[Full Episode] Kannaway Champions with Nick Lowery: Episode 24 - Joe Namath

[Music] welcome everybody you know i've had dick for milan recently i've had some of the greats in nfl history i've had all sorts of amazing people that have overcome adversity and been champions each with their own story i can't think of anybody i'd rather interview than somebody i consider one of the nicest kindest most considerate people which is an amazing accomplishment to be nice and kind and considerate and one of the great competitors in national football league history with the best darn arm from beaver falls high school and alabama joe namath joe just so happy to have you on the show brother well nick it's been too long since we visited last man but it's good to see you and i'm glad you finally let me come on your show well you know you're down there in florida with jessica your daughter and about 10 years ago we had a fun time honoring don maynard out in tucson and i just noticed and i want people to hear this because i don't care how famous and how successful you are if you lose that ability and we see it joe today more than ever whether it's athletes or anyone in a position of success if you lose that human touch you've lost everything and one of my theories is not too sophisticated a theory is that one of the reasons why the new york jets beat the baltimore colts one of the reasons why that team was great is because every one of those players loved joe namath they trusted him they loved him they were willing in the most physical game on the planet to sacrifice their heads their bodies to do whatever it took because they knew they were playing for a guy that always had their back and joe i watched you that night at a casino in south tucson and you would not sit down i was the emcee we were raising money and don maynard obviously was the honored person and after two hours i remember saying hey joe could my ankle was bothering me two weeks later i had ankle surgery and uh i said hey joe can we sit down and you said uh nick there are more people i got to sign autographs for after four hours and i was doing the emceeing i came back i said joke uh you want to eat something and he said i i just gotta you know be available to sign people and really basically for six hours joe namath put everybody else ahead of himself and that's just who you are you can't fake that and so what i wanted to start with was the notion that every player who's ever been great and we just witnessed the retirement of one of the great ones drew brees the great players and the great quarterbacks especially because they really run their teams have an amazing combination of enough ego to set goals to be confident almost arrogant but not quite but the best ones of all have something in here that their players know is real that makes them want to really love that player and trust him and play at a level and sacrifice more than anybody else tell us about that tell us about your journey uh starting as a right fielder in baseball and high school at beaver beaver falls with a great i just learned admiration for roberto clemente i think the most charismatic baseball player of all time and how that attitude of being a leader being a competitor being cocky but also humble enough to always uh to never lose that connection with people how did that start for you nick uh man everything in my opinion or most everything starts at home you know if we're lucky enough to have parents that instill respect in their children and their work ethic uh you treat one another the way you want yours to be treated you know when it comes to family and friends uh respect for other people for sure and also uh we learned from our mistakes too and i made a heck of a lot of mistakes growing up and on through life but i had great teachers again learning some basics at home and then when i was in sports uh especially with my high school football coach uh larry bruno and uh i would have quit football my senior year my my sophomore year if it wasn't for our former high school coach bill ross who he didn't take me to football camp he was our coach at the time i was a sophomore and three of us didn't go off with our high school team to camp because we weren't good enough and also our size we were small you know and when they came i was crushed i was crushed man i was crushed as an athlete as a person uh being told and you know i didn't measure up and i was always good in the neighborhood now and parochial school or elementary school to measure up but uh being told uh and showing that we weren't the three of us weren't good enough to go off on a high school camp made me quit made me want to quit give it up and focus on baseball and whenever our team came back from camp i waited outside of the locker room uh for the coach whenever they finished with whatever they were doing and head coach came out and i said coach uh you know i i i'm gonna concentrate on baseball basketball even if i was small i could still play basketball too uh and i'm not gonna play football anymore i'm gonna quit wow and then he uh he took a couple of beats nick and he kind of looked up and then he looked at me and he said no name it uh i don't think you should quit i i i think you could play someday you know and boy that's all i needed yeah that's all i needed was uh his you know encouragement man i dragged those dummies out you remember i don't know if you remember the dummies that were stuffed and you know you had to hold them for the guys that were blocking and tackling i with the other sophomores a couple of us we dragged those dummies out too man i had and i was about 155 pounds and 6'4 i was getting my rear end kicked and i'm holding those dummies yeah yeah well you know again uh what we accumulate with the people we've been around through the years has a lot to do with how we approach life and that is if you're a listener and i was taught to listen you know don't interrupt somebody i mean we have somebody teaching us trying to help us and i was taught to listen and uh i tried to do my best listening after i found out my way wasn't always the right way and uh you know you mentioned something at the beginning uh nick about teammates uh we have all kinds of different teammates we meet different people in life you know and i think uh i know uh if you if we're able to kind of let hear them out kind of kind of understand them where they're coming from don't be so judgmental or whatever early on you know you get a feel for them you get to know your teammate yeah like family you know but even in family man that old saying they're not old saying but the