A Football Life-Joe Namath Pt 1

namath going back to pass in the pocket he is throwing to the far side for maynard went for the bomb on second down in inches [Music] anywhere you go just about in america today if you mention the fact that you're from beaver falls the first thing that comes out of their mouths are wow okay you're from the home of joe williams [Music] [Applause] he's one of the greatest football players to come out of beaver falls he's like the mayor of beaver falls he's more than the mayor of beaver falls i would say [Music] the greatest football player he's ever seen well i was in a service and joe was playing for alabama you know i told these guys the service i said you watch i said that guy's going to make the pros and they said never heard of him i said you will joe [Music] there's a tremendous source of pride knowing that no matter what the odds are you get a guy from beaver falls with confidence and ability he'll make it happen we're kind of lucky that joe name is beaver falls other cities other towns don't have what we have yeah you know so what he did was actually put beaver falls on the map you're gonna be a football player today is the best day of your life he might be the finest quarterback produced in the last 10 years that's all i need fortunately for me i didn't lose my life didn't lose my job football convinced kids that life is a team game nobody can ever tell you that you couldn't do i saw my name in the newspaper for the first time in little league baseball i got two hits out of four bats i couldn't wait to show my brother bob and man i showed it to him and he looked at the paper he said what happened so what do you what do you mean what happened you only got two hits out of four what happened those other two times man i went from being so jacked up and so happy to uh they wouldn't let me get a big head confident yes i may have come off as cocky but the reality of it was my home life and where i came from did not allow cockiness i had three older brothers 12 6 and 9 years older than me and our family adopted my sister rita and she's six years older than i am so i was still the run i can remember my brothers and my sister always feeling like joey spoiled you always getting spoiled and uh mischievous yeah he had this smile this smirk that gave him away and it was like yeah you did do this didn't you up next a childhood moment that shaped namuth's future in the 1940s beaver falls was tough proud and prosperous one of dozens of steel towns strung across western pennsylvania where mothers like rose namath worked at the five and dime and fathers like john namath a hungarian immigrant labored 51 years at the local mill a job that exacted a steep price my dad did suffer from emphysema and breathing problems from the steel mill work just like a lot of guys did i don't recall him ever telling me that i shouldn't work in the steel mill but he did walk me through the mill when i was about 11 years old and i'll tell you something scared me it's like 120 degrees by these furnaces this ugly stuff man i swore at that time to myself as old man i am not going to come in here i was four years old and i came out on my porch one morning and there was this kid standing on the sidewalk there and he said hi i'm joe i said hey i'm in wood that's how we met and it went from that point on linwood and i boy uh we were all over that town railroad tracks to the woods on both sides and the river as well linwood and i were tight black and white didn't even come into the equation you know in other words we were just kids i can remember once when joe put brown shoe polish on his face because he thought he was supposed to look like me me and joe was like brothers [Music] unfortunately for joe his happy-go-lucky innocence did not follow him home i remember one particular night hearing my parents arguing downstairs and my dad saying that he was leaving i was pretty darn young but old enough to be able to walk over to the top of the stairs and yell down the stairs daddy don't leave don't leave i didn't understand it scared me we had all left home and uh joe was still pretty young at the time so it affected joe more so than anybody else in the family they got divorced and my mother was alone except for me at home and she was working constantly that's something that he didn't discuss and you know if she didn't discuss it with me and i and i felt that i was his best friend okay then i i doubt if he discussed that with anyone [Music] yeah it it it stayed with me it influenced my life coming up a coaching legend takes nameth under his wing he was baseball everything was baseball joe didn't get into football until later on joey's got a game tonight you have to warm the baby up i says okay so we'd go out in the backyard and warm the baby up i had a sponge in the glove and then in football i was his receiver i remember throwing a ball i heard my brother bob say so from here get it up to here throw it from here bring it all the way back and he actually taught joe how to throw that ball and joe could throw the football a city block he's one of the type that comes along once in a lifetime football basketball baseball he bet at 667 in high school natural ability and i used to always tell him message your legs are disgusting the prettiest legs ever seen on a human guy i mean he just had the perfect body when he had his picture taken he wanted to look cool all the time he was mr cool that was making him different than the average high school ball player i remember this one incident this kid said