Written by Matt Goldberg

"When Namath emerged from Bear Bryant's football program at the U. of Alabama, the upstart American Football League was the stepchild to the powerhouse National Football League. Sonny Werblin, who'd left MCA after the Justice Dept. broke up Lew Wasserman's company, knew the value of star power and was determined to use it when he bought the Jets. He outbid the NFL, paid Namath a record $400,000 salary and turned him loose on New York. The handsome nonconformist became a sensation, on the field, in nightclubs and on Madison Avenue as the first star to become a magnet for commercials.

After backing up his guarantee that the Jets would beat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, Namath put the AFL on equal footing with the NFL, paved the way to a merger and helped establish football as a TV sport. He accomplished all of this on knees so bad that draft board doctors refused to send him to Vietnam for fear that they would give out on the battlefield.

"Most of the stuff you saw in 'Forest Gump,'[sic] Joe lived through all of it," said Walsh, who first met Namath on the Alabama campus and has worked with him ever since. They witnessed the struggle for civil rights in Alabama, the sexual revolution and Vietnam."

Oh my God!  It's like RUDY meets FORREST GUMP!  You see, Namath was a rebel and in no way a pre-cursor to the non-stop endorsements, athletic obsession with materialism, and putting the "I" back in team.  Football used to be pure!  It used to just be guys hitting each other with minimal padding!  You never saw this kind of behavior in Baseball, America's great pastime! 

I wonder if they ever make an O.J. Simpson biopic, if it will focus on his football accomplishments.  I don't see why not.

No non-sequiturs about footballers here.