Happy 80th Birthday, Joe Namath!

May 31, 1943, 80 years ago: Joseph William Namath - not named "Joe Willie," as Howard Cosell called him, and allowed it to be incorrectly entered into public consciousness – is born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, a mill town outside Pittsburgh.

Joe would play quarterback at the University of Alabama, where he developed that weird half-Pittsburgh-half-Dixie accent, and led the school to the 1964 National Championship. Then on to New York, where he made the American Football League first exciting, then respectable.

One of my favorite sports trivia questions is, "How many touchdown passes did Joe Namath throw in Super Bowl III?" The answer is, "None." The Jets only scored one touchdown, on Snell's run. Namath was better 2 weeks earlier in the Jets' win over the Raiders in the AFC Championship Game. That was a better game overall, too.

It could even be argued that Namath, with a career completion percentage of just 50.1 percent, more interceptions than touchdowns (220-173), a career losing record as a starting quarterback (62-63-4, plus 2-1 in the postseason to make him exactly .500, 64-64-4). He only made 1 Pro Bowl, in 1972. That was also the only time he led the NFL in passing yards, and the only time he led it in passing touchdowns. And with injuries leaving him with his last productive season at age 32 and his last game at 34, would not have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame if the Jets had lost this game.

But Namath did lead the Jets to victory in that game, and was elevated to sports idolhood. Along with the Mets' Tom Seaver 9 months later, and the Knicks' Walt "Clyde" Frazier 8 months after that, he became part of New York's holy trinity of sports icons for a generation, as Mickey Mantle and Frank Gifford had been in the generation before, and Reggie Jackson and Lawrence Taylor, and then Derek Jeter and Eli Manning, would later become.

In 1999, at Number 96, he just barely made The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. When the NFL Network chose its 100 Greatest Players in 2010, he squeezed in at Number 100 – although he was ranked Number 1 on the Network's list of the NFL's "Greatest Characters."
 
But that Super Bowl III prediction and win made him a legend for all time. That 1 Super Bowl win stands taller than the 4 won by fellow Number 12 Terry Bradshaw, and the 7 won by fellow Number 12 Tom Brady. (And Joe never had to cheat, as Brady did.)

That win, often called one of the greatest upsets in sports history, also helped pave the way for the Mets' World Series upset win later in the year. A wiseguy might say that the modern world of sports was conceived on January 12, 1969, when the Jets won the Super Bowl; and was born 9 months later, on October 16, 1969, when the Mets won the World Series.

The Jets retired his Number 12, and he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As yet, he does not have a statue outside MetLife Stadium. Maybe, as the Mets did with Tom Seaver, the Jets are waiting until after he dies.

From 1984 to 2000, he was married to actress Deborah Mays. They had 2 daughters, Jessica and Olivia. Through Olivia, he has a granddaughter, Natalia. He quit drinking after he got married, relapsed after the divorce, and quit again in 2004, after an embarrassing interview the previous year.

Like his contemporaries Muhammad Ali and Walt Frazier, Broadway Joe was a perfect mix of man, method and moment in sports. As a rebellious young player, at the glamour position in what had become the glamour sport, in the biggest city in the country, at a time when television had become not just the big thing (as it was for his hero, Johnny Unitas) but everything, he was the right man, doing the right thing, in the right way, in the right place, at the right time.

He was also the only athlete who made it onto President Richard Nixon's infamous "Enemies List." White House Counsel John Dean was once asked about this, and said he didn't know why, suggesting that it might have been a mistake.
 

Because of those circumstances, there might one day be another quarterback leading the Jets to a Super Bowl win – stop laughing – but there can never be another Joe Namath. Anybody copying his style would be hit with, "Yeah, been there, seen that, what else ya got?"