Joe Namath, the brash young quarterback of the New York Jets professional football team, made an audacious  prediction in  January 1969.  He “guaranteed”  that his team would defeat the venerable Baltimore Colts in the world championship game that year.  Namath’s prediction was especially  provocative since the Baltimore Colts were heavily favored to win what became the first named superbowl game – Super Bowl III.  What’s more, Namath delivered on his promise with a “Most-Valuable-Player” performance on game day, making it one of the more memorable and colorful acts in professional sport.  But the full story – of the man, the boast, and the times  — is even more interesting, especially given all the controversy and media attention that swirled around Namath in the years leading up to Super Bowl III.

     In 1969, Joe Namath and the Jets were the outsiders in professional football – coming from that “upstart” football league; the American Football League or AFL; a league many regarded as lightweight and in no way the equal of NFL, the National Football League.  Only two years earlier, the AFL had begun playing the more established NFL in an annual championship game.  The first two of those games– then called championship games, not Super Bowls – were won by the NFL team, the Green Bay Packers.  So, by 1969 most fans expected that the champion NFL team, the Baltimore Colts, would likewise dispense with Namath and the AFL’s New York Jets.  The odds makers in fact, were betting against the Jets — at first, 7-to-1 against them beating the Colts.  By game day the Colts were favored to win by 18-19 points.  So the popular banter leading up to the game was that the Jets would be hammered by the Colts.  That’s what everybody believed  — everybody that is, except Joe Namath.  What follows is some back story on Namath and the Jets in the years leading up to 1969, a description of the Jets-vs.-Colts battle in Super Bowl III, and then some accounting of how Namath and this game helped change the tenor of professional football, making it a more valuable business and a more center-stage part of popular culture.

Broadway Joe

     Joe Namath’s grandfather, a Hungarian immigrant, worked in the mines and steel mills around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Joe grew up as the youngest of five children with 3 brothers and 1 sister in a working class Hungarian Catholic family in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.  Namath’s parents divorced when he was 12 years old, not a happy development for young Joe.  Among other things, he was known to frequent local pool halls in his younger years.  But Joe Namath also became a standout scholastic athlete, excelling in high school football, basketball and baseball.  In basketball, he could dunk the ball in competition, then uncommon in high school (a few high school photos appear below in Sources).  He was also a good enough baseball player to receive offers from a number of major league teams, including the Yankees, Mets, Indians, Reds, Pirates, and Phillies.  He admired Roberto Clemente of Pirates and at one point thought he might play for Pittsburgh.  The Chicago Cubs offered him a bonus of $50,000, but he decided to play football, partly at his mother’s urging him to get a college education.  Major colleges sought to recruit him, including Notre Dame, Penn State and others.  But in the end he decided to play for Paul “Bear” Bryant at the University of Alabama.  Namath led Alabama to a 29-4 record over three seasons, including a National Championship in 1964.  However, he would not complete his college degree requirements until years later, in 2007.

     In late November 1964, Namath was selected in both the NFL and AFL drafts for college players – 12th by the St. Louis Cardinals of the NFL and No.1 overall in the AFL draft by the New York Jets.  Namath signed with the Jets in January 1965 for a then record $427,000.  Part of the deal included a retirement plan that guaranteed Namath $5,000 a year for life after his playing career ended.  At signing, for good measure, a brand new Lincoln Continental automobile was given to him.

     Namath arrived in the pro ranks with something a reputation.  At Alabama he had been suspended as a junior when coach Bear Bryant kicked him off the team for drinking and carousing before the last two games of the season.  With his good looks and no shortage of female admirers, Namath came off as something of a playboy.  And there was a certain star quality about him recognized by others.  When Jets owner and former Hollywood executive Sonny Werblin signed the 22 year-old University of Albama star he said: “When Joe Namath walks into a room, you know he’s there.  When any other high-priced rookie walks in, he’s just a nice-looking young man.”  Werblin also reportedly said to Namath at his signing, “I don’t know whether you’ll play on our team or make a picture for Universal.”

     Sonny Werblin, in fact, knew something about star power.  For 30 years he had represented Hollywood and music stars for the Music Corporation of America (MCA), the biggest talent agency in show business. Among those he represented were: Jack Benny, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Carson, Ronald Reagan, Jack Paar and others.  He also helped put together TV productions such as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jackie Gleason Show.  When he retired in 1965 as a vice-president of MCA and president of MCA-TV, he was known as “the world’s greatest agent.”

     Werblin came to the Jets knowing well the business value of stars and talent.  He would later tell Sports Illustrated: “I believe in the star system.  It’s the only way to sell tickets.  It’s what you put on stage or the playing field that draws people.”  Werblin and partners had purchased the faltering New York franchise in 1963.  In the 1965 college draft, Werblin spent $1.1 million to assemble 28 rookies – the most money then ever committed for new athletic talent in one year by any pro football team.  Among those acquired was Joe Namath, of course, but also two other quarterbacks, including John Hurate from Notre Dame, the Heisman Trophy winner in 1964, who Werblin also singed for $200,000.  Still, it was Namath who got the notice.

     Namath, in fact, was billed by the press as a star at the outset  — a star in that most glittery of galleries that is New York city.  Sports Illustrated put him on its July 1965 cover with Broadway in the background.  In fact, Namath would later get the nickname, “Broadway Joe.”  The Jets, meanwhile, were then a franchise being rebuilt and reborn.  Founded in 1960 as the AFL’s New York Titans, by 1963, they had gone through a change in ownership.  The team also adopted the New York Jets as their new name and hired a new coach, Weeb Ewbank, who had produced back-to-back championships with the Baltimore Colts in 1958-59.  By 1965, as the Jets began their new season with new players such as Namath, there were great expectations.  The AFL by then as well had a brand-new $36 million, 5-year deal with NBC-TV network to televise the league’s games nationally.  And the Jets in the big New York market, and then one of the city’s hottest sports teams, were sure to be a good draw.  They would also prove to be popular nationwide.  Namath, stepping onto this stage, did not disappoint, either as a player or a high-profile personality.  Off the field, Namath’s reputation as a ladies man became part of his “man about town” image, appearing in public with actresses, models, and other stars.  But on the football field he also stood out, and in the fall of 1965, after a brief battle with other contending Jet quarterbacks, he began appearing in sports-page headlines for leading the Jets to wins over their opponents.  In his first season, Namath appeared in 13 games, nine as the starting QB.  He threw for 2,220 yards and 18 touchdowns.  However, the Jets finished their season with 5 wins, 8 losses and 1 tie, good enough for a 2nd place finish in their division.  Namath, meanwhile, took AFL rookie-of-the year honors.

 
1966: 6-6-2

     As the 1966 season began, Namath did not start the opening game on September 9th against the Dolphins in Miami.  However, on September 18th, not only did Namath start, but threw five touchdown passes, missing a sixth by a yard or so, as the Jets crushed the Houston Oilers, 52 to 13 with 54,681 fans on hand, setting a record for the league.  However, in the following week, the Jets fought for their lives, hanging on with a second-half rally to beat the Denver Broncos, 16-7.  They then fought the Boston Patriots to tie, and won their next game beating San Diego.  They were 4-0-1 and leading the Eastern Division.  By October 16th, the Jets suffered their first loss in a second game with the Oilers, with Namath tossing four interceptions.  About this time, Namath was featured on a Sports Ilustrated cover story with the title “Jet Propelled Joe Namath,” focusing on his earlier games that season.  By mid-November 1966, the Jets had lost four straight.

     In early December 1966, with a few games remaining and Namath leading the AFL in passing yards and completions, the Jets faced the Oakland Raiders in California.  In that game, on soggy turf, the Jets tied Oakland, 28-28, on a rare two-point pass play from Namath to Emerson Boozer in the final minute.  In the Jets’ final game that season, a showdown with the Boston Patriots, Namath threw three touchdown passes in a 38-28 upset victory.  The Jets finished the year with 6 wins, 6 losses, and 2 ties, ending in third place in the Eastern Division.  However, that December in the off-season, New York sports fans held their breath as Namath went into surgery to repair a gimpy knee.  The 23 year-old quarterback survived the surgery, and by early January 1967 he reported to the press that his knee felt great, then heading to Miami, Florida to recuperate.  By July of that year, in the Jet’s first scrimmages, Namath was moving smoothly on the field at his quarterback post and no apparent problems with the surgically-repaired right knee.  He was soon back to his old form again.

     However, as the August 1967 exhibition season got underway, Namath appeared to have a little  Alabama undergraduate still in his soul, as he violated the team curfew one night, staying out late.  Coach Weeb Ewbank later dealt with his quarterback in private, levying a stiff fine on Namath. 

1967: 8-5-1

      As the regular season began in 1967, the Jets dropped their opening game on the road to the Buffalo Bills and had a week off until their next game.  On September 23rd against the Denver Broncos, Namath was in good form as he passed for 399 yards to help the Jets win, 38-24.  The following week, on October 1st, as the Jets’ first home game that season was played at Shea Stadium, a record crowd of 61,240 watched Namath lead his team to win over the Miami Dolphins, 29-7.  Namath had a total 415 passing yards that game. Running back Emerson Boozer also scored three touchdowns.  The Jets then beat the Oakland Raiders at Shea the following week, and then tied the Houston Oilers the week after that in a game in which Namath made a game-saving tackle on the four yard-line during the closing minutes of play, preventing the Oilers from winning.  On October 22nd, the Jets beat the Miami Dolphins, 33-14, after Namath had built a 24-0 first half lead.  The following week, a Namath passing touchdown in the fourth quarter gave the Jets a 30-23 win over Boston Patriots.  On November 11th, the Jets lost to Kansas City on the road, 42-18.  Then back home at Shea Stadium they beat the Buffalo Bills, 20-10 on November 12th.  They next traveled to Boston’s Fenway Park where they beat the Patriots 29-24.  At the end of November they had a week off, but returned to lose three straight games – to the Denver Broncos, 33-24; the Kansas City Chiefs, 21-7; and Oakland Raiders, 38-29.  In their final game of the 1967 season, the Jets beat the San Diego Chargers in San Diego, 42-31.

