Joe

It's the end of another football season and the Super Bowl is at hand.

In 1965 when I was a young teenager of 14, I admired New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath perhaps more than anyone living at that time. This admiration was a combination of a newly pubescent boy, and a insanely popular playboy athlete. It was not purely coincidental that upon the floor of Namath's bachelor pad there rested an expensive, decadent llama-skin rug while at the same time my sock drawer was lined with fake fur from a couple of torn-apart winter gloves. I wanted to be like Joe, even if I couldn't.

In the mid 1960s there were better choices than Joe for personal admiration. There was John Glenn and Martin Luther King Jr., to quickly name two. But I had not seen either Glenn or King throw a fifty yard pass in front of 60,000 cheering fans, let alone fend-off countless beautiful women. Fact is; Joe Namath was probably not even the best quarterback of his day. His football career overlapped the careers of such Hall of Famers as Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen. Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach. But none of them had the off-field charisma of Joe Willie.

The idolization did not last long; perhaps a football season or two, but right there at that critical stage of my young life, it was going full blast.

Namath retired from football in the mid 70's at a fairly young age. He had bad knees almost his entire career and eventually they brought his playing days to an end. By then his wild popularity had waned and within a few years he was mostly forgotten by both pop America, and by me.

In recent years Namath has occasionally reemerged in the public eye, sometimes in embarrassment. A few years ago during a football game, an aging, drunken Joe Namath flirted with an attractive female media member during an ill-conceived interview. Other appearances have been more positive, thankfully.

It has been fifty years since Joe Namath's rookie season. He seems in good health. He is trim, lucid, and his damaged knee joints have been replaced with artificial ones. But gone are the cheering crowds. His picture has long since disappeared from magazine covers. The groupies have gathered elsewhere. No more crowds of girls. Aside from the occasional reunion, the comradery with teammates is a thing of the past. I hope the older Joe is happy.

I am no longer 14, but I still remember the young Joe Namath and the dubious effect he had on me. I suppose the truth is; I am still something of a fan. I'm a big enough fan that I thought of him this morning... as I was pulling on my fur-lined gloves.