i'm gonna kick your white friend's butt i said well i wouldn't be in a hurry to try that by the time i come out of the front of the school joe had knocked him out and i said i told you i wouldn't be in such a hurry to do that in his only season as starting quarterback at beaver falls high school joe displayed so much skill and confidence that he began to have visions of grandeur joey you that was me joey you yes sir when i started wearing number 19 after johnny u you know johnny united baltimore colts great quarterback and certainly i tried to think i was him when i was out there playing under coach larry bruno joey you and the tigers went undefeated in 1960 the coach taught his young quarterback a powerful offensive weapon the art of deception joe could fake so well into the line and roll out and then throw a pass i mean it was like mr tricky that was him [Music] he was the most deceptive quarterback i ever seen in my life so there was a play i don't know if you guys heard about this or not he could hide the ball that was unreal and at one time you know he faked the handoff the guy was tackled he didn't have the ball and the replica free blew the whistle joe still had the ball and threw a touchdown pass and it was i still say he's the he's the greatest quarterback that i ever seen play [Music] it didn't matter what you did during the day but like later on in the evening everybody met in the blue room the pool home he always liked to play for a dollar a game or something he looked apart he played the part you know he had the cool salem cigarette in his mouth so he was going to do what he wanted to do i mean we were always getting what they call mischievous stuff i remember one time we were arrested for trying to do some vandalism they take us to jail and the chief of police he says wibb get joe out of here he's got a game tomorrow so we snickered laughing we walked out the door and that was the end of that i don't think he was doing too good in school at the time and bob and frank were on them about the studies and everything and wanted him to go to college i really wasn't looking to go off to college i got some fillers for a professional baseball fifty thousand dollars was the best offer from the cubs at that time i'll never forget my brother bob and my mother and frank and i sitting around the table and they knew i wanted to play baseball and bob asked mama well mom what do you what do you think about you oh i want joey to go to college bob hit the table with a fist boom i said go to college i was the student equipment manager for the football team at the university of maryland and notre dame was after michigan state all the big schools were after joe of course and marilyn had a shot and then he decided to go when he was studying for the college boards i tried to help him as much as i could we had good intentions but you know things got in the way shoot a game of pull we'll go to a bar we we strayed a little bit i'm not saying that affected his score but you know i don't know if it helped it well he takes the college boards i think he needed 750. he said i didn't make it i got 738 and you know that was it it was really a real cloud over beaver falls because they were rooting for him and so the coach at maryland tom nugent called coach brian at alabama and said look nameth is still out there coach bryant called me in his office and told me you want me to go up in beaver falls and bring joe namath down to campus the university of alabama successfully wooed joe which was just fine with maryland as far as the terrapins were concerned if they couldn't have nameth then neither should their eastern rivals [Music] we directly went to denny field of course brian was up in this tower on his fall horn said uh coach schneller bring him on up to the tower i looked over to the sideline and there stood this guy in a little sport coat and a tie and a small hat with a feather in it and he had a toothpick in his mouth and i looked over to one of the graduate assistant coaches and i said who is that character and he said that's your new quarterback and i laughed and i said he'll last here about about two weeks at the most the thing that nobody could understand is why he invited this young high school senior to to ascend to the throne i must have stayed up there with coach bryant for five minutes or so but i didn't understand but one word he said the one word was stud it played down here over here on me i stood you know uh yeah i stood over here stood here i and i didn't know what it meant the entire four years i was there i never saw another player going to tower with him [Music] there were a few upperclassmen uh at the time that were hard on the kid from pennsylvania only trying to bust his chops somehow oh i wanted to quit uh my freshman year of course i wanted to leave i wanted to get out of alabama i wanted to go anywhere he was literally dropped in here almost like parachuted in to a foreign land so to speak you know he was a yankee and he was different from the rest of the good old boys i i wasn't really aware how segregated the south was you can't drink out of a water fountain you can't sit at a counter and order food you're different why your color in 1963 joe was on campus when the all-white university of alabama was forced to integrate that june black students vivian malone and james hood arrived at foster auditorium to register for classes but they were stopped at the door by governor george wallace i've been before you representing the rights and sovereignty of this state and its