     The Jets finished that year with an 8-5-1 record.  It was their best showing since Namath had joined the team.  For his part, Namath had put together a spectacular year.  He complied 4,007 passing yards, which made him the first-ever pro quarterback in a 14-game season to pass for 4,000 yards in a season.  At the time, passing for 3,000 yards in a single season was considered quite good.  By the end of the year, Namath was still making the style pages occasionally, noted for his expensive suits and generally natty dress,  sometimes described as the “swinging quarterback of the New York Jets.”  One December story in the New York Times featured his bachelor pad – a penthouse apartment with white Llama rug and suede couch.  He also continued to get attention as a ladies man.  One notable girlfriend he dated in late 1960s was Suzie Storm, a singer and friend since college days and who he was sometimes photographed with during the 1960s.

Super Bowl Season: 11-3

     In 1968, the Jets were poised to have an even better year than they did in 1967, raising the visibility of the AFL’s play as they went.  A major test for Namath and his team in 1968 came in their first game facing the Kansas City Chiefs on the road.  The Chiefs were a perennial AFL power and had played in the first AFL-NFL Championship contest of January 1967  (later dubbed Super Bowl I).  Added to the hype in opening day Jets-Chiefs contest that week was a comment that Chiefs’ coach Hank Stram had made about 1968 not being Namath’s year.  But in the game, the Jets prevailed, 20-19, with Namath later claiming it as an especially sweet victory.  The Jets then won their next game, then see-sawed a bit in the next few weeks, losing one, winning one, then losing another.  But from that point on, from late October 1968, they would win every game they played with the exception of one loss to the Oakland Raiders in mid-November.

     The game with Oakland, played on November 17, 1968, was also the infamous “Heidi game,” when NBC, believing the game was over with 50 seconds remaining as the Jets then led 32-29, switched from its national broadcast of the game to begin airing the children’s movie, Heidi.  However, in the remaining seconds of the game, Oakland would proceed to score two touchdowns to win the game 43-32, as the Heidi film rolled.  Telephone calls from legions of irate viewers overwhelmed NBC switchboard in Manhattan, with much public scorn and ridicule heaped on the network for its televised faux pax.  In any case, the Jets would later get another shot at the Oakland Raiders in the championship game.  But in the regular season they went on to win their last four games and finished with a record of 11-3.

     Namath, meanwhile, had grown a much- celebrated FuManchu mustache toward the end of the 1968 regular season, and as part of a promotion for some Schick razor advertising, he agreed to be filmed shaving it off.  In mid-December 1968, Namath walked into a Manhattan television studio, was set up with a Schick electric razor as the cameras rolled, and within three minutes or so, it was done, the FuManchu was history.  The 25 year-old Namath had just made a TV commercial for a cool wad of cash – a reported $10,000, which in 1968 was pretty good money for a few minutes’ work.  Upon departing the studio, Namath commented  that he was feeling “a little bit lighter” having lost his facial hair.  “I can scramble better now,” he said.  And in week or so, he might just have to do that, as the Oakland Raiders were coming to town.

     In the AFL’s championship game, played on December 29, 1968, the Jets faced the Oakland Raiders at Shea Stadium.  In what proved to be a very exciting game, Namath led his team to a 27-23 victory, throwing three touchdown passes.  With a crowd of 62,627 fans looking on, the Jets took a quick 10-0 lead in the first quarter.  By the fourth quarter, they still led 20-13.  The Raiders, however, fought back and took a 23-20 lead about midway through the fourth quarter.  But the Jets weren’t finished either, as Namath marched them down the field to score with a final short pass to end Don Maynard to re-take the lead, 27-23.  The Jets defense then held, and with that, the New York Jets had won the AFL championship.  Then it was on to Super Bowl III in January to meet the Baltimore Colts.

Colts on A Roll: 13-1

     Over in the NFL, meanwhile, coach Don Shula’s Baltimore Colts had also completed a superior season in 1968 – in fact, pro football’s best that year – finishing the regular season by winning 10 games in a row, four by shutouts.  The Colts posted a 13-1 record.  In their last ten games, they had allowed only seven touchdowns.  Their quarterback, Earl Morrall, who had replaced the legendary Johnny Unitas after an injury, was having a great season, with a league-leading passing performance.  On their way to meeting the Jets in the Superbowl, the Colts had decisively beaten the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL championship game.  Given this performance, many regarded the Colts as one of the best teams of all time, even comparable to Vince Lombardi’s championship Green Bay Packer teams  — teams that had won Super Bowls I and II.  So it was no surprise that the Colts were favored to beat the Jets in the big game.

     Super Bowl III was scheduled to be played in the Orange Bowl at Miami, Florida on Sunday, January 12th, 1969.  Both teams had come to Florida a week or so before the game to practice there and become acclimated to the warmer climate and prepare their respective game plans.  Joe Namath had been talking to the press about the upcoming game even before his arrival in Florida.  In late December, on the 30th, he told the press that Daryle Lamonica of the Oakland Raiders was a better passing quarterback than the Colt’s Earl Morrall.  And once in Florida, Namath would appear in public a few more times, also speaking with the press about the game.

     On the evening of January 9th, several days before the big game, Namath attended a dinner in the Playhouse Room at the Miami Villas.  The Miami Touchdown Club was honoring him as pro football’s most outstanding player for 1968.  During the course of events that night, when Namath spoke at one point, someone in the back of the room shouted out “the Colts are going to kick your ass.”  Namath then responded: “Hey, I got news for you.  We’re going to win Sunday, I’ll guarantee you…”  The “guarantee,” as Namath himself would later explain, was not planned or premeditated, it just came naturally in the context of his remarks, prompted in part by the heckler – but also by Namath’s personal belief that the Jets would win.  Namath had been studying Colt game films by this time, and he was seeing opportunity in the Colts’ defense.  At the dinner, Namath reiterated his views about Colt quarterback Morrall, saying he was entitled to his opinion.  He also took issue with press accounts that the Jets defense could not compare to the Colts, giving his own guys very high praise.

     The next morning The Miami Herald ran a banner headline on its front sports page that read “Namath Guarantees Jet Victory.”  Jet’s coach, Weeb Ewbank, was furious when he learned about the story and Namath’s remarks, and he quizzed his quarterback at break- fast to see if he really, in fact, had said it.  Namath readily admitted he had.  “Ah Joe, Joe, Joe,” said Ewbank, with some exasperation, “you know what they’re going to do?,” referring to the Colts. “They’re going to put that [story] up on the locker room wall.  Those Colts are gonna’s want to kill us.”  Ewbank had preferred the Jets take a more low-keyed approach.  But Namath and other Jets were growing angry over the predictions being made in the other direction — especially the bookie’s growing point spread on the game, how the Jets defense wasn’t any good, and the general talk about the inferior AFL.  Namath’s “guarantee” also managed to convince some doubting Thomases on his own team – and get them rethinking and looking at Colt game films again.  The effect was a positive psychology in the Jets’ locker room.  In fact, on the day before the game, Bill Rademacher, a member of the Jets’ special teams squad, told the Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist, Jerry Izenberg, that Namath’s remarks had psyched up the Jets:  “Joe has been trying to shake us up.  That’s why he started all the talking.  Well, now we’re properly shook and I’ll tell you something else.  It’s more than just his pregame behavior.  He’s telling the truth.  We are going to win.”

     Namath, meanwhile, persisted with his prediction, defending it poolside with reporters at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel in Ft.Lauderdale where the Jets were staying.  The Colts, he said, were not only beatable, but their quarterback, Earl Morrall, the NFL’s most valuable player, would have a tough time making the Jets’ third string.  Engaging with reporters, Namath said: “We’re a better team than Baltimore.”  And adding to his critique of Morrall, Namath said, “There are maybe five or six better quarterbacks than Morrall in the AFL.”  Sports Illustrated reporter Tex Maule observed that Namath “reminds you a bit of Dean Martin (an actor from the 1950s) in his relaxed confidence and in the droop of his heavy-lidded eyes.”  But some in the football world weren’t so taken with Namath.

     Namath had already had a personal run-in with Baltimore Colt defensive end and field goal kicker Lou Michaels at a Miami nightclub the previous Monday evening.  Michaels and Namath were there seperately having dinner with some teammates.  Michaels later sought out Namath at the club telling him what he thought of his off-base remarks about Morrall and the Colts.  There was something of a heated exchange between the two, each predicting their side would prevail on Sunday,but no fisticuffs.  Namath, in fact, reportedly bought a round of drinks.

