by T-Bone
I am a college football guy. The idea of millionaires playing a game I would still love to play for free is tough. But because I am from Alabama, I watch the Super Bowl; not because the teams are my favorites or because anyone I am rooting for is playing, like Shaun Alexander (a fellow Tide alumni, who last year ran his way into the NFL MVP); not because I have a commercial on it either (I haven't had one on there in years).
Instead, I watch the Super Bowl because of one man who is old and bent and cripple and flawed, who still has a famously carved face that is hawkishly capable of exploding into a smile that makes you believe that losers can win and the crippled can walk and the blind will see.
This man made his share of mistakes. He wasn't exactly a role model nor a model of moral behavior, and he may have played drunk or hungover on more than one occasion. But even with a crushing after-all-nighter fur ball in his mouth, he could throw 5 bitterly accurate touchdowns and embarrass gifted athletes who were as sober as Jerry Fallwell. He played through pain and insults and under the pressure of fame, threats, money and cortisone.
The last time I saw him live on TV, he was drunk again, asking a young sportscaster to kiss him. I nearly cried. There was a time when there would have been 40 million women lined up for that opportunity. Not anymore. As he smiled and looked vulnerable, the woman squirmed and turned him down.
How the mighty have fallen. It made me realize that our heroes are flawed, and that's why we love them. They are like us, but we are not like them. Not on Super Bowl Sunday.
Joe Willie Namath is why the Super Bowl is Super. His young, brash guarantee of victory against the favored Colts put him in the cultural ring with Mohammed Ali. Joe Willie Namath came into a league that only a few eccentric diehards followed, and the Jets' Sonny Werblin stroked the young Alabama quarterback the biggest check in football history. Why? Because he knew Namath could not only deliver the TD's and the wins and the women that would insure success, Namath could deliver the baby that was soon to be the biggest thing in sports.
On January 12, 1969, in Miami's Orange Bowl (a stadium he knew all too well from his days under Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant), Broadway Joe threw his way into Super Bowl history by backing up his boast and grinning like it was easy. But that wasn't the biggest thing that happened on that day when he famously ran off the field pumping the number one sign. The Super Bowl itself rode into national holiday status on his ruined knees, devil-may-care attitude and brutal arm.
Namath turned the Super Bowl from a game into an icon; he took it from a stadium into America's living rooms and hearts. Legendary NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the marketing genius who saw the power of football on TV and made the Super Bowl into the holiday we know today, needed a magic, defining moment, a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus blinding light that would rip the past from the future and give birth to something bigger than a mere game -- which is what the Super Bowl was before that day.
Namath delivered it like one of his dreaded passes, renowned because they came so hard that your hands would bleed.
Pre-Namath, 40-50 million people watched the Super Bowl and a 30-second commercial cost 42 grand. Today, a billion viewers worldwide watch two teams, dozens of commercials (at $2.3 million per :30) and our own addiction to celebrity in a Roman-numeral'd buffet of capitalism that rivals Christmas and overshadows Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July in the psyche of America.
All other sports seem like multi-game, scripted affairs (March Madness, The World Series). But when the Super Bowl cranks up, it's one big Chipotle burrito. Millionaires are made. Corporate cash is guzzled. Companies fight it out in the commercials. Legends are cast and careers are made. Embarrassments are unfurled. It's an orgy of corporate, athletic entertainment. We might see anything from Mick Jagger shake his 60-something arm-flaps to Janet Jackson's pierced nipple. There's even a football game.
David Halberstam's XL Super Bowl: The Opus is adapted in this week's Sports Illustrated and if you love football, you should check it out.
And then there's Joe. When Susan and I were in college at the University of Alabama, Joe Namath would show up on campus regularly with the newest Jets QB, former Alabama QB Richard Todd. I suspected a couple of cheerleaders were the lure, but that's just my opinion.
Namath was an adopted Alabamian. We share a Crimson diploma -- and on a particular night at his restaurant in Tuscaloosa, we shared more. Susan and I were about to start eating when Namath hit me in the head with the kitchen door of his restaurant, just as cleanly as he ever hit Maynard for a TD back in the day.
That big grin exploded and he grabbed me and patted my head like a dog. He apologized, and I apologized for denting his door with my pate. Then he sat down, autographed a napkin for Susan, talked for a few minutes about our recent marriage, and paid for our meal. It was like he knew us.
I can still see that big grin, that same grin those guys saw in the huddle in 1969 on the field in the Super Bowl as he made them believe they could do what nobody else believed would ever happen – except Joe Willie.
That's why I watch the Super Bowl.
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