people the national guard surrounded the campus i remember gathering myself 30 40 feet away and could hear every word i would ask you once again to responsibly step aside this is a federal issue step aside governor wallace stepped aside vivian went in man and that was special those of us that understood had goose bumps first and there was a big change still to come the birth of broadway joe [Music] he had a good command of the alabama offense he was shifted he was all over the field and he just almost leave you standing in your boots when you were trying to tackle him he had tremendous speed and quickness and agility he was like trying to tackle the wind he could stop on a dime and throw a jump past 40 or 50 yards and it was different from what any of our opponents had seen in the past as a sophomore namath led the tide past oklahoma in the 1963 orange bowl all at once the newly famous quarterback showed up in living rooms across the country [Music] were you all jittery or nervous when you first started the ball game well you always are in a big game you got a team out there working with you like the rest of the guys from alabama real good team you don't have to worry too much about it but late in his junior year joe jeopardized his career at alabama when he broke team rules and was caught drinking at a party that night i did have a drink coach bryan said i have to suspend you i was shocked he talked about getting me in another school but i didn't want to leave alabama man that was my family at that time i had really grown to like the people and liked the place and i knew he was right [Music] the suspension cost namath the final two games of the season but he worked his way back and in his senior year had the tide in the hunt for a national title he owed his success in part to a pregame ritual that involved wrapping white tape around his worn out cleats i'm not saying i'm a superstitious guy but i continued to put it around my laces make it feel real tight to my foot and all good i forgot to do that the fourth game my senior year it will be third down and three to go for alabama north carolina state famous hiding that ball keeping trying to cut the corner and namath is shaken up on the play looks like it might be joe namath's right knee i forgot to tape my shoes it was scary because we didn't know what specifically was wrong we didn't have a way of looking inside to see what was torn we just taped it up and played as much as you could on it but i wasn't the same player i knew that i knew i couldn't run [Music] one of the tragedies in american sports is that most people really never had the chance to see a healthy joe namath play to see how good he really was if you'd ever seen him at his best you'd never forget as the public watched namath take alabama to a national title no one not even the pro scouts realized how badly his right knee had been damaged but joe's timing was ideal there were two leagues vying for the best college talent the established nfl and the second class afl which was desperate to gain legitimacy sensing a bidding war for his prized quarterback coach bryant offered joe valuable advice he said you have any idea what you're going to ask and i said well yes sir i was thinking about a hundred thousand dollars coach bryant you know he thought a minute took a little draw off that cigarette of his you go ahead and ask him for 200 000 that's a better place to start the nfl cardinals were the first to entertain namath's demands oh no this is crazy 200 000 they're going back and forth waving it and i had forgotten to mention the new car and a new car 200 000 and a new car see yeah and then one of them so what kind of car nice uh a lincoln continental convertible oh sure a lincoln continental convertible yeah the boy wants a lincoln continental made an issue out of it 30 or 40 seconds later they got papers in their hands all right well let's sign here let's sign there and i said wait a minute uh i haven't even talked to the new york jets yet with sports agents still a rarity in 1965 namath found his negotiator in a friend who practiced real estate law when we did talk to the cardinals i asked about endorsements and things like that that would be available in st louis and they said oh you might get a radio show we might be able to help you get five thousand dollars for the season i said gentlemen i'm going to talk to the other side we go to los angeles california and i meet this gentleman by the name of david a warfare said call me sonny wharton i said yes sir as president of the new york jets sunny werblin knew almost nothing about football but he was a genius at selling talent sonny whirlwind came from a show business background he was the agent at mca for the biggest people in television and movies in those years i mean he was the man he opened up at three hundred thousand dollars uh that's pretty impressive and mike and i both had the wind knocked out if it's a bizarre way we gotta go talk this over we're go in another room joe and i said he said i want something for my family i got to go back mike bite may have been well versed in mortgages but his demands were about to shake up professional football when i threw that last number at him sonny woodland excused himself and joe said what do you think i said i'm gonna get on my knees and start praying i said i've blown a lot of air in that balloon i just hope i didn't pop it when top players were lucky to make twenty thousand dollars a year namath clinched a three-year deal for 75 000 plus a 200 000 signing bonus the