     Former NFL star and then Atlanta coach Norm Van Brocklin also ridiculed Namath and the AFL before the game, saying, “This will be Namath’s first professional football game.”  Writers from NFL cities insisted it would take the AFL several more years to be truly competitive with the NFL.  Much of the hype surrounding the game had to do with the worth of each league’s level of play – AFL vs. NFL.  A merger of the two leagues was then in the air, and many doubted that AFL teams were truly worthy of merging with the NFL.  Still, Namath’s message was the same whenever he was asked about the game: “We’re going to win.  I guarantee it.”  Still, it would all come down to game-day execution and which team was most effective on the playing field, man for man.

     Most football fans, meanwhile, were unaware of Namath’s prediction that the Jets would win.  This was the era before “all news all the time”  — i.e., 1969 B.C., or “before cable.”  This was a world without the internet, the iPhone, Twitter, etc.,.  Newspapers and three-channel broadcast TV were the primary media.  There were no TV cameras present at the banquet when Namath had made his remarks.  The only news coverage of Namath’s “guarantee” was that first carried by Miami Herald newspaper on Friday, January 10th.  On the Saturday before the game, January 11th, one New York paper, Newsday, had picked up the story.  But most papers in Manhattan didn’t have it until game day, and even then it didn’t get much notice.  At the outset of the game’s TV broadcast on game day, NBC’s announcer Curt Gowdy did say something about Namath’s prediction.  Still, around the country, old-school fans who had heard about Namath’s prediction thought it little more than big-mouth braggadocio, and that Namath would get his comeuppance in the game.  And so, it really wasn’t until after the game had ended that Namath’s famous prediction would begin to enter the realm of legend.

The Game

     As the game began, it looked like the Baltimore Colts were going to validate the bookies’ odds-making prediction of a Colts blow-out over the Jets.  The Jets had won the opening kickoff, but had five plays before turning the ball over to Baltimore.  Then Earl Morrall went to work.  He first passed to tight end John Mackey who ran over two Jet tacklers for 19 yards.  Then fullback Tom Matte swept right end for 10 yards.  Running back Jerry Hill then swept left for seven more yards.  The first downs were racking up.  Then Morrall passed to tight end Tom Mitchell for 19 more yards, another first down.  The Jet defense then began to find itself and tightened up, forcing two incomplete passes.  Morrall then sought to pass again on third down, but found no open receivers so he ran for no gain.  The Colts kicker, Lou Michaels, then tried a field goal from the 27-yard line, but missed.  On the Jets’ second possession in the first quarter, Namath threw deep to end Don Maynard, who was open by a step, but the ball was overthrown.  After one quarter of play the Jets had held the powerful Colts to a stale mate.  The score was 0-0.

     In the second quarter, Baltimore recovered a Jet fumble on the New York 12 yard line.  They could practically smell the endzone.  On a third down play, from just six yards out, Morrall fired a hard pass to Colt tight end Tom Mitchell in the end zone, but the ball bounced off his shoulder pads into the air, as the Jet’s defensive back Randy Beverly made a diving, off-balance interception for a touchback.  The Jets then had the ball on their own 20 yard line.  Namath brought his offensive unit in and proceeded to engineer a 12-play drive for over 80 yards, taking the Jets deep into Colts territory, with fullback Matt Snell taking it in for the score from four yards out.  In this drive, Namath mixed his play calling with a series of runs and short passes, but Snell’s running was key.  A 219-pound fullback in his fifth year with the Jets, Snell had one of the best games of his career.  Earlier that week Snell had to have fluid drained from a damaged knee, but on game day, he ran without flaw.  The Jets were now up, 7-0.

     At one point in the second quarter, Baltimore nearly broke it open.  From their own 20-yard line, they advanced to a near score when fullback Tom Matte broke for 58-yard run.  But with 2 minutes left in the half, Morrall was intercepted at the Jets’ 2-yard line, taking the air out of the Colts considerably.  The Jets, however, lost the ball on downs, punted, and the Colts once again moved to New York’s 41-yard line.  Then came another play that could have turned the game in Baltimore’s favor.  Colt quarterback Morrall handed off to running back Tom Matte, who started on an end sweep, but stopped in a “flea- flicker” type play flipping the ball back to Morrall then setting to pass.  The Jets were fooled, and so was the NBC camera crew, but Morrall’s pass to running back Jerry Hill went bad and was intercepted by Jets safety, Jim Hudson.  However, Morrall hadn’t seen a wide-open Jimmy Orr, standing just yards from the end zone, all alone.  Time then expired in the half, with the Jets still up, 7-0.

     Superbowl III marked the first time that celebrities appeared in various game related ceremonies.  Bob Hope led a pregame ceremony honoring Apollo 8 astronauts for the first manned flight around the Moon.  Singer Anita Bryant sang the national anthem at the game.  Big-time rock stars at halftime, however, had not yet arrived.  The Florida A&M University band did the halftime show. On the first play of the second half, the Jets recovered a Tom Matte fumble which led to the Jets’ Jim Turner kicking a 32-yard field goal to make the score 10-0, Jets.  Baltimore on its next possession lost the ball on downs.  Namath then took his team back down the field with a series of passes, setting up another Turner field goal, this time from 30 yards out.  It was now 13-0, Jets.

     With about three minutes left in the third quarter, Baltimore coach Don Shula turned to Johnny Unitas, the veteran quarterback and Joe Namath boyhood hero who had been sidelined most of the year with a bad elbow.  But Unitas could not get the Colts offense moving on their next series of downs and had to punt.  In the fourth quarter, Namath then made a 39-yard pass his split end, George Sauer, with the Jets later reaching the Colts 2-yard line.  But Baltimore’s defense held tough at that point, keeping the Jets out of the end zone.  Jim Turner was then called on once again, and he kicked his third field goal of the afternoon from 9 yards out.  It was now 16-0, Jets.  When the Colts next got the ball, Unitas showed a bit of his old skills moving the team 80 yards down the field for a touchdown, completing four passes on the drive.  It was now 16-7, Jets.

     The Colts were then successful with an onside kick, recovering the ball on the Jet 44 yard line.  With 3:14 to go, Unitas hit three passes in a row, but then he missed three and lost the ball on downs.  Taking over with 2:21 remaining in the final quarter, Namath used his running back Matt Snell on six running plays to eat up the clock.  In fact, the Jets would not run a single pass play the entire fourth quarter.  But in this final series, the Jets could not get another first down.  Namath then took two penalties for delaying the game to wind down the clock down further.  Jets punter Curley Johnson then kicked the ball to the Colts with only 15 seconds remaining.  Unitas came back in to try to do the impossible, and he managed to complete one of two passes, but time ran out.

     The Jets had done it; they had won the Super Bowl!  Professional football was instantly changed; the AFL had come into their own, or at least opened the door in a major way.  The Jets had beaten one of the most widely touted NFL power teams.

     Joe Namath, meanwhile, won the Super Bowl MVP award, more for his masterful game management than passing skills.  Namath, in fact, did not throw a scoring touchdown all day, though he did use his passing talents strategically, completing 17 out of 28 passes for 206 yards and no interceptions.  And it wasn’t just Joe Namath, of course.  First and foremost was the hard running display of fullback Matt Snell, amassing 121 yards in 30 carries.  Split end George Sauer had snagged eight completions from Namath for 133 yards.  Defensively, the Jets’s secondary had a good day, picking off four Baltimore passes.  Randy Beverly had two of those.  The Jets offensive line had cleared the way for Snell and kept Namath well protected.  Jet lineman Dave Herman had a tough assignment in the Colt’s hard-charging Buba Smith, but he kept Smith at bay.  On the other side, Baltimore had a pretty bad day, with fumbles, interceptions and missed field goals proving costly.  Morrall was 6 of 17 for 71 yards and was intercepted three times.  Lou Michaels had missed two field goals.  The Jets, for their part, had also missed scoring opportunities.  For the Colts, however, there were a few bright spots.  Unitas in his brief appearance had 11 completions for 110 yards, but was also intercepted once.  Tom Matte had 116 yards on 11 carries and also caught 2 passes for 30 yards.  Actually, with the exception of the turnovers, the game statistics for the two teams overall were very close in just about every category.

     Overall, though, it was Namath’s day, as he was praised for running an intelligent game; one that included changing plays at the line of scrimmage, reading defenses incisively, and dealing with Baltimore’s famed defensive blitz.  “Namath’s quickness took away our blitz,” said Colt coach Don Shula after the game.  “He beat our blitz more than we beat him.”  Namath’s teammates also had high praise for their quarterback, especially for his positivism before and during the game.  “He never let up all game,” said Jet rookie John Dockery, a Harvard grad.  “Every time he’d come to the sidelines after a series he’d pat everybody and keep telling us, ‘c’mon, c’mon – today is our day’”

     Around the country the next day, the headlines in major newspapers reported surprise at the upset, with a few vindicating Namath’s predictions about game and the worth of the AFL.  “Jets Shock Colts in Super Bowl,” reported the Washington Post.  “Namath Stands Behind Guarantee in 16-7 Jet Victory,” ran one headline with an Associated Press story.  “Broadway Joe Puts AFL in Lights,” said the Los Angeles Times, headlining one of its stories that suggested the ALF had now arrived.  “Broadway Joe Rings Down the Curtain on the NFL,” was the headline used on the continuation page of that same story.  Some L.A.Times columnists weighed in on the AFL vs. NFL argument.  A Jim Murray story was headlined: “Don’t Look Now…But that Funny Little League is No.1.”  A Bob Oates story was more circumspect: “Namath No.1, But NFL Teams Still Tougher.”  Another headline spread across two pages in one paper read: “Famed Colt Defense Was Picked to Pieces…By Broadway Joe, Ruler of the Jet Set.”  And so it went, all around the country.  Many big city papers in NFL towns that had predicted a Colts victory, or that Namath would be crushed, were now eating crow.