alchemist in the book of familiarity breeds contempt a locker room you know you're getting to know guys with egos uh in sports man going like in the locker room because you know some guys think they've got to win the debate in the locker room marcus allen uh i'll never forget one of the great leaders in many ways and we had joe you know montana and marcus allen in the same locker room and marcus psyched out harvey williams a very good running back to the point where harvey thought he could win his job by out talking marcus harvey ends up being cut and he ends up going and doing okay with the raiders but uh he he he uh got caught up in the wrong game you mentioned marcus i just see him at his death posture just straighten up he's a listener too he'll listen he'll let you know what he thinks but he'll he'll hear you out he'll listen yeah what were you like in the locker room i mean even in high school do we when you became the starting quarterback and people are looking at you and colleges like alabama are beginning to whisper that these guys might be worth taking a look at what was that like for you were you still thinking you know i haven't proven myself or were you thinking you know i need to have some fun and some banter in the locker room and what was your disposition back then in high school you know i had three older brothers and uh they they taught humility they taught team stuff you know and not to not to be uh uh you want to be confident but you got to earn that confidence for yourself and for anybody else being cocky wasn't wasn't the way uh i had a style i enjoyed uh doing some things that i could do but it was within the guidelines of the team stuff and uh you included people you know that's it and again it's nothing that i conjured up it's what i was taught right and uh i was lucky starting from the beginning at home and having uh people along the way man and the important ones because sports was important to me uh i was good at physically i was quick you know regardless of my size and i had good hand-eye coordination and uh i excelled and what what youngster adult doesn't want to excel and feel good about what they're doing man and so i was kept under control by my older brothers so to speak early on and then the reality of uh what a leader is like it was taught to me uh football wise with my high school coaches and i'd watch autogram out there man i grew up watching otto graham in the cleveland browns boy and uh i saw how he conducted himself and uh it was special so again uh alabama coach bryant uh being a freshman there was uh was joyful uh it was a learning experience coming from western pa and and going to the heart of dixie so uh i i listen were you ever intimidated joe intimidated yeah alabama oh a kid from from western pa and a dad with a steel worker you know some kids would write in their books you know i really never felt like i could be much and here you are in alabama one of the great traditions in the history of college football with one of the more intimidating coaches in college football um were you ever feeling a little bit intimidated i was intimidated early on at home too i told you i had three older brothers six nine and 12 years older than me the one that was 12 years older was the gentleness the other two brothers were rather mischievous but they taught me how to catch run throw you know that and uh how to behave myself as best as possible even though they didn't always behave absolutely no i was intimidated uh in different ways you know if you know you can't do something very well and yet you're challenged with it that's a form of intimidation itself and uh i was intimidated when i first went on the boards with uh real actors and and then people that were uh gifted as well as trained and trained and intimidation can come in in various ways a defensive lineman that i was intimidated by buck buchanan and uh ernie ladd six eight and six ten standing in the middle of that kansas city defensive line with william here behind him with bobby bell over here man and bobby hunt is a free safety i wasn't afraid of him because he was an auburn guy that's mean yeah there's different ways different times you get intimidated and i've been intimidated sure yeah you know but joe i think one of the other gifts you had and that's what translated as you mentioned just now on the stage was being aware self-aware of how you carried yourself because your teammates you know whether you were scared or not you had to feel and convey that sense of confidence and belief and of course there's a famous game that everyone always talks about but even before that that's what i want people to hear is these roots start with the family they start in the community year and they start and whether you can listen and notice other people i len dawson one of my favorite people the same person i met my rookie year when everybody hated me because they'd cut john stennerud and even though i'm breaking all of his records they still are you know not really liking me very much and len dawson was the same person then i find out he came from a family it was either 12 or 16 children so he had to be humbled because he knew he was just one of many tell me before we move on from your family your dad's a steel worker you know i mean talk about work ethic talk about pain and sacrifice and discomfort what did you learn witnessing your dad and how he carried himself because i think one of the great gifts of joe namath was and i'm going to use this word you have charisma which everybody saw and felt and it was combined with his human humility which is the weird uh very rare combination what did you learn from your father wow man i i uh you know he he he went to the third grade and after that he started working he was a first generation uh he came from hungary and uh uh he was he was a workhorse he was a worker and uh he took me up to steel mill when i was about uh 11 years old or so and uh scared me to death uh seeing this molten metal being poured and the heat from the furnaces and that kind of thing man i i was amazed that he had to wear long underwear under his clothes so he wouldn't get burned or get hot but he worked he never complained about it it was a good job he had several jobs before that uh but he he worked and uh well we'd go on all kinds of we had our disagreements uh you know like a teenager would have and uh falling out but uh we could talk for hours about the family one one thing i admit that i didn't mention when i was describing my three brothers was my older sister uh when i was four yeah we adopted my sister my mother god bless her you know