windfall included a house for rose jet scouting jobs for joe's brothers and the green lincoln that nameth had coveted the package totaled four hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars uh to my knowledge it's the largest amount ever given to an athlete for professional services and let me say we're very happy to do it the salary of joe namath got them the impetus to become on a par with the nfl even before he stepped on a football field my god if the guy is worth 427 thousand dollars this is something we've got to see your future coach and the owner mr weblin have referred to you as the greatest football player in college this year uh you haven't even put on a jet uniform yet you already feel a little bit of pressure well uh pressure just makes you go a little more i don't kind of like pressure a little bit [Music] [Music] mr wurblen looked after me quite a bit he was teaching me about what he called the finest city and people in the world that was a pet project of his of course and uh worked out sonny werbling called all the local pro football writers and he did it in the upstairs room at twitch shores it wasn't really a press conference it was a get to know joe part of joe's charm is that he's an attractive wise guy you know he's a street smart guy lou ephrat at the time said to him joe uh you've got all this money and that's great he said but suppose you don't make it joe and joe just sit there and look that low and said i'll make it and i said to myself i like this guy this gentleman comes up introduced himself as dr james nicholas he was the team doctor so he said come on he took me by the arm we went to the men's room now i'm standing up sink's over here the head's over here whatever i'm standing up my pants are down around my ankles and dr nicholas is down on his knee going through this thing right he said we got to fix this i said yes sir when you want to do it tomorrow [Laughter] they had me in the hospital right after that [Music] werblin made sure that everything about namus life as a jet was made public even knee surgery when he was operated on i went to see him in the hospital and he was in excruciating pain while he was in that agony frank ramos from the jets came in and said joe we got to take a picture and show how to go out in the hallway at jersey and they took a picture of them for the newspapers everything about joe was headline worthy that's what werblin saw that this guy was going to be able to be that kind of a celebrity after the operation dr nicholas said man everything went great we think you can play four years four years so thank you thank you four years of pro ball this is going to be great in july 1965 the jets high-priced rookie arrived at training camp he came in with a target on his back the target on his back with with his own teammates here comes a guy in here who's driving a big lincoln continental and he's the darling of the owner and you got guys who resent that you heard chris was in the locker room our savior's coming in you know so let's see what this 400 000 quarterback is is he worth it there was some that were eager to see him and there were some guys that were pissed off to see him we had a team meeting after practice some of the guys the veterans said their piece and i had to say something like me or dislike me all you want off the field don't bring it on the field and if you don't understand that and you want to fight then you can go ahead and do your best i will fight nobody uh attacked me i didn't get in any fights right then so they knew i was there to play football [Music] we came into the locker room and sitting on each stool was that magazine with my picture on the front now you've got to understand i'm a rookie so this is embarrassing as heck sitting straight across the locker room from me is german plunkett our offensive tackle and most vested veteran at the time and the sherman looks at it and a big old smile breaks out on his face and i'm looking he looks over at me and that smile is there and he says broadway broadway joe and that was good you know just coming from him the way he said it up next a small town boy in the big city [Music] from the opening whistle the american football league season overflow crowds of swell shea stadium wanting to see the man they've heard so much about joe naman [Music] the jets home games at shea stadium they became social events it wasn't just men at a football game you saw women your sister your mother your aunt they all wanted to know who's joe namath already equipped with a nickname broadway joe soon added the most distinctive element to his iconic image coach eubank was also the general manager and he just got flat tired of me putting so much tape around my darn shoes because tape costs money walk into the locker room one day and sitting right there on the floor in my locker was a pair of white football shoes i'd never seen anything like them and the other guys didn't either low-cut white shoes i mean nobody had whites nobody wore white shoes joe come on you know you know what he's dancing or what are you doing i like the look yeah i like the look i knew it was different i mean that was me those were my feet and again the last time i didn't have white on them i tore ligaments in my knee nama's leg may have been damaged but his arm was in mint condition in 1965 he was named afl rookie of the year and two years later he became the first quarterback in either league to throw for four thousand yards [Music] true magazine said i want you to do a peace on could nameth make