     But Joe Namath and Super Bowl III also marked a change in the history of sport in mainstream culture and the nature of “pop sports businesses.”  Following this game, sport as big-business entertainment, sports news, and sports broad- casting were all ratcheted up another notch.  Sports hype, promotion, and coverage all increased.  Football, in particular –the sport and its stars – all got a little bigger as a result and moved more center stage in popular culture.  Monday Night Football first aired on ABC-TV on September 21, 1970 featuring a game between the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns (at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium where a record 85,700 fans came out).  Advertisers were charged $65,000 per minute for that game by ABC, but its telecast collected a 33 percent share of the viewing audience.  Pro football became a lot more impor- tant in terms of bottom-line business value – for owners, the media, and advertising.  By mid-October 1972, with Joe Namath on its cover, Time magazine noted the following about Namath and the game:

…Win or lose, Namath generates more high-voltage excitement than any other player in the game.  Indeed he is the sort of thrill producer that the N.F.L. badly needs these days.  On the surface…the game still appears to be prospering at the brisk pace it set in the 1960s.  Baseball may be the national pastime, but pro football has become the national obsession.  It is now, according to N.F.L. Commissioner Alvin (“Pete”) Rozelle, a $130 million-a-year business.  There are 26 teams in the league’s two conferences, and Rozelle talks of expanding… Last year the N.F.L.’s regular-season attendance surpassed ten million for the first time.  Psychologists and sociologists by the score are peering into homes to determine the familial side effects on the 30 million-plus Americans who sit glazed before the tube on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.

     The AFL of the 1960s and its legions were in one sense, the “entrepreneurs,” pushing on the NFL establishment, expanding the pie, bringing in new opportunities.  And the Joe Namaths in these enterprises were the center-stage enablers of bigger economics.  Namath biographer Mark Kriegel writes in his 2004 book, that Namath “aroused a kind of interest [pro football] had never before seen.  He raised attendance, viewership, and wages.”  But it wasn’t just Namath, as noted earlier.  There were other movers and shakers behind the scenes who were prominently involved in the football-to-entertainment expansion, such as Jets former owner Sonny Werblin.  Still, celebrities like Namath became the vessels of change and the media darlings.  “Before Namath, football was a team sport played by mainly anonymous men..,” wrote Wall Street Journal reporter Stephen Barbara in 2004.  “But after Namath, football was a show, a kind of unscripted drama that viewers could see in prime-time…”

     And Namath’s stardom and stature were such that he began to cross over into the regular entertainment world.  In fact, he is sometimes cited as one of the first “multi-platform” big time athletes – starring in advertisements, film, books, and television.  Following Super Bowl III, for example, in 1969 alone, he: published a book, I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow (co-written with sports writer, Dick Schaap); launched The Joe Namath TV Show of sports talk and related guests, co-hosted with Dick Schapp; appeared in TV and print advertising; and also began taking film roles in Hollywood and for television.  But in the end, for Joe Namath, it has been the sports moment of January 12, 1969 that has lived in time.

The Iconic Moment

     At the conclusion of Super Bowl III, Joe Namath ran off the field and into the locker room holding up his index finger saying “We’re No. 1.”  Captured by photographers, that scene has become one of professional football’s classic iconic images – and to a degree, a validation of one man’s belief in his team, his own abilities, and of willing an outcome.  And to this day, Namath’s famous “guarantee” remains memorable.   Or as Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News recently put it: “Nobody ever proved that [Babe] Ruth actually called his [home run] shot in that World Series against the Cubs.  Namath called his.”  In Joe Namath’s athletic career, and much of his public life as well, there was perhaps no better moment than winning Super Bowl III.

     Joe Namath would play eight more seasons with the Jets, finishing his career in 1977 with a final season with the Los Angeles Rams.  Plagued with knee injuries and a series of surgeries throughout much of his career, and playing at a time when quarterbacks were not protected by game rules, Namath still managed to complete 1,886 passes for 27,663 yards and 173 touchdowns.  He played in four AFL All-Star games and one AFC-NFC Pro Bowl.  He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.  Well-respected coaches have touted his abilities.  Bill Walsh, long-time coach of the San Francisco 49ers and three-time Super Bowl victor, has said that Namath was “the most beautiful, accurate, stylish passer with the quickest release I’ve ever seen.”  And Don Shula called him “one of the 3 smartest quarterbacks of all time.”

     Meanwhile, Joe Namath, the famous bachelor, did marry and become a family man.  In 1984, when he married Deborah Mays, an aspiring actress, he settled down, stopped drinking, and became a devoted father of two daughters.  Fifteen years later, however, in1999, that marriage ended.  Today Namath remains close to his now grown daughters, and one grandchild, who live with him in Florida.

 

The Real Namath

     In some ways though, the real Joe Namath was never really revealed during his football career or in his post-football acting days.  “The sportswriters made Joe Namath into this hippie, stud, counterculture gambler,” observed writer Jack Newfield in a 2004 New York Sun piece.  “They made him the Zeitgeist of the 1960s and this is how he was marketed.”  But Joe Namath was more than the high-living and free-spirited celebrity athlete.  Like everyone else, he was human, and he had his demons – a young boy scarred by divorce; an athlete self-medicating his pain with alcohol; and later, a lost husband and aching father when he faced his own divorce.  And for all the hype about his boasting, Namath – even in his prime New York Jets days  — was a guy who was privately not what he may have seemed in public.  Hank Stram, coach of the Kansas City Chiefs remarked in 1975: “Too many people have given him the Broadway Joe image.  He’s not that way at all.”  Namath’s playboy image was played up as well, said Phil Iselin in July 1975, then president of the Jets organization.  “He’s not that way at all,” said Iselin.  “He is actually a very quiet and timid guy.  I think more people are getting to know the real Joe Namath.”  Iselin did admit to Namath being the “greatest sports attraction since Babe Ruth,” adding that the Jets had then, by July 1975, already sold out its 1975 fall season, with a long waiting list.  “You can give Joe a lot of credit for that.”

     Sportswriter and commentator, Dick Schaap, co-authored and helped Namath write his 1969 book, I Can’t Wait Till Tomorrow..Because I Get Better Looking Every Day, which, according to Schaap, was part put on.  Still, Schaap worried that some folks might get the wrong impression from this book and think Namath was “a braggart”.  Schaap explained, in fact, that Namath was the opposite of braggart, though he had a sense of humor and was a guy who “winked at life”.  Schaap noted that in the process of reviewing the manuscript for the book, Namath “deliberately edited out anything that smacked of serious immodesty, anything that sounded to him as though he were placing himself on a pedestal.”  Schaap also added that while Namath was “no saint,” and that he could be rude and ill tempered at times, there were other aspects of Namath’s personality and character that did not appear in the book or always surface in public – “like his honesty, his generosity, his loyalty to old friends, his respect for elders, and of course, his charm with men and women.”  Even when Namath made his much-celebrated “guarantee” he was making it out of a belief in himself and his teammates; a confidence he credits his father with instilling in him during his boyhood.  As Namath’s high school football coach Larry Bruno said of Namath at his 1985 Hall of Fame induction: “When Joe played football for Beaver Falls High School, the entire football team believed whatever play Joe called it would work; they would make it work because they knew Joe had confidence in them.”

     In recent years, however, Joe Namath has battled his inner demons on occasion, some still carried from the scars of his pro football days and a renewed use of alcohol since his divorce.  In December 2003, he had a publicly-embarrassing, alcohol-fueled “I-want-to-kiss-you” TV moment with ESPN’s Suzy Kolber, then interviewing him about Jets quarterback Chad Pennington.  Earlier that day, Namath had attended a Jets reunion bash where he had been drinking.  The incident with Kolber was seen by millions.  Namath, mortified and contrite, later apologized to Kolber and has admitted to being “way out of line;” that it was “awful, rude behavior.”  But the incident served to get Namath into rehab and onto a more sober path.  According to his agent Jimmy Walsh: “That probably turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to Joe.  He said, ‘Wait a second. I better straighten myself out.’  And he did.”

     For those who may want further reading on Namath’s life, Mark Kriegel’s 2004 biography, Namath, A Biography, captures some of his personal history.  And there is also Namath’s own 2006 autobiography, Namath, which reviewers at Amazon.com and elsewhere have recommended.  Additionally, Michael Oriard has some interesting observations about Namath’s role in the business history of pro football in his 2007 book, Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport. 

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_______________________________

Date Posted:   23 December 2009
Last Update:   10 January 2010
Comments to:   jdoyle@pophistorydig.com

Article Citation:
Jack Doyle, “I Guarantee It.  Joe Namath,”
PopHistoryDig.com, December 23, 2009.
________________________________

Sources, Links & Additional Information

Joe Namath flanked by coach Weeb Ewbank, left, and his Dad, John Namath, right, post-Super Bowl III.

Matt Snell & Joe Namath at NY City Super Bowl III victory celebration, January 23, 1969.

Joe Namath with Mayor John Lindsay, at NY City Super Bowl III victory celebration.

“Denise, Mary, Rosie, Love You,” reads the banner for Joe Namath at a “rock star”-like reception during NY City 1969 Super Bowl III celebration.

Joe Namath gets a home town salute from Beaver Falls, PA for his Super Bowl III heroics.

Joe Namath (24) grew up & played sports with African Americans in Beaver Falls, and was shocked by racial attitudes he later found in the south & at Alabama Univ.