she where if she had those three boys three years apart sonny bob and frank and i really think uh going into having three boys she still wanted a girl so i came along six years after frank right i think she was trying for a girl she and that man and uh i can remember the day that we adopted my sister rita uh she was six years older than me i was four she was like 10. and i can remember peeking around the corner waiting for her to come in the door when they knocked on the door well she looked after me a lot too and because of my sister rita and the way she looked after me and it wasn't always you know smooth but uh she she helped protect me i i developed uh a respect also for uh girls the ladies and rita you know she was terrific man so she'd have to look after me when everybody else was gonna i get to go with the high school girls rita when she was 16 or so and i was 10. i can remember a carload of girls four or five girls and me sitting in between them in the back because she had to babysit me but it was a friday night and they wanted to go out you know to the hamburger joint and stuff but they probably thought you were pretty cute i'm sure they didn't object well i hope so i mean i got along with them but uh my family that's where it all starts for all of us i believe and and we got to be fortunate to have understanding parents family neighbors you know otherwise it's a tougher goal one of the great things about football too is you know you have these male figures and obviously they're female figures in our lives um and you think about um so many of the players we played with coming from broken families that didn't have a father sometimes didn't have a mother and and a lot of their structure came from football um how about your comments on the different cultural uh the differences in cultures where you had guys coming from all parts of the country some with great structure in their family some without some with discipline with great talent some with unbelievable talent but not a lot of discipline uh any comment about that and and how football is one of the great uh examples of how we can get along despite all the differences that we grow up with well i think again i don't know exactly uh uh who said it but uh he the well yeah he was not sitting through the first stone that they're doing that time you know when they're getting ready to throw stones at a lady uh way back public here right uh i made mistakes man and uh i wasn't judgmental of every teammate so to speak or every person i meet again i was taught to be respectful no matter what color what what where they kind of had come from you know and you learn to get to know about people you give them a chance just like you want your chance yeah to be understood and uh i i just i could have uh had some ignorance about that maybe i should have been uh should have would have could have yeah but we can't but maybe you didn't know what you didn't know so then that retreat that defaults back to your intuition joe and i've always felt one of the great things about you is you had this innate intuition about human beings and i don't care what anybody else says i mean a lot of great people but i really i want people to see there are ways to handle fame and you not only were the greatest quarterback in the nfl when you played uh winning that first super bowl for the jets over the the dominant supposedly nfl but you were in new york city with and we see it today what media putting all this extra pressure on you so that that's the thing that i think separated you is you handled that like you were in a sunny day in alabama and there you were in broadway in the midst of the media capital of the world you know nick i can remember the first time seeing my paint my my name in the paper i think all of us uh we're excited about that we want to see ourselves recognize for something get a pat on the back and the first time i did see my name in the paper i was about 10 years old or whatever on a little league baseball team and uh i when the paper came man i ran and got it and i came in and opened the sports page and i was lying on the floor man i'm looking for the box scores of my team our team the elks playing against somebody uh the turners the owls or somebody and i saw my name in black and white or just you know in the paper the black print name it uh ab4 uh hits and runs hits two and i was so happy to see that and i couldn't wait to show my brother somebody anybody take a look with me man look at this and my brother bob came home from work and uh the first thing i did was you know take bob bob look look and then they kept my name in the paper and he looked at it and he saw what i was pointing at and he looked at uh two for four he said what happened the other two times man that just knocked me out you know i don't oh oh yeah [Music] i literally learned not to read about myself because of what coach bryant or someone had told me earlier it's either well coach bounds either too damn good uh it's not real they sensationalized thing you didn't play that well or [Music] you take a beating because you're throwing five interceptions and i recognized the difficulty of juggling the two so i developed the habit of not reading about myself when i was in the city my friends would tell me about things you know um but literally i'm driving out to practice riding out the practice one day from manhattan with my uh roommate not a short drive by the way well out to say it was only 20 minutes from manhattan so you know at that time we lived on the east side so it was not a major hall but i'm reading the paper and i catch myself man i'm so frustrated and angry about something that i read and it dawned on me wait a minute what what am i doing to myself here you know i'm distracted i'm going to practice and i've been taking this stuff with me so i i just stopped and i survived i promise you i uh my physiology didn't take the kind of beatings with the uh lows that you can have whenever uh uh you talked about in a negative fashion or written about in a negative fashion because you either deserved it you really didn't it feels bad so yeah well um i i'm i'm reminded of john wooden one of the great coaches of all time uh and it was always about never too high never too low um and he he could do that with a def touch some other coaches could be pretty harsh i'd like to move on to your coaches especially you talked about larry bruno and then you talked about mr ross and maybe one of them was a little bit more encouraging than the other by the way i'll just get a little editorial in the power of coaches and so many coaches in the