it in the nfl so i had to call some nfl people hello lombardi he said he's a perfect passer meaning mechanically he was he just brought it up to his ear and zipped it once he made up his mind it was going boom it's like boom throw a dog the only quarterback i've ever been around that you didn't have to look to see when the ball was released you could hear it you could hear the whoosh when the ball left his hand and that is not kidding the receivers they had blackened blue marks in their body from getting hit by these balls that he threw oh yeah i had basically on my arms and biceps you catch the point of the ball kind of like getting hit with a hammer i didn't have to see him work out one time and realize that this guy is unbelievable i think mentally throwing a football uh well i feel confident i can play better than anybody that's ever played the position i always wanted to play i always wanted to be the quarterback don good 20 yard out on this one i wanted to stand out i wanted to be good all right 74 double choice on two ready the cool kid from beaver falls had become a football innovation and his lifestyle a downright revolution there had not been anybody like joe namath not in sports long hair sideburns oh my god it was it was next to communism he can grow a fu manchu and suddenly this is like whoa we got some kind of revolutionary here no you got a guy who's grown a fu manchu because the chicks dig it oh and i like the clothes too on occasion you know i had a few nice coats and some pants and things yeah i was styling i was a part of the time man so here was this this rascal not a maverick a rascal who wore white shoes wore his hair along and he went his own way he was mick jagger in a football uniform he wasn't pat boone and that's what america wanted there was a big party going on all these bars in the east side of manhattan and all of a sudden you had the singles phenomenon you have all these women who were promiscuous because of the pill and joe was right in the middle of it girls would come in and i'd call them over and joe was very you know shy and nice but he had a real southern surf accent nice to meet you how you doing and so it's one girl this is you better lose that if you want to do good here in new york and joe says how do you connect with these girls how do you meet him i said just throw a lot of touchdowns you'll have no problem [Music] every night drink get up the next morning it's a new day and you're off and running again he was the king of new york [Music] i like my lemon blonde and my johnny walker red yeah i had a sense of humor you know oh i like everything he does what are some of the things he does that you like [Applause] [Music] uh joe namath i think he's overrated over sex and overpaid uh sometimes they talk about drinking and conniving around with ladies and stuff it seems almost un-american to me for a bachelor not to you know go around having a drink with a lady now and then and why all of a sudden that's becoming evil in me just trying to get by look at that shot if joe was going to california we wanted to be part of it about four or five of us let's have some fun and keep the party going every time we landed at a away game his buddy was there with a 40-foot limousine and two of the most beautiful babes you ever saw your whole life waiting for joseph to get off the plane we get on the bus go to the field joe we'll get into the limousine with the two girls eventually namath and his entourage had a clubhouse of their own when joe and two friends opened bachelor's three on manhattan's upper east side well it wasn't a matter of needing our own place it seemed like it'd be a lot of fun plus i felt like hey i'd rather go to our place than someplace else we were at the bachelor's degree and somebody said mickey mantle and billy martin want to say hello ben crosby at the bar even vince lombardi went there frank sinatra you name them they want to meet joe willy the only place cooler than bachelor's three was joe's east 76th street penthouse apartment i put it in the hands of a rather flamboyant decorator you see and he had his ideas white llama hair rug everywhere like you're walking on a cloud furniture snow leopard skin stuff i'm thinking of my mother now too when she saw my bedroom for the first time with the entire ceiling covered with a mirror nice big oval bed there and when my mother walked in she just and boy i started scrambling and i said well yeah mom uh you see there's uh the mirrors this look makes it really feel big you know how much room you know the mirror and all this is she just kept looking around i am happy for him i am happy that the people in new york and all over the country love them but to me and to the people of beaver falls he will always be beaver false joe but to opposing defenses the broadway joe needed to be knocked down a peck every guy on the defense you know they wanted to be the guy to break joe's leg it's not animosity it's the publicity you get if you knocked him out the big deal was the 400 000 man that fit right in those headlines pretty well and that was pretty impressive to the rest of us and he was out there and i mean you could hit him and joe had a good quick release and the ball was out of there before we could stop ourselves and i guess that's why we sometimes maybe accidentally hit him after the ball was gone that's my story and i'm sticking to it this guy just played a football game and he's limping around and he needs help to go upstairs you realize this wasn't going to go on for much longer but it did