Joe Namath, high school photograph.

Joe Namath, with sunglasses, in portion of high school baseball team photo.

Joe Namath,, center, helped his high school win basketball championships – shown here with coaches and co-star, Benny Singleton, left.

At Alabama, Namath started out as a running QB as well as a passer, until his first knee injury. As a sophomore in the 1963 Orange Bowl, he went 9 of 17 with 1 touchdown pass.

Joe Namath & Bear Bryant. In 1962-64, Namath led Alabama to an overall 29-4 record, with a running & passing total of 3,652 yards and 44 touchdowns.

Joe Namath’s knee operations during his career became a newsworthy staple -- media attention which, according to one orthopaedist, helped advance sports medicine.

Joe Namath doing leg strength training while coach Week Eubank looks on.

Joe Namath holds up newspaper headline in the summer of 1965 when he faced the military draft, but was deferred because of his knees.

Young Joe Namath in sideline parka.

In June 1969, Football Commissioner Pete Rozelle told Joe Namath to sell his ownership share in an East Side New York bar named “Bachelors III” because gamblers frequented the place – or else he would be suspended. At an emotional press conference, Namath announced his retirement from football rather than comply. Six weeks later, however, Namath's love of the game prevailed and he sold his share of “Bachelors III,” returning to the Jets. Life magazine, June 20, 1969.

Joe Namath, making a pitch for an electric razor: “I’m shy with girls. But I kind of like the one who gave me this Soilid State Schick Retractable.” 1969.

Esquire magazine writers have a go at Joe Namath in October 1969.

Joe Namath, working at his day job, 1970.

Joe Namath escorting Raquel Welch to the Academy Awards in Hollywood, April 1972.

Joe Namath & Farrah Fawcett on the set of a famous 1973 Super Bowl TV ad for Noxema shaving cream. Fawcett was an unkown at the time. Photo, Robin Platzer.

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Dick Young, “Oiler Accused in ‘Cheap Shot’ Namath Injury,”Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1966, p. B-2.

Frank Litsky, “Namath Throws Five Touchdown Passes as Jets Turn Back Oilers, 52 to 13; 54,681 Fans Set Mark for League; Namath’s Tosses Gain 283 Yards–New York Breaks Team Scoring Record,” New York Times, Monday, September 19, 1966, Sports, p. 58.

Frank Litsky, “Jets’ Second-Half Rally Beats Broncos, 16-7; Eagles Rout Giants, 35-17; Namath Connects in Final Quarter, Snell Takes 5-Yard Scoring Pass–Jim Turner Kicks Three Field Goals,” New York Times, Monday, September 26, 1966, p. 52.

Frank Litsky, “Namath’s Passes Ward Off Defeat; 14 Completed in 4th Period for 205 Yards Turner’s Field Goal Ties Score,” New York Times, Monday, October 3, 1966, Sports, p. 85.

Frank Litsky, “Namath Checked in Houston Game; 4 Interceptions Mark First Defeat for Jets–Blanda Passes for 2 Scores,” New York Times, Monday, October 17, 1966, Sports, p. 50.

Dan Jenkins, “The Sweet Life Of Swinging Joe,” Sports Illustrated, October 17, 1966.

Dave Anderson, “Bills’ Defense Enjoys Namath Pool; Player Who Gets to Passer Most Often Wins Side Bets,” New York Times, Monday, October 31, 1966, Sports, p.62.

Frank Litsky, “5 Namath Passes Are Intercepted; Jets Throw 53 Times, Bills 40; Warner Scores on a 95-Yard Kickoff Return,” New York Times, Monday, October 31, 1966, Sports, p. 62.

Dave Anderson, “2-point Play Key; Namath Hits on Pass for Conversion after Boozer Scores; Raiders Strike Quickly; Jets and Raiders Play a 28-28 Tie,” New York Times, Sunday, December 4, 1966, Sports, p. S-1.

Charles Maher, “Joe Namath: The League Leader—in Publicity,” Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1966, p. C-1.

Frank Litsky, “Namath Excels; Throws 3 Touchdown Passes–Boozer, Snell Also Star,” New York Times, Sunday, December 18, 1966, Sports, p. S-1.

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Frank Litsky, “Namath of Jets Undergoes Surgery to Remove Torn Cartilage in Right Knee; Operation Here Termed a Success Tendon Also Is Transferred to Kneecap to Provide Greater Stability,” New York Times, Thursday, December 29, 1966, Sports, p. 37.

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Bob Oates, “Namath’s Year? Stram Says ‘No’,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1968, p. A-2. 

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Dave Anderson, “Namath Takes It Off — at $10 a Clip,” New York Times, Thursday, December 12, 1968, p. 68.

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“People,” Time, (re: Namath Schick razor ad), Friday, December 20, 1968.

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Dave Anderson, “Jets Favored over Raiders; Raiders Wary of Namath Arm,” New York Times, Sunday, December 29, 1968, p. S-1.

Dave Anderson, “Jets Win A.F.L. Title by Defeating Raiders, 27-23, Before 62,627 Here; Namath Connects for 3 Touchdowns; Maynard Registers Twice — Jets to Face Colts in Super Bowl Jan. 12,” New York Times, Monday, December 30, 1968. p.40.

Jeff Prugh, “It’s Super Joe vs. Super Colt Defense,” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1968, p. D-1.

Bob Oates, “Namath to Test Colt Zone Defense,” Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1968, p. D-2.

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Joe Willie Namath, I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow … ‘Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day by (Hardcover – January 1, 1969).

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Luther Evans, “I Guarantee We’ll Win – Namath,” Miami Herald, January 10, 1969.

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Norm Miller, “Colts on Joe: Good Passer, No Humility,” Daily News, January 10, 1969.

Luther Evans, “Is Namath’s Lip Action Kiss of Death for The Jets?,” Miami Herald, January 11, 1969.

George Usher, “Can The Jets Win? Joe Guarantees It,” Newsday, Januaury 11, 1969.

Bob Oates, “Namath’s Super Confidence Shakes Crowd,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1969, p. E-5.

Dick Young, “Super Bowl is Born,”Daily News, Friday, January 11, 1969.

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Dave Brady, “Jets Shock Colts in Super Bowl, 16-7,” Washington Post, Times Herald, January 13, 1969, p. C-1.

Los Angeles Times coverage of Jets vs. Colts Super Bowl, January 1969.

Bob Oates, “Namath No.1, But NFL Teams Still Tougher,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1969, p. F-1.

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Tex Maule, “Say It’s So, Joe,” Sports Illustrated, January 20, 1969.

“Bedlam on Broadway; Screaming Girls Mob Namath in New York,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1969, p. E-6.

“Schoolgirl Squeals Cap Namath’s Day; …Telegram From Governor; 5,000 at City Hall,” Washington Post, Times Herald, January 23, 1969, p. F-3.

“Impossible Reality,” Time, Friday, January 24, 1969.

“Namath Captures Hickok,” Washington Post, Times Herald, February 4, 1969, p. B-3.

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Bob Oates, “Joe Namath Another Baugh? Sammy Says Yes,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1969, p. E-1. (See also, Jack Doyle, “Slingin’ Sammy, 1930s-1950s,”  Pop HistoryDig.com).

“Joe Namath and the Jet-Propelled Offense,” Time, Monday, October 16, 1972.

Harry Benson, Cover Story, “Quarterback Shuffle: The Ecstasy of Being New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath-and the Agony of Having His Knees,” People, September 16, 1974, p. 6.

Will Grimsley, Associated Press, “Jet Considered Charisma in Namath Contract Terms,” The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA) July 31, 1975, p. 7

Grace Rishell, “Meet The Woman Who Married Joe Namath,” Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, Monday January 28, 1985, p. 9.

Joe Namath Hall of Fame Speech, with Introduction by Beaver Falls High School Coach, Larry Bruno, @ CBSsports .com.1985.

Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., “Sonny Werblin, an Impresario of New York’s Sports Extravaganza, Is Dead at 81,” New York Times, November 23, 1991.

Jack Newfield, “Namath Biography a Feat,” The Sun (New York), August 13, 2004.

Jon Saraceno, “‘Broadway Joe’ Puts Life Back on Track,” USA Today, October 14, 2004.

Stephen Barbara, “The Football Legacy Of Joe Namath,” The Weekly Standard, @ CBSNews.com, November 20, 2004.

Les Carpenter, “Nothing Like Namath’s Guarantee – QB Made History With Correct Prediction That Jets Would Beat Heavily Favored Colts in Super Bowl III,” Washington Post, Tuesday, January 30, 2007, p. E-5.

Greg Bishop, “40 Years Later, Old Jets Relive Super Bowl III,” New York Times, September 4, 2008.

“TJB Hall of Fame: Joe Namath,” TheJets Blog.com, July 14th, 2008.

“Joe Debuts on Broadway,” Photo Gallery, Daily News, October 25, 2008.

“Joe Namath, Ladies Man,” Photo Gallery, Daily News, October 25, 2008.

Allen Barra, “This Bowl Made Them Super: What’s Remembered About ’69 — And What’s Forgotten,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2009, p. W-9.

Mike Lupica, “Forty Years Later, Joe Namath’s Still Super,” Daily News, Sunday, February 1, 2009.

Mark Kriegel, Namath, A Biography, New York: Viking, August, 2004, 528 pp.

Larry Borstein, SuperJoe: The Joe Namath Story, Tempo Books, 1969.