early years of little league etc that are so impressive on kids are parents they're not trained but the power of coaches to get over their own ego trip that they're going to be the next tom landry or bill belichick or you know we bu bank etc to imprint on a kid to brand a kid who doesn't know who he or she is yet with negativity or confidence it's a great power and it's a sacred power and it just makes such a big difference and i hope that whoever is watching if they are a coach or know a coach uh to help make that coach understand they've got a sacred and wonderful responsibility that can uh breed a lifetime of encouragement in the end we have to live with ourselves you've learned to live with yourself and all your mistakes i've learned to live with my mistakes my missed field goals and hopefully to grow i love my life now i get the feeling you love your life now too um but tell us about bear bryant and what it was like what you learned from that that figure that mountain at mount rushmore of a figure you know nick before we jump into coach brad when you talk about coaches uh like every walk of life you know you have some that are better at communicating than others and that's putting it a nice way um it's about us you learned it it's about us not about me team sports and life in general you know yeah you have to survive it's about you you know individually uh but it's how you understand the big game you know it's about us and people to get in positions of leadership how they go about conducting themselves with the inclusion of an understanding that it's about us collectively i think jupiter florida might have been the first place that the the town uh had to control the parents at athletic games somehow yeah and they made the they had the parents sign a behavior contract yeah to be able to have access to what's their children player to have their children playing the coaches too to have that kind of behavioral contract because we've seen coaches that uh yeah that's a tough job it's tough job coaching it's time consuming more time than we see is as parents or players that are there you know it's you've got to really want to do that uh and it's a hard job but lady luck plays a role in our lives and sometimes you get lucky with good leadership and sometimes you're unlucky with uh a bad uh foreman okay you're working for for the city and he tells you to do something did you try coaching at any point oh i i uh i my teammate john dockery uh uh with the jets he came up with an idea to use uh the sport of football to teach children about life and we had uh we we ran we were part of a football camp for many years where both the boys and finally girls too wanted to come to the camp and not only play the game but get the guidance and uh yeah i i've done quite a bit of coaching on the field through the camp and uh trying to do a gentle bit of coaching with my daughters when they were growing up and and you know uh uh it's it's very sensitive maybe borderline you know you don't want to be too aggressive uh uh you've got you need to be under understanding to some point but you got to be firm it's got to be disciplined and they got to get the message they have to get the message and you got to be given the right kind of message and it takes uh practice trial and error repetition first rule of learning is repetition you know you yeah we all make mistakes but coaching i've learned uh yeah that's a tough tough gig then you have to have the passion to do it because it is difficult and it is time consuming what was the great lesson from from bear bryant as you look at that juggernaut which is again a juggernaut now oh man it was an ongoing uh wonderful experience uh relationship that coach bryant had most of his players uh i say most because some guys didn't get the message from him early on and uh they they packed their bags and and left you know those of us that stayed really learned to appreciate what he was doing the kind of man he was as a youngster he shared with us growing up in morrow bottom arkansas and how he went through some life uh when he played football he he he let us in on his home life to begin with and uh he was demanding um very demanding you needed to do things his way because he knew he was right from experience you know he was a military man after college uh he became a coach when he got out of the military in the military he uh coached some but uh he became a college football coach i believe the first time at the university of maryland as a head coach and uh you did it his way and his way was the right way you know joe uh i was lucky enough and it's it's one of the great things so like a fine wine as as you get out of football and these relationships evolve i got to be really close and have some great relationships with our so-called enemies our nemesis the raiders and kenny stabler another alabama man uh and in fact i was lucky enough about nine years ago eight years ago to emcee his exo foundation golf tournament in mobile alabama and i felt such an honor and i feel a resonance because both of you and of course he's more southern than you but you you still carry yourself with a little bit you know even though you've got western pennsylvania branded all over you you still carry yourself with a little bit of that southern charm as well as kenny stabler did um what's that about uh i believe it's locker room style i believe uh goes back to team style uh i can do damn yankees it'd be sky master center i mean when i'm normal when i'm just talking with the guys and the people that get into a uh conversational style yes but if it needs to be proper grammar english uh dictation that you i evolved into that with the training that i've had [Music] the alabama dialect that i pick up and have a twang at the locker room yeah sure i like this style uh that's a basic part of me growing up in beaver falls pennsylvania you know with the guys we weren't uh the best of students that's the one thing nick that if we had a chance to do things over and we don't get that chance really but a new opportunity comes up and can't present itself in a way i would have been a better student in school i wouldn't have been daydreaming in school about getting out and playing ball well i was doing that too i was wondering yeah what what uh insight the kenny stable was a few years behind you right yes kenny was a freshman when i was a senior and freshman couldn't play that was back then uh freshman we had three games when we were freshmen we practiced against the varsity every day of the week but uh we did have three freshman games and kenny was a freshman and you