JOE NAMATH WOULD not be much on our minds these days except for two astonishing developments. First, he got married, and second, he joined pro football’s Hall of Fame, only one of which, as far as is known, required a vote.
Namath as a groom may be more intriguing than Namath as an all-time hero, since his reputation as a bachelor always exceeded his fame as a quarterback. Namath had one great moment on the football field. The number and intensity of his other accomplishments will have to wait for his memoirs.
I suppose he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for no other reason than that magic afternoon in Super Bowl III, when he brought the American Football League from tourist to first class. But he never did anything with a football before or after that day that warrants enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, the last place anyone nicknamed Broadway would be expected to be found anyhow.
FOR THOSE WHO have forgotten the legacy of Namath, he once represented a generation, right up there with the Beatles and Muhammad Ali.
His last game, if memory serves, was a losing playoff encounter six years ago between the Los Angeles Rams, for whom he lurked in the final year of his career, and the Minnesota Vikings.
The end was not what his legend demanded. For those who believed he was everything romantic and compelling in sports, Namath should have gone down under a fierce pass rush, pinpointing one last touchdown pass to win the big game. He should have been carried off on his shield, thumbing his nose at the world in one final, glorious act of defiance.
Instead, the man who once joked about sleeping through college sat alone on the bench of a team most of us can’t remember he ever suited up for while Pat Haden, a Rhodes Scholar, swept up in front of him.
The man who once saved a league with the New York Jets was not asked to save a single game for the Rams.
IT WAS AN END not uncommon in sports. Babe Ruth ran out his string with the Boston Braves, leaving his team in a pique because it wouldn’t give him the day off. Ali fought pygmies for money, losing his last fight in front of foreigners because they were the only ones who could watch without turning their heads. Billie Jean King hung on and on, willing to lose tennis matches to children.
And like them, Namath was always bigger than the game he played. He has managed to remain with us, more or less, as a fitful actor, a celebrity bowler or some such.
It takes a Hall of Fame endorsement for us to remember what he was. Namath’s real importance and his real credentials for the Hall of Fame were his influence on his sport and on his time. What he was and what he did linger still like a locker-room odor.
He was the first to give football players an exaggerated value of their own worth, getting nearly half a million dollars as a rookie and immediately jacking up the wages of combat.
Any sports contract that does not begin on the fat side of $1 million these days is not worth mentioning.
NAMATH’S LIFESTYLE, outrageous in his day, is commonplace now. Not that booze and women were ever out of fashion with athletes, but Namath made both a status symbol for the successful jock. Booze has been replaced by more exotic mindbenders, a not surprising progression.
A more trivial example of a Namath affectation that became routine is white shoes. It is difficult to find an athlete south of Minnesota who wears basic black on his feet instead of white. And are we all too young to remember when Namath was the only one who wore them?
Namath’s long hair set a style not only in sports but also in the larger arena. Executives who would have been the first to yell, “Get a hair cut!” in 1968, became shaggier than Namath ever was, and like the original he was, Namath showed his ears again long before they showed theirs.
Namath was the first athlete who got away with being different. “Do your own thing” became a catch phrase for a generation.
BY BEATING THE establishment in the Super Bowl, and by challenging it when he quit football in dispute over ownership of a bar, he set the tone for much of the later rebelliousness of athletes everywhere.
Namath’s demand for freedom was echoed in player strikes in both football and baseball. For better or worse, the roots of almost all athletic unrest can be traced to Namath’s trend-setting belligerence.
It was no accident that Namath’s greatest glory came in the ’60s. He was the kind of hero an uncomfortable nation was looking for–arrogant, self- confident and a rebel.
And it is worth noting that, as the turbulent ’60s gave way to the complacent ’70s, Namath gave way also. Here in the causeless ’80s, he is just another Yuppie whose only rebellion is against polyester.
Now he is being honored by the establishment he once taunted, going into the Hall of Fame at the same time as no less than the high commissioner of the game himself, Pete Rozelle, which proves what we’ve always suspected: Young pioneers have a way of becoming old proprietors.