Robert B. Jackson, Joe Namath, Superstar, January 1, 1968.

Joe Millard, The Last Rebel, Mass Market Paperback, 1970.

James T. Olsen Joe Namath: The King of Football, January 1974.

Jim Burke, Joe Willie, The Story of Joe Namath, Paperback, 1975.

“Jets: Broadway’s 30-Year Guarantee,” New York Daily News, Legends Series, New York: Sports Publishing LLC, December 1998, 200 pp.

Beverly Keel, “Interview With Joe Namath,” AmericanProfile.com, Publish- ing Group of America, Inc., January 23, 2005.

Joe Namath, Namath, New York: Rugged Land Books, 2006, 320 pp., 200 photos & DVD.

Michael Oriard, Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport, UNC Press, 2007, 326pp.

Andy Martino, “Jets Beat Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, Change NFL History,” Daily News, Sunday, October 26, 2008.

Colin S. Stephenson, “Izenberg: Who Could Have Believed That Crazy Joe Namath Would Be Right?,” Star-Ledger @NJ.com, January 26, 2009, with video of Izenberg remembering Super Bowl III and Namath at poolside.

Ed Gruver, From Baltimore to Broadway: Joe, the Jets, and the Super Bowl III Guarantee, Triumph Books, hardcover, September 2009, 256 pp.

A Joe Namath website @ CBSsports.com.

BroadwayJoe.org (extensive photos).

     It was December 1937 in Chicago.  The Washington Redskins professional football team had come to town to play the fearsome Chicago Bears in the National Football League championship game at Wrigley Field.  It was a bitterly cold day with frozen turf.  Washington, although a good team, wasn’t given much of a chance against “the big bruising Bears,” as Washington Post reporter Shirley Povich called them.  But the Redskins had a new powerful weapon in the person of Sammy Baugh, their 23-year-old rookie running back.

     Baugh had come out of the college ranks, an innovative “passing” back, still something of a rarity in professional football at that time.  In his college career at Texas Christian University (TCU), Baugh was an All-American who had led the nation in passing in his junior and senior years and finished fourth in 1936 Heisman Trophy voting.  He had helped TCU to victories in the Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl.  But Sammy Baugh’s professional career – played entirely with the Washington Redskins over 16 years – would be even better.  In fact, he would change the way pro-football was played.  “The history of pro football simply cannot be written without the story of Slingin’ Sammy,” says Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon.

The Forward Pass

     In the late 1930s when Sammy Baugh arrived in Washington, throwing the ball in football games – i.e., the forward pass – was still quite new, especially in professional football.  Pro football was then second fiddle to college football, which was much more popular.  In fact, the first time the passing technique had been used in football was at the college level, dating to an 1895 game between North Carolina University and the University of Georgia – an illegal use, it turns out, not then “approved” by the rules of play.  Passing began at the college level, and slowly made its way to the pros, where it was used only sparingly by the early 1930s. But the first officially approved forward pass also occurred at the college level – in September 1906 when St. Louis University used it against Carroll College of Wisconsin.  St. Louis University, however, was in the Midwest, and due to the nature of communication in those days — primarily newspapers — not many other colleges “back East” had heard of or used the technique, so its adoption by other schools was slow. But in 1913 a then little-known minor school named Notre Dame used the forward pass in a surprise win over a highly-touted team from Army.  The technique demonstrated how a smaller Notre Dame team could use it to their advantage in beating the bigger Army team ( Knute Rockne then played end for Notre Dame and Gus Dorais, quarterback).  After that game, the forward pass began to get more notice.  A variety of college coaches and teams all experimented with passing and new formations – among them: Knute Rockne, who later became a coach at Notre Dame; Pop Warner, who used it as a college coach; Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians; Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago; Johnny Heisman at Georgia Tech; various Ivy League teams; and others.

     Still, passing then was also not like the conventional drop-back passing of the modern game today, centered on the quarterback.  Passing came out of the single wing formation, where play responsibility was split between a separate play-caller and another running back who may have thrown the ball.  Passing was also more of desperation measure then, not a planned part of the offensive attack.  At the professional level, the first passing appears to have been used in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but then only rarely.  Professional football games then could be very dull and boring compared to today’s games. They used the single- and double-wing offenses, and almost always ran the ball — no sixty-yard touchdown pass plays.  But that more pedestrian style of football play was about to change with the arrival of Sammy Baugh in Washington in 1937.  Baugh was one of the few experienced passers from the college level, and  he would soon prove to be one of the best of the new breed at the pro level.

 

Swinging Tire

     Sammy Baugh was born in Texas in 1914, and played three sports in high school at Sweetwater, Texas — football, basketball and baseball.  In preparing to play for his high school team, Baugh practiced with an old tire strung from a tree which he would try to throw the ball trough while the tire was swinging and he was on the run.  He developed a strong arm and pretty good accuracy.  And although he did well in high school football, Sammy had his heart set on becoming a professional baseball player, and that’s the sport where he would pick up the name “slingin’ Sammy.”   A sportswriter impressed with Sammy’s throwing arm as a college third baseman is credited with giving him that nickname.

     After high school, Sammy had played semi-pro baseball for a time, and had met a guy who was going to arrange for a baseball scholarship at Washington State University.  But Sammy hurt his knee right before he was to attend, and the baseball scholarship fell through.  But as Baugh would later recount, “Dutch Meyer [ the football coach at TCU] told me he’d get me a job and help me through TCU if I’d come there and play baseball and football and basketball – the whole thing.  So that’s where I went.”

     At TCU, it was Sammy’s football play that would put him in the big time — although he remained a very good baseball player at TCU as well.  However, in football as a college junior, he threw for 1,241 yards and 18 touchdowns.  TCU only lost one game that year, to national champion SMU.  As a senior, Baugh threw for 1,196 yards, completing 50.5 percent of his passes.  He led the nation in both passing and punting his final two seasons at TCU.  Many believe that Baugh’s performance at TCU helped bring national press notice to Texas football at a time when press coverage tilted to eastern sports teams.  And although Baugh did not win Heisman Trophy in 1936 – he finished fourth in the voting  — his performance is believed to have opened the door for his successor at TCU, Davey O’Brien, who did win the Heisman two years later.

     Still, when Sammy completed college, his thought was to play professional baseball.  Baugh wasn’t convinced football was his best sport.  He also thought he might have a longer career in baseball.  Baugh had been a star third baseman for TCU, and drew the notice of a few scouts.  Rogers Hornsby, the famous St. Louis Cardinals baseball Hall-of-Famer, was then a St. Louis Cardinals scout, and in the spring/summer of 1937,  he signed Baugh to play with the Cardinals.  However, Baugh was farmed out to the minor league Columbus team after being converted to shortstop, and then was sent even lower down in the minor league system to Rochester.  There, Baugh still had to play behind Rochester’s starting shortstop, Marty Marion, who would go on to the major leagues and become a Cardinals regular for 11 years.  Baugh knew he would never be as good as Marion.  “The other [problem] was I couldn’t hit that curve [ball] very well,” Baugh would later say.  “So I left in August [1937] to play football, and after that I stuck with football.”

 

Preston Marshall & Sammy

     But the courting of Sammy Baugh by Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall had begun when Baugh was still at TCU.  Marshall’s Washington Redskins professional team, in fact, was then newly arrived in Washington, as Marshall had moved them from Boston where he lost money and failed to generate a fan base.  But Marshall’s fortunes would change in Washington, and Baugh would become one of his best new assets.  Baugh later described his early meetings with Marshall and the salary discussions:

     “…In the spring of my last year, 1937, George Marshall brought me to Washington and offered me $4,000 to play with the Redskins.  Now down here in Texas, no one knew anything about pro football.  They didn’t even know what it was.  I didn’t know if I could make it in pro football, and since Dutch Meyer had offered me a job as freshman coach, I told Mr. Marshall I thought I was going to stay in Texas and coach. “…So I asked Mr. Marshall for $8,000, and I finally got it. Later I felt like a robber when I found out what Cliff Battles [a Redskins star] and some of those other good players were making… If I had known what they were getting I’d have never asked for $8,000…”
              - Sammy Baugh See, I still wanted to be a baseball player, but I wanted a coaching job to fall back on.

     Anyway, the summer after I got out of college I went to Chicago to play in the College All-Star football game against Green Bay.  I talked with the rest of the boys on the All-Star squad and found that a bunch of them were going to play pro football.  I found that most of them were just like me — that they hadn’t been out of the country too often themselves — and that I could play ball better than 99% of them.  So I became more confident.  As it turned out, we beat Green Bay, and then Mr. Marshall got after me pretty hot.

     I didn’t know how much pro players were making, but I thought they were making pretty good money.  So I asked Mr. Marshall for $8,000, and I finally got it.  Later I felt like a robber when I found out what Cliff Battles [a Redskins star player] and some of those other good players were making.  I’ll tell you what the highest-priced boy in Washington was getting the year before — not half as much as $8,000!  Three of them — Cliff Battles, Turk Edwards and Wayne Millner — got peanuts, and all of ‘em are in the Hall of Fame now.  If I had known what they were getting I’d have never asked for $8,000….”

 

“Which Eye?”

     When Baugh first reported to the Redskins for practice, he had a meeting with coach Ray Flaherty and had an exchange that reportedly went something like this:

“They tell me you’re quite a passer,” said Flaherty, handing Baugh a football.

“I reckon I can throw,” Baugh answered.

“Let’s see it.  Hit that receiver in the eye,” said Flaherty, pointing to a man running down the field.