you know you could tell he was special yeah let's move on joe just by the way everybody that's watching joe namath one of the great characters and performers and competitors and also one of the big hearts and i want to really stay on that is the main theme of this is how do we as we fight through our own adversity our own games in life our own tragedies like we've many have had with cobit this year there's always an unpredictability to life how do we can continue to have this empathy in this heart and joe namath is uh one of the great hearts i've met in my life um let's talk about players and uh whether it's at uh alabama but most importantly uh as you took over with the biggest contract uh bonus ever 450 000 which probably would be about 25 million today or more uh ballet 50 million for all i know um you know there's a lot of expectation and you come to weeb eubank and and the new york jets and all this expectation what was that like for you uh i met two guys uh before i got to training camp uh up in buffalo at a golf outing one was named veto babe pirelli and the other was named george blanda i hadn't played it down of professional football yet and i'm sitting with those two guys that both played for coach bryant at the university of kentucky okay veto was called the kentucky babe and george uh well he was just great george blanda and he turned into something very special as he went along of course um it was it was different i mean again if i didn't have the the leadership from coach bryant or coach bruno or home you know i would have struggled and i and i did struggle in new york i can remember walking the streets by myself my rookie year man i felt alone it was whatever lights everywhere i'm walking down second avenue no one knew me yeah per se i mean no one compared to how our team grew and i grew in popularity with our team and all but i had those moments of really feeling small and small in new york is small yeah yeah um but uh if we didn't win it wouldn't it wouldn't have worked and myself having played for coach bryant yeah i knew i could play and visiting with george and babe up there at that time they gave me the confidence that i could play they had played for him they told me you played for coach bryan yeah you can play yeah i had watched vito and george of the afl playing football from 1960 on man when i when i was still in high school but in in college i'd watch him every week and i'd watch the afl every week too so i knew they had some terrific athletes and i i i was just happy to be drafted by both leagues and uh uh you have to come in the nfl by the way which team drafted you in the nfl the st louis cardinals uh they uh drafted me and they had a good quarterback there too but the decision that came down to what coach bryant told me to do and he said he asked me after the auburn game my last game what i was going to ask for i was sitting in the locker room man and i was putting steve sloan or a quarterback sock on his foot because he hurt his knee in the game and i had to come in and play some because my knee was hurt but i was i got to play it i'm down there getting steve's uh sock on coach brian standing there and he's joe you know what you're going to ask for and i'm just working as well coach don troll don true was a quarterback for the houston oilers i said well coach don trill signed for a hundred thousand dollars last year so i was thinking about something like that and i looked at him coach brown he took a big old draw when people used to smoke a lot they didn't we didn't know how bad it was for us uh coach brian took a big old draw off his cigarette blew the smoke up in the air and then he looked down and he said well joe you go ahead and ask for two hundred thousand dollars it's a better place to start and uh i didn't have to ask for anything this is what it was nick um the the saint louis cardinals representatives came to the dormitory and uh my dorm our football dorm and uh unannounced and we ended up talking upstairs in my room and uh i i couldn't sign with him coach brian had told uh the team and had told we seniors uh not to sign any kind of contracts before the bowl game we had coming up january 1st and uh because we'd make ourselves and ruin it for the team and all right coach bryant's exact words i don't even want you to take coca-cola [Laughter] so okay let's let's move on to you know you're walking the streets as a rookie feeling alone and yet that team began to play better each year you kind of grew with the team the group the team grew with you people began to notice you could do things that others couldn't i'm reminded frankly of patrick mahomes right now people seeing something in that play and they're going he can do things i've never seen before you were not patrick mahomes you were joe namath that team though that arm that athletic ability now begins to build into this you know championship potential team uh let's move on to that and how uh things approach where you knew you were potentially going to be a champion a leader of a champion what was that like for you joe namath as you began to see more expectations more recognition on the street your own private life which we'll leave alone for right now but certainly you had a lot of fun and you had to keep that balance and that focus if you didn't get it done on games no one would have cared well you know we had some good players on the team but i got there you see uh i was i'm an alabama basketball fan now too and always have been since i've been there and their coach said something uh recently when he was getting immaculate and patting them on the back because it's only a second year there and they they've made the playoffs they won the sec and he said well you know coach avery who the coach was ahead of him he said he didn't leave the cupboard bear for me when i got here there were already some players there when i got to the jets they already had a jerry filming on the team rocky rochester on the team sherman plunkett on the team you know we brought in berlin biggs you know it was my year yeah we we had some players but we still needed to improve uh big time and uh nick four coaches four assistant coaches we view bank and four assistant coaches understand as opposed to 20. yeah you know we thought you mentioned patrick mccomb mchomes uh mahomes and i look at the game today and i'm sure you do too uh it's never been played better than it is today and for a variety of reasons uh coach bryant well yeah coach saban he's done his homework along with bill belichick they go back they watch close to the coaches of yesteryear paul brown a lot of people