because he had this ability to play with pain i watch him stand on these trainers table and get taped every sunday every practice really it came one knee then became both knees it was sort of sad to see because you really wanted to think that maybe one day they won't have to do that but that wasn't the case i always remember the first time i ever had my knee drain to get this needle it's about this long you know and it looks like a straw well when they broke through into the knee joint fluid shot up this high out of my knee it cuts under pressure joe laughed because he was in there too get used to it he says coming up namath lives up to the hype as tough as namath was he had not yet brought the jets a title [Music] and in 1967 despite leading the league in interceptions for the second straight year he stubbornly continued to do things his way confidence that was his mantra too confident especially when it comes to throwing the football god dang it there were rules for joe and there were rules for the rest of the team we understood that joe was special and if he didn't like that that's tough sometimes we we get in the huddle with joe you had to back away from the huddle because the fumes like coming out of his skin he had hangover he did not miss the practice but he enjoyed the nightlife of new york city and there was a lot of sundays he's on the table in the back and they tried to dry him out but he had enough gumptions enough sense to get to that stadium early the jets needed their superstar to take a leadership role and in 1968 they elected him team captain ready everybody felt it was time you know enough of the playboy it's time to step up be the leader that we know you are maybe i needed a little more responsibility i don't know that that could have been it did change my way of thinking somewhat but becoming captain did not transform nemeth into a winner overnight [Applause] in the first five games of the 68th season namath was intercepted 12 times you can't throw these interceptions you can't play this way we need to play a little differently you don't have to throw for 300 yards let's establish the run play defense and throw the ball when we have to and here's a handoff you do what you need to do to win you see this is the bottom line win the game namath changed his play calling strategy and elevated his game to a new level [Music] he led the jets to an 11-3 record and was named the league's most valuable player he had brought his team one win away from the super bowl now came his next hurdle beat the raiders for the afl championship i'm a police trainee in the 17th precinct which is on 51st street between third and lex and across the street is the summit hotel i get off at 7 30 that morning to sunday morning and coming out of the summit is joe namath with a beautiful model in tow and he looks like he's been partying all night you know i'm a jet fan and keenly aware of what's going on there's a big game today championship game so myself with a few friends we decided we're going to bet against the jets our own team back at shea stadium in new york there is a gusting wind here today and the temperature has dropped to 37 degrees we were as close as we could be to going to the championship game the world championship game the world championship game for people to accept him as a great quarterback the jets had to win that game i mean they knew he was flashy and a great arm but he hadn't won anything [Music] [Applause] i got my bell rung in the first quarter got a little dislocated finger in the second quarter i'm on the ground and my hands hurting like heck boy and i i just peeked and i just did like that i didn't want to see the rest it was pointing that way kind of so i just got up and ran over there and just gave it to the trainer and then he got it back the ball was frozen so when i slapped that up to him think about it when you have a broken finger dislocated knuckle that ball is hitting it like like that [Applause] mistake of the day set the jets back 23-20 in the fourth quarter he had eight minutes to bring them back there was a time during the game that don maynard had specifically pointed out that he could get a step on atkinson and i said well hey i got a long one when you need it that's the way he put it any time you need it i can get a step on here okay we had to score if we didn't we were done we sent three receivers out just george star and lamb is down the middle and dawn on the outside and don true to his word had that step on atkinson namath dropping back to pass [Applause] [Music] he went back like he was throwing a javelin in the olympics and he just flung this past and i remember writing that that's the play that will define this franchise i can't believe what i'm watching joe willie literally watches down the field here's a fake handoff to matt [Applause] it's the most physical game toughest game that i've ever been in that we won that we won [Applause] and of course we [Applause] [Music] football league lost and bedlam breaks loose at j stadium next time on joe namath a football life and they could have sold 150 000 tickets for this game there was no question that colts are going to win none we're going to win the game i guarantee it no i don't wear pantyhose yeah it was awkward but it wasn't that awkward i want to kiss you joe is in trouble here looking for these people man oh joe might have been someplace else [Music]

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Length: 44min 29sec (2669 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022