“Which eye?” said Baugh.

     For years, this exchange was believed to have been more urban legend that truth, but Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich confirmed it with Baugh himself in the 1990s. Baugh admitted the exchange was true, adding it was the one time he had been a little too flip.  “Yep, ah said it,” he acknowledged in his Texas drawl to Povich.  “First and last time in my life ah was cocky.”  But Baugh would soon show he had something to be cocky about.

 

Threw Spirals

     At 6′ 2″ and 182 pounds, Baugh was a good size for a throwing back.  He also had large hands, and could grip the ball in a way at the laces to send it skyward in a spiraling fashion, achieving both accuracy and distance when he threw it.  And throw it, he did.

     In his first game, and the Washington Redskins first game in Washington at Griffith Stadium, Baugh completed 11 of 16 passes for 116 yards as the Redskins defeated the New York Giants, 13-3.  Baugh’s passing, still new to the NFL, would become a key part of Washington’s attack.  Washington Post reporter Shirley Povich greeted Baugh’s performance with high praise: “There was Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, putting his college reputation squarely on the spot, and justifying every advance notice with his magnificent forward-passing barrage against the Giants.”  In the 11-game season that year, the rookie Baugh set an NFL record, completing 91 of 218 attempts and throwing for a league-high 1,127 yards, taking the Redskins to the NFL championship. Baugh was also defensive back and the team’s punter, or quick kicker in those days.

     The 1937 NFL championship featured  the Western Division’s Chicago Bears (9-1-1) vs. the Eastern Division’s Washington Redskins (8-3).  It was only the fifth time the annual NFL championship game had been played.  Washington was the distinct underdog, not expected to have much chance against the “Monsters of the Midway” as the Bears would later be called.  The contest was held on December 12, 1937, on a bitterly cold day on frozen turf at Wrigley Field in Chicago.  The recorded attendance that day was 15,870.  This was, of course, long before the Super Bowl and television.  Players still played both offense and defense then, including running backs, and they had no face masks.  The game was a lot rougher then as well.  Quarterbacks were not protected and could be hit at will until the end of the play.  In the Chicago game, in particular, Baugh was targeted by certain Bear players – linebacker and fullback Bronco Nagurski among them – who were trying to knock him out of the game.  In pile ups, there was also some purposeful Sammy Baugh leg twisting.

     In that championship game, the Bears had pinned Washington to their own five-yard line in the early minutes of the game, pushed up against the end zone.  On first down, Baugh called for “punt formation,” but in the huddle told his teammates, “we’re gonna pass.”  Passing, then used sparingly at the professional level, was hardly ever used on first down, and certainly not when a team was deep in their own territory.  So Baugh got some weird looks on the call from his teammates.  With the Bear lineman charging hard to block a punt, Baugh calmly tossed a pass to halfback Cliff Battles, who then ran for 42 yards.  A few plays later Washington scored, and went on to win the game, 28-to-21.  Baugh in that game turned in a stellar, championship performance, completing 17 of 34 passes for 352 yards – an astounding number even by modern day passing standards.  Baugh’s passing yardage alone that day was more yardage than the entire Chicago offense had managed.  He threw three touchdown passes – of 35, 55 and 78 yards.  “Baugh was a one-man team,” one of the Bears coaches told reporters after the game.

     By the end of his first year, Baugh had become a pro football veteran and a key player to the Redskins’ future.  Back in Sweetwater, Texas that December, a few weeks after Baugh and Redskins had won the championship game with Bears, the home town boy was honored at a gathering of townspeople, ex-teammates, and former coaches.  They praised Baugh and said he done more to “put Sweetwater on the map that any citizen in history.”  Red Sheriden, one of Baugh’s former Sweetwater High School football teammates, said that “all the adulation had not gone to his head,” and was still “the level-headed, likeable kid he was back in 1931 and 1932 when in high school.”  Baugh’s high school coach Ed Hennig, was credited with teaching Baugh both football and modesty.

The Preston Marshall Show 1930s-1940s       Back in Washington, Redskins owner, Preston Marshall, was setting out to build a business empire around his new team. Marshall was a colorful character who had once dabbled in the business of Vaudeville entertainment, dated Hollywood star Louise Brooks, and married another film star, Corinne Griffith. Marshall had been the owner of a chain of laundries in Washington, built up from a single store founded by his father – a business which Marshall later sold for a considerable profit.  By the time Sammy Baugh was signed, Marshall had only been in the football business for a few years.  In the early 1930s he and three other partners acquired a National Football League franchise in Boston naming their team the Boston Braves.  By 1936, Marshall had gained sole control of the team and renamed it the Boston Redskins.  But the team fared poorly, was not supported by the fans, and Marshall moved the team to Washington in 1937, the year he signed Sammy Baugh.  Preston Marshall as a younger man.      According Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich, who followed the Redskins organization from its start, Marshall had brought his franchise to Washington with a plan to make the Redskins “the South’s team.” Marshall established a network of radio stations in Southern cities and towns to carry the games, and later TV coverage as well, and he directed his coaches to draft players mostly from Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Texas colleges. They did, and the team became, according to Povich, “the Confederates of the NFL.”  In fact, one original line in the Redskins’ fight song originally was penned as, “Fight for Old Dixie,” later changed to “Fight for Old D.C.”      In bringing notice to his team, Marshall also sought the help of sportswriters.  “I need the support of you guys,” he said to reporters, according to Povich, who was among those Marshall was pitching.  “I’m paying Sammy Baugh $8,000, and I need to put 12,000 people in the park [Griffith Stadium] to break even.”  In 1937 the Redskins sold 958 season tickets.  By 1947, with the help of Marshall’s promotional flair, all of the stadium’s 31,440 regular seats were selling out.  Marshall was also something of a showman, and installed entertainment for the fans with a band and a team song, “Hail to The Redskins.” He also once paid for an entire train of multiple cars to take 10,000 Redskins fans to a New York Giants game in 1937.  When Baugh first came to Washington, Marshall also insisted he wear cowboy boots and a Stetson hat, even though Baugh was more small-town boy than Texas cowboy. Sammy Baugh & Preston Marshall, believed to be sometime in the 1940s.      Marshall was also active in opening the game up through rule changes and advanced a proposal to divide the league into divisions, keeping more teams involved in title races.  According to Baugh, Marshall also helped win a rule for protecting quarterbacks: “…Marshall called me into the office one day and said, ‘What if we could get a rule put in that after a passer threw the ball, that they couldn’t run him down and knock him around?’ I said, ‘Do that and the passer will play about 10 years longer than he used to.’ And he picked up the phone and called [the Bears'] George Halas, and George went for it, and they put the rule in.”      But one area where Marshall was not progressive was in the matter of racial integration, believed related to his southern states business strategy. Some pro teams had begun signing and drafting black players in 1946-1949, but it wasn’t until 1962 when Marshall did. And that came about only after Interior Secretary Stewart Udall threatened to revoke the Redskins’ 30-year lease on the new D.C. Stadium (RFK Stadium), paid for with government money.      Marshall was also a meddlesome owner on the field at times, frustrating and firing his coaches.  Baugh, in fact, played for ten different coaches, a fact which may have held Sammy back from an even greater career.  But Sammy Baugh was undoubtedly the best investment Preston Marshall ever made, as Sammy helped put the Redskins on the map in those early years, boosting the organization and its business.

Passing From the “T”

     Sammy Baugh began his career with the Redskins as a tailback, playing from the single-wing and double-wing formations.  Baugh was responsible for passing and punting, while another back, Riley Smith, handled the play-calling duties.  But all that began to change in the 1940s when the Redskins and other teams began to adopt the T-formation.  In this formation, the quarterback became a more central figure, taking responsibility for both play-calling and passing, giving the quarterback full control of the offense.  And this is where Baugh excelled – making the forward pass a more a designed-in part of the game, played from the line scrimmage.  With the “T”formation and passing now part of the planned attack, Baugh helped bring a more exciting form of play to the pro game.  From 1940 to 1949, Sammy Baugh led the league in passing five times. Together with his passing championship from his rookie season, Baugh would claim six career passing titles; a feat only equaled by Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers in the 1990s.

     Baugh would direct the team to four division titles and two NFL championships in1937 and 1942.  In a career spanning 162 games, he threw 1,693 completed passes in 2,995 attempts, a 56.5 percent completion rate.  He totaled some 21,886 passing yards and 187 touchdowns.  At the time of Baugh’s retirement, he held a number of NFL and Washington Redskin records, some of which still stand at this writing.

     Baugh played his entire 16-year career with the Washington Redskins through the 1952 season.  But in Washington, he also had a few bad games, the most notorious of which was the 73-0 drubbing by the Chicago Bears for the 1940 championship.  He was pulled out of the game to spare him embarrassment, after completing 9 of 16 passes for a total of 91 yards with 2 interceptions.  But two years later, Baugh and the Redskins took some satisfaction in stopping Chicago’s perfect season, then at 11-0 until Washington beat them 14-6 in the championship game.  In 1945, Baugh compiled his best statistical season, completing 128 of 182 attempts for 1,669 yards and a 70.3 percent completion average – an NFL record that stood for decades before being surpassed in 1982 by Ken Anderson of the Cincinnati Bengals who posted a completion rate of 70.6 percent.  One of Baugh’s most impressive games came fittingly on “Sammy Baugh Day” in 1947 when he threw six touchdown passes against the Chicago Cardinals.  But by all accounts, Baugh worked hard at his craft, as it was said that in practice he liked to complete 100 consecutive passes before leaving for the day, and missing one, he’d start again.