follow paul brown the game is today from what those guys did earlier it evolved and the four coaches on a professional staff can you imagine that the time the hours that they spent just breaking down a game film when everything is prepared for them now you know with the modern technology yeah uh so the the athletes today in all sports is so much bigger faster stronger better players than the exceptional guys of yesteryear i mean gretzky could play in any time right you know you do have guys that uh could have played i mentioned uh early land and buck buchanan and bobby dale willie lanier that kansas city bunch uh uh they could play anytime yeah but for the most part man these cats today are the best collectively and it's because of what was ahead of them yeah you know they've worked through that history right also a sense of history i want to bring up something because i want to take all time your busy man and your awesome daughter jessica is there too we want to don't want to take too much time but you are not a complainer and here you have this career first time ever a quarterback threw over 4 000 yards but you're throwing in the windiest time stadium on the planet shea stadium it's all chewed up uh you had to deal with rules that allowed uh the receivers to get beaten up at the line of scrimmage if you had the rules today joe you'd be throwing for five and six thousand yards too and maybe your knees might have had a couple more years in them as well uh what do you think about that what it would be like for you today because you know i think one of the things that we are really lacking today as you've alluded to is a lack of appreciation for the sacrifices and the context of living 10 and 20 and 50 years ago and that appreciation for where we are today so we don't uh negate what our parents had to go through what they learned the sacrifices they made and how that made it better for us but for you let's say you're you're drafted today by let's say the new york jets and they i think sam darnold may have some potential but uh but with the rules the way they are today in a stadium that maybe isn't quite so windy on artificial turf what do you think it would be like for you uh we did all right we won the championship that was the goal to win a championship i i should have made the goal to win seven championships huh did anybody ever make that goal you know besides otto graham and tom brady you know yeah but uh things improve and and the world it's so fast we we learn from the past if we if we go back and look at it but uh we're going to keep up with speed now and keep ahead of the game uh keep ahead of the other thing nick i don't know did anybody work year round on a regular basis to hone their skills back then we didn't we had other jobs to do i mean we had bobby bell worked in a car factory that's right and uh our our center john schmidt went to work we practiced at one o'clock every day had to be at the stadium by noon so we had at least a handful of guys there or more that went to work in the morning and then came to practice i mean that we were getting the guys were making a regular salary at 10 grand 20 grand well those things changed and it's gotten better and and it's wonderful how it's gotten better but this world itself is still struggling in a lot of ways this country itself is still struggling in a lot of ways i wish we were a better team throughout the country working together yeah uh and you need to focus you see in sports it's almost easy you have that that that focus on the championship of being the best for that season yeah uh and if you don't make it that season then maybe you'll do it the next you do it next it's difficult uh for us to see what's going on around the world and in our country and put it all together to get everybody seeing eye to eye and understanding what's really important in life uh you know we didn't talk about spirituality either man whenever i felt alone and i don't know about you nick if you've ever felt alone but who do you talk to when you're really low yeah who do we talk to when we feel like we are alone and no one else can help us at this i mean i know the doctor and the nurses down the hall of you're in that hospital bed or whatever you just feel alone scared you know the good lord and whatever you want to call your spiritual leader man stay tight with them i really believe in your spiritual leader because uh when things are going wrong when things are bad when they're tough whenever you have a child that maybe is is suffering and what do you do well you can't you've got to talk to that spiritual leader man so uh let's keep that in mind too because without that strength uh i always turn to and it felt like i was understood and that little message went off in my head all right you know you gotta do this you gotta do this better you wanna do this just do this and then comes back to that listening and then it's the hardest most beautiful kind of listening where it's a spiritual listening where you just something comes to you and you know it's pure and you know it's right and it helps you guide you through the tough times before we talk to and i do want to ask you you know what was the biggest mistake and how you learned from it but i want to get to that championship season because there has been no more pressure uh than that game in miami and i remember photos of you with the all the press sitting around you by the pool and you know the expectations of that game because i i want this to be something people can relate to you're getting ready for the big presentation you've lost your job and you're you're trying to take your life to it and your family to a new level how did you manage those expectations you know i know that lots of stories around the famous guarantee but you carried yourself again your body language no matter how you were feeling internally you carried yourself with great confidence tell us about that week you know the biggest week of your life at that point i would imagine uh how did you handle it you know we've all been underdogs before that yeah i was an underdog many times in my life growing up and doing things you know and i never had a coach tell me or someone tell me i couldn't do something that i was determined to do uh we were underdogs big deal i didn't play on any teams that expected to go out and lose whether it was pop warner or whether it was high school or college we expected to go out there and win you know and we practiced hard individually and collectively to convince ourselves individually and hopefully collectively we're going to win this game we just got