was a hoot, with chapter titles such as “I Never Drink At Halftime,” “I Like My Women Blonde and My Johnnie Walker Red,” and “Some of My Best Friends Are Arabs.”
He became an unwitting spokesman for a league and a generation, but to hear him talk about it three decades later, Joe Willie Namath was just a kid from Beaver Falls, Pa., who never knew how to keep his emotions from ending up on his lips.
“I was just speaking from the heart,” he said. “I was juts speaking up for our guys, the AFL. I never let myself get caught up in all that other stuff. I was just the kind of person who spoke my feelings at all times. I knew I wasn’t exactly pleasing everybody, but I didn’t think about it. I lived it.”
Now, at 55, Namath seems smaller, thinner, frailer, his shoulders narrower, his back even more alarmingly hunched than in his playing days.
In middle-age, his face has become almost a living caricature, the nose, teeth, dimples and blue eyes seemingly oversized and exaggerated.
Standing for long periods of time on his rebuilt knees is difficult for him, and between shots he plops into a folding chair for a few seconds of relief.
And yet, he retains a hint of the cool he once wore like a tailored suit, along with the slouchy posture and slow, careless gait of a man who knows the world will wait for him.
“I think about that Super Bowl every single day,” he said. “Every day of my life, someone brings it up to me.”
And he does not mind it a bit. Why should he? Like the Oakland Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs, their predecessors in the first two Super Bowls, Namath’s Jets were a laughingstock, 18-point underdogs to the big bad Colts.
“That game influenced opinions, abilities,” he said. “Underdogs all over believed they could win. If we don’t win that game, maybe Kansas City doesn’t beat Minnesota the next year. Then, you’re down 0-4 and it just gets harder and harder.”
Instead, from that game on, the older, established NFL teams and the upstart AFL teams were seen as equals. Soon, they all played under the same umbrella, and this year, for only the third time in the last 12 years, the AFC team is favored to win the game.
That is part of Namath’s legacy.
So too, is this: Today, everyone points fingers and brags. They confuse poor sportsmanship with sportsmanship.
George Foreman guarantees mufflers. Patrick Ewing guarantees championships. None of it means a thing. It’s just talk.
And Super Bowl XXXIII stands for nothing really, nothing more than money.
“I haven’t outgrown my loyalty to the AFL, but this is the first time I’ll be pulling for an NFC team,” Namath said. “I’d love to see Dan Reeves and the Atlanta people have something to cheer and hold onto.”
Few players have given an entire league something to hold onto the way Joe Namath did 30 years ago, the last time a Super Bowl really stood for something.