Sammy Goes Hollywood 1941      Sammy Baugh had a brief run with movie stardom in 1941 when Hollywood’s Republic Studios approached him about acting in a Western TV series, King of the Texas Rangers.  Republic was then known for its quality B pictures, especially westerns and movie serials. John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers were among those who played in Republic westerns and became recognizable stars at the studio.  With Sammy being a well-known football star by then, both nationally and in Texas from his TCU days, Republic wanted to capitalize on that notoriety by using him in its films.  So Sammy signed a contract to make a dozen or so of the Texas Rangers serials, all filmed in June and July of 1941.  Advertisement for a 'King of the Texas Rangers' film serial in which Sammy Baugh starred as Joe King.      In the series, Sammy played the role of Joe King, a Texas college football star who leaves school and to join the Texas Rangers. King takes up with the Rangers to avenge the death of his father who had been murdered by a group Nazi-like agents acting on the U.S./Mexican border with designs on the Texas oil fields. King teams up with Sally Crane, a reporter who witnessed his father’s murder, and Mexican police officer, Pedro Garcia, who is also after the saboteurs. Garcia is played by Duncan Renaldo who later becomes a star in The Cisco Kid series. In the Texas Rangers serials, King pursues the villains on horseback, fights them with his fists, and in gun battles.      Though inexperienced as an actor, Baugh was a quick study and had worked on a ranch as a youth, so he was a capable horseback rider.  He did his own riding in the serial, but others, including, Davey Sharpe and Tommy Steele, did the more dangerous stunts for him. Some film analysts say the serial contains “one of the greatest cliffhangers of all time.” King (Baugh) jumps onto a speeding train and gets into the engine cab just as the train enters a tunnel in a mountain.  The villains detonate explosives causing a landslide at the other end of the tunnel. But Baugh saves the day yelling “Open that throttle!” as the train shoots out of the tunnel to safety. Sammy Baugh with Bob Hope on the set where Hope was filming ‘The Lemon Drop Kid’, in 1950-51.      Sammy Baugh was offered more roles by Republic, but acting wasn’t quite Sammy’s cup of tea.  He took it as a one-time experience, and enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a new career path for him.  He preferred playing football and spending time with his family.  However, some of those in the film industry who worked with him, such as director William Whitney and co-star Kenne Duncan, believed that Sammy had Western star potential and thought he should stay in the business.  But after filming ended, Sammy returned to football, and he also bought a ranch in Rotan, Texas, which he named “Double Mountain Ranch” for the two mountains overlooking the property.  Sammy’s Texas Rangers serial, however, continued to run for many years in television syndication.  But Sammy apparently had some unique character qualities about him, as in the late 1980s, actor Robert Duvall visited Sammy in Texas to study his manner, crafting the character of Gus McCrae in the Lonesome Dove series after Baugh.

All-Around Player

     In his professional football career, Sammy Baugh was an all-around athlete. In an era when players played both offense and defense, before the days of free substitution, Sammy Baugh played defensive safety, and did well at the position.  He was not shy of contact either, taking down the toughest runners of the day, including the likes of Bronco Nagurski.  “He had that tough, prairie strength,” says NFL historian Steve Sabol. “He was a leathery kind of guy.”

     Baugh’s agility and quarterback sense made him an excellent aerial defender, and he shares a defensive record to this day of making four interceptions in one game.  In 1940, he intercepted 11 passes in just 10 games, which Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell has singled out as especially noteworthy. “How good is that?,” says Boswell, adding that “no NFL player has intercepted 11 passes since 1981 and the last man to have more than an interception per game was Night Train Lane in 1952.”  In 1943, Sammy was one of the few players to win a rare pro football “triple crown” distinction in offensive, defensive, and special teams categories — passing, punting, and interceptions.  In 1943 he completed 133 of 239 attempted passes for 1,754 yards and 23 touchdowns.  In punting, his 50 kicks averaged 45.9 yards for a total 2,295 yards.  And he also led the league that year in interceptions with eleven.  Baugh is the only player ever to lead the league in offensive, defensive and special teams categories.  As a passer, he was known for his ability to accurately connect with his receivers over long and short distances in the face of onrushing defensive linemen.  In nine seasons — 1937, 1940, 1942, 1943 and 1945-49 — he led the NFL in completion percentage.  Sammy also passed for six touchdowns in a single game on two occasions – once in October 1943 and again in November 1947.

     After retiring as a player in 1952, Baugh returned to his 7,600-acre ranch in Rotan, Texas, about 95 miles south of Lubbock.  Although ranching would become a major part of his life thereafter, he also stayed involved with football.  In 1955, Baugh began five years of college coaching at Hardin-Simmons College at Abilene, Texas.  He was also a coach of freshman football at Oklahoma State University and a backfield coach at the University of Tulsa.  In 1960 and 1961 he was head coach of the New York Titans of the new American Football League – the team that would later become the New York Jets.  In 1964, he became head coach of the Houston Oilers, posting a 4-10 record and decided he needed to focus on his West Texas cattle operation.  In November 1993, during a pre-game ceremony at a TCU football game, the university retired Baugh’s No. 45 college jersey.  His No. 33 Washington Redskins jersey was also retired, and is the only one the Washington organization has retired to date.  And each year since 1959, the Sammy Baugh Trophy has been awarded to the nation’s top collegiate passer.

     But Sammy Baugh, despite his one year of film acting, or even his stardom as a football player, was never much into being a celebrity.  After retiring from football, he stayed out the limelight for the most part, and lived a pretty modest life in west Texas.  Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell would later write that every decade or so, reporters would journey to Texas to seek Sammy out for an update.  “They always found him a gentleman,” said Boswell, a fellow who told stories punctuated by a single “hell” or “damn,” but otherwise, was a model of restraint.  Although there was a flurry of activity around him in 1994 when the NFL selected him to its 75th anniversary all-time team.  In September of that year he “stole the show,” according to some, with his “hysterical frankness and salty language” on the TNT cable TV special, 75 Seasons: The Story of the NFL.

     Baugh had married his college sweetheart, Edmonia Smith, of Sweetwater, Texas in 1938.  They had five children, followed by 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. His wife died in 1990, and he lost a son in 2006. But Baugh himself lived to the age of 94, when he died of kidney failure and pneumonia.  The doctor said his body just wore out.

 

“Changed The Game”

     Sammy Baugh was inducted to the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1963, a charter member, along with George Halas, Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange, Jim Thorpe, Curly Lambeau and about ten others.  But only Halas and Baugh were selected unanimously.  Sammy’s Hall of Fame profile calls him a “premier passer” who influenced a the game’s great offensive revolution.  “When Baugh first started with the Redskins,” says the profile, “pro football was largely a grind-it-out ground game.  The forward pass was something to be used with caution. . . By the time Baugh was through, the forward pass was a primary offensive weapon.  Obviously, such a change could not be totally brought about by one individual.  But Baugh was the catalyst that changed the game. No one had seen a passer who could throw with such accuracy.”

     Putting some perspective on this accomplishment, Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell observes: “What Babe Ruth’s home runs did for baseball in the early 1920s, Baugh’s bombs did for the NFL in the late ’30s.”  In 1936, the season before Baugh arrived, the average NFL team scored 11.9 points a game and completed 5.6 passes. “What Babe Ruth’s home runs did for baseball in the early 1920s, Baugh’s bombs did for the NFL in the late ’30s.”
                           – Thomas Boswell The NFL completion percentage was 36.5. The entire sport threw only 67 scoring passes.  As a rookie, starting only five games, Sammy Baugh broke the NFL completion record with 81.  By 1940, he was completing 62.7 percent of his passes.” Before Baugh came,” says Boswell, “only one man ever passed for 1,000 yards in a season.  By 1947, Baugh completed 210 passes for 2,938 yards… If Ruth [in baseball] quadrupled the prevailing view of how many home runs were possible in a season, then Baugh tripled the notion of how much yardage a team could gain through the air.”  Baugh was a trendsetter, who influenced other great quarterbacks of his day, including Sid Luckman in 1942 and Otto Graham in 1946, who also helped move the game into its modern era.

     For those who saw him play, Sammy Baugh remains one of the game’s best.  Said legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice in 1942: “Sammy happens to be just about the most valuable football player of all time, according to most pro coaches I’ve talked to.”  In the 1990s, sportswriter Dan Jenkins a Fort Worth, Texas native who saw Baugh play at Texas Christian University and as a pro, called him “the greatest quarterback who ever lived, college or pro.”  Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films and a noted football historian told the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon about an experience he had as a young boy seeing Sammy play:

     “I was 9 years old and my father took me to Shibe Park in Philadelphia to see the Eagles play the Redskins.  It was 1951.  My dad said: ‘See the man wearing Number 33? That’s Sammy Baugh.’  That’s all he said.”

     “It was like pointing out the Empire State Building, the Washington Monument or Niagara Falls. ‘That’s Sammy Baugh.’  That’s all that needed to be said to anyone who followed pro football in the 1940s and early 1950s.”

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Date Posted:  21 December 2008
Last Update:  16 April 2010
Comments to: jdoyle@pophistorydig.com

Article Citation:
Jack Doyle, “Slingin’ Sammy,1930s-1950s,”
PopHistoryDig.com, December 21, 2008.

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Sources, Links & Additional Information

“Boston Bravery,” Time, Monday, Aug. 19, 1935