to go do it we we know we can because we've done it before we were underdogs before and and nick i swear i i i came to the realization there are more underdogs out in the world yeah they're our favorites and the best stories the best stories the best stories are all about underdogs they couldn't do something they're not they haven't been as fortunate with the beginnings they weren't dealt a full deck underdogs when we won that day that was a win for the underdogs all over that was the one thing i took away from there other than having achieved a goal man it was a victory for the underdogs to show them you can do it don't let anybody tell you you can't do something you have a passion to accomplish and do and it's with a group it's not all about yourself because you know darwell it takes a collective group to put things together to make it happen life is a team effort life itself what do we do on our own yeah joe namath is it your life purpose you could say in some ways about representing and helping uplifting the underdogs in the people you meet in your life uh i i don't know nick it wasn't the purpose uh in a sense uh on uh every day whether i'm in a grocery store or a restaurant somewhere whatever every day and i meet somebody i want us to separate in a positive fashion i'll do my best if somebody's oh hey joe hi oh hi how you doing yeah i'll take some time i'll spend some time with them even if i'm going somewhere i'm going to make sure when we celebrate i want to feel good about having met them that meet me i want to leave in a positive fashion yeah i want them to feel uh comfortable with what we've done that that's i i i find myself uh i've grown into that and that's the way i was early on i'd rather it be that way that i've grown into it and i figured it out then i had it figured out and then i forgot about it later because i was this and that let me just i'll ask because we're winding up on this interview with one of my favorite people anywhere um 1989. and i will say it was the worst field conditions the old cleveland stadium probably about a foot of mud uh end of the game i kicked the field goal with four minutes left to tie the game 10 to 10 it's marty schottenheimer's return to cleveland late in the season steve deberg was our quarterback and he was complaining that mike webster the legendary center was now on our team and mike had slept with the window open and she comes in the locker in that tiny crappy locker room in cleveland he'd been freezing all night we're laughing but now it's at the end of the game and somehow we complete a 50-yard pass and i've got to kick a field goal and i miss it and they're offside and i've got to kick another one and i miss it then it's in overtime and i'm just devastated i'm the most accurate kicker in nfl history and yet here i am letting my team down and then i missed that one and i remember vividly the paper the next day in kansas city in one day and i have a feeling you can relate to this there's a cartoon of me like i'm one of these little uh clowns with a box of spring coming out of my head like i'd lost it like i was somehow in one day i'd gone from the most accurate to the worst kicker in nfl history and i resolved i would never ever ever ever have that feeling again and i just dug deeper and that's the great thing about sports and it can be the great thing about life is i just found places in me i didn't know i had and i went from 77 to 86 no one else in the nfl was above 80 i led the nfl in scoring the next year and i remember marty schottenheimer my goal was that marty schonheimer would come up to me because he was not one who was going to give you a lot of compliments and i just was going to shut up which is another important thing for me to learn and just get it done and he he just gave me a hug and said man what's happened to you and it felt so good to be someone that my teammates could depend on so in life i mean i've made lots of mistakes but what is the mistake that you've learned the most from joe namath wow uh i've made a lot of mistakes i mean we do we i mean god that i've learned the most from uh yeah yeah we don't have enough time to go through this because it comes through my mind the the last time i i mean i probably made a mistake yesterday or somehow or whatever but uh playing uno with my granddaughter yesterday but the serious mistakes uh i changed my life a little uh a great deal whenever i stopped alcohol yeah i i had dinner with my friend last night uh whose son died of opioid and fentanyl on may 8th and and despite everything she did despite loving him to death he killed himself essentially um what message do you have from what you've learned about being able to overcome one form of addiction to be able to bring out this beautiful loving person that inspires so many people i love it because it's not about joe namath some sort of political figure it's the human joe namath that i really respect the most that i know that whether it's a garbage man or whether it's somebody that's important you're going to treat them with amazing respect well addictions uh happen to a lot of us uh and i start out with the two most in my opinion addictive legal substances that are out there is sugar that has said to every child and adults throughout the sugar and nicotine nicotine you could steal but we've learned about nicotine and backed off and nicotine big time but addictions when it comes to drugs uh medications and alcohol i've been fortunate to deal with both of those kind of situations one is an athlete and being careful uh early on i was told about morphine when i was in the hospital for my first knee operation and when they started weaning me off the morphine they told me this was going to be tough and it was i told you i talked to god nick i promise you when i was coming off morphine in 1965 in january uh i felt like my insides were coming through my shirt sweat i mean just things that were just i i was i was going crazy i thought but with what they had told me about the morphine and how i would feel tough coming off of that i was able to go ahead and endure and there were other things in life other times with medications uh oxycontin for example uh whenever you're prescribed they're giving it to you you think all right before you knew about it you know you're listening to so many players today that's a big yeah and the things that i went through myself mentally i recognized it earlier because this was later in my life uh but meantime i knew that was doing something to me i'd look at my watch because i was supposed to take one every four hours and i was wondering when i could get the next one yeah yeah you see so i i i got off of that told the doctors not to ever give me that again you know there's got to be something else you could do that and then the experience with drinking alcohol i i through the years uh i quit drinking alcohol uh the first time and uh we could all fall into the problem with alcohol most of us can anyway because it's everywhere uh if your family your grandparents are drinking my first drink came from my grandpa when i was about six or five i can see myself standing with him he's holding a shot glass of rock and rye and i'm standing beside him he has his hand on my head that was the picture well you know what he gave me a little sip of that rock and rye and it was oh you know i it was a for a kid you tasted awful well i never did have anything to that tasted good when it came to alcohol but i drank yeah i drank for a number of years until my wife a former wife told me that i needed help i needed to stop drinking my oldest daughter from you met she was about a year and a half old and so uh i went and got help nick i i went and got help first with a guy that was uh a psychologist uh that would listen to me i'd talk to him and when i'd leave his office i would go to the state store to package store in los angeles and buy a pint and go back home and i didn't think she could smell it right i thought that vodka you can't smell that well she smelled it so i did i i i quit so i quit for 13 years i went to meetings i was finished for 13 years and uh something came up uh that uh i use as an excuse to go back to drinking and i drank uh for two more years and then i had an incident uh that was uh drinking all day i was and it happened on a football field in new york with the lady in the media and i was uh really humbly embarrassed for her my family i let everybody down and i stopped that and i went back and i got an education i got a better education i was determined uh to get that out of my life because i wanted to be on the same page as my daughters and turns up grandchildren now or whatever and for those people that do have the addiction don't hide nick don't hide share that with someone share it with someone you can get help you can get help we need help we need the education it takes courage it takes courage when you know you're being held to expectations of being the perfect person the joe namath the iconic person it takes it maybe even harder for you right because you know people expect you to be perfect well you know what nick it wasn't hard for me because i was taught early on it's not all about me it's about us and what i had become i didn't like that i needed help in stopping that i recognized it because it was pointed out by other people i mean it was there to be seen by the world and i first thought of my family i thought about my friends i guess wow look i let them down and myself but i didn't know uh you got to reach out and get help this is what i'm saying own up to it recognize what you're going through and get help people want to help you and thank god we have people out there yeah thank god a lot man but god wants you to get help too whatever your your spirituality you call them it's uh it's someone that wants you to get help and joe you've been so kind to so many people so many people love you they want to be there for you you know we could go on and on i'm just so humbled and grateful to have had this time with you and i hope i can always be someone you can rely on to do whatever it is to help you and anything you're doing is there something some foundation some cause we just talked about addiction uh some way that people can get in touch uh or help you and support the one big cause it meant means the most to you oh well no there's so many good causes man if you've got a problem check around your own town there that's for sure uh alcoholics anonymous you know if it comes to drinking and if it's a drug problem just ask for help for your local doctor they'll point you in the right direction or somebody in this day and age all all around the country i'm just guessing now i i don't know if you live out in the country somewhere and you're not in constant touch with the hospital or somebody close by how to get help and you don't have a computer or whatever trust believe me somebody wants to help you share your problem with somebody share your problem with somebody that wants to help you they'll want to help you if they don't you find somebody else but you repeat one of the things coach brian said it and i i believe it was coach bryant but uh maybe some other coaches too if you think you can't you won't yeah if you think you can't you won't well damn it don't think you can't do something think you can do something with the right help with the right effort man you can accomplish almost anything you have a dream to do and it's all right to dream you make the dreams come true man don't say i can't do it i'm an underdog yeah you can do it we can do it you have people that want to help you well joe um what an honor it's it's been to have you on brother um and i just want to say the great thing about joe namath and at this point in my life i'm turning 65 in a couple months and joe you're only 29 but at my advance i have to say um it's the fact we have a program called champions for the homeless you know whatever it is that you if you don't have something in your life like that find that because the bottom line is joe namath every day will take time to help at least one person feel better about themselves feel like even if they're the underdog that they can do it and that's the gift that god gives every single one of us each our own way we might be able to throw the football 80 yards and win a super bowl or we might just have the chance to help a little lady who's alone in an apartment and she suddenly feels loved again because we took that time so joe namath you embody that empathy that compassion as well as anybody i know we're so grateful to have had you on this and i just want to end this with something i'd love to say which is it's not the brightness of the spotlight on you it's the intensity of the light within you joe namath god bless you brother and thank you so much for coming on the show thank you my friend i look to see you in person sometime soon you got it thanks for having me thank you [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: KANNAWAY

Views: 136

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Keywords: Kannaway, Hemp Oil, Hemp, Sustainable Hemp Oil, Kway

Id: bLFT5s1hhAo

Length: 67min 25sec (4045 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021