Namath's Guarantee

---

---

On this day 45 years ago, Broadway Joe Namath made good on his famous guarantee, and Namath's underdog New York Jets became the first members of the old AFL to win the Super Bowl, defeating the Baltimore Colts, 16–7.

It was also the first time that the name Super Bowl was used officially.

Before the game, there was a widely held belief that the AFL was inferior to the NFL in every possible way. Baltimore was favored by 18 points — and that was surely seen by many as too few. The Colts, they would have told you, were certain to beat the Jets by more than that. They had outscored their opponents by more than 18 points in more than half of their regular–season games that year (and came within a point of an 18–point victory margin in three other games), and they had won the NFL championship two weeks earlier by nearly five touchdowns.

And, with a defense that was coached by future Hall of Famer Chuck Noll and featured players like Bubba Smith, Billy Ray Smith and Mike Curtis, it was easy to imagine the upstart Jets being manhandled as the Chiefs and Raiders had been in the previous two Super Bowls.

The AFL began to gain some grudging acceptance when the Jets managed to sign Namath, who played his college ball at Alabama for Bear Bryant. In fact, it was due in large part to Namath's decision that the NFL agreed to merge with the AFL a few years later. The NFL feared bidding wars for the top collegiate talent and felt that bringing the AFL into the fold and subjecting its teams to the annual draft would prevent such wars from happening.

The merging of the two leagues didn't happen until 1970, more than a year after Namath's Jets beat the Colts in what has come to be regarded as one of sports' greatest upsets.

Namath's guarantee was the result, perhaps inevitably, of accumulated frustration from suggestions that the AFL was inferior. Some analysts had suggested that, if they had played in the NFL, the Jets would not have qualified for the playoffs, let alone made it to the Super Bowl.

Three days before the game, Namath appeared at the Miami Touchdown Club. A belligerent Colts fan heckled Namath and taunted him with claims that the Jets would lose. Exasperated (and intoxicated), Namath said, "We're gonna win the game. I guarantee it."

Without question, there have been times — in the histories of all sports — when players for one team believed they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning a certain game. Sometimes it happens in championship games.

On this day 45 years ago, there might even have been a few Jets players who believed they would lose to the mighty Colts. But Joe Namath was not one of them.

---

---

The year before he led the Jets to the Super Bowl, Namath was the first pro quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards, and he is still the only one to accomplish the feat in a 14–game regular season.

Ironically, Namath was the MVP of Super Bowl III in spite of the fact that he didn't throw a touchdown pass in the game. In fact, he didn't attempt a single pass in the final quarter.

Happy 75th Birthday to Razorback Stadium

---

---

Today is the 75th anniversary of the opening of the football stadium on the campus of my alma mater, and a season–long celebration is planned.

I am speaking of Razorback Stadium at the University of Arkansas. Actually, since 2001, it has been known as Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium. (Reynolds was a philanthropist who studied journalism at the University of Missouri and went on to own newspapers in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Reynolds' newspapers launched the Donrey Media Group, which was active in both journalism scholarships and internships when I was in school.)

The Razorbacks only won twice in 1938, but one of those victories came in Razorback Stadium's opener. The victory came against Oklahoma State, 27–7.

It's been expanded twice since I was in school there. They've added all sorts of bells and whistles — as well as seats — since the last time I was there. When I was a student, the only lights in the stadium were designed to allow players to practice, not to illuminate a night game for television. But Razorback Stadium has lights now — along with one of those huge screens at one end of the field.

Even so, I'm sure it would feel much the same to be there — even after all these years.

There have been lots of changes starting with the conference affiliation. When I was growing up, the Hogs competed in the Southwest Conference, but they've been in the Southeastern Conference since 1992. And today, the Hogs are 3–1 to start a season for the eighth time in the last 25 years (they started 4–0 four other times).

This Saturday, they will come home to face Texas A&M, an old Southwest Conference nemesis.

---

---

Back in the summer, I saw an online contest to pick the most significant game ever played in Razorback Stadium. I didn't participate in the contest — I meant to, but I was short of time when I saw it, and I told myself I would go back and cast a vote, but I never did — but I've been thinking a lot about the question it posed.

If the question had been asked about War Memorial Stadium, the Hogs' home in central Arkansas (and much closer to the town — now small city — where I grew up), I think it would be pretty easy. In 1975, Texas A&M was ranked second in the nation when the Aggies came to Little Rock to face the Razorbacks in the season finale.

Teddy Barnes' TD reception just before halftime sparked Arkansas to a 31–6 victory over the previously unbeaten Aggies and a berth in the Cotton Bowl against Georgia.

But the question was not asked about War Memorial Stadium. It was asked about Razorback Stadium.

I went to some significant games at Razorback Stadium when I was a student there, and I know of some significant games that have been played there since I graduated, but only one game came to mind when I read that question. It was played long before I went to a game in Fayetteville.

It's "The Great Shootout" between top–ranked Texas and second–ranked Arkansas in 1969.

---

---

I have written of that game before. The Texas game was always the most important game on the schedule when I was growing up, no matter what the records were. The fans in Arkansas would have worked themselves into a frenzy even if both teams came into the game winless.

But the 1969 game was unique.

It was a rare meeting between the top two teams in the nation, and network folks were so certain that Arkansas and Texas would beat all of their other opponents that year — and be #1 and #2 in the polls — that they persuaded the schools to move their game from its traditional slot in mid–October to the first weekend in December, when no one else was scheduled to be in action, and the Hogs and the Longhorns could have the spotlight all to themselves.

In the days before conference championship games — and even national championship games — it was a fitting capper for college football's 100th season.

---

---

It may have been the greatest disappointment of my then–brief life when Texas edged Arkansas, 15–14, and was given a plaque proclaiming the Longhorns the national champions by President Nixon, who was, I believe, the first sitting president ever to visit Fayetteville. Texas coach Darrell Royal accepted the plaque from the president — even though he knew the Longhorns still had to overcome Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day.

And I watched it all on my parents' black–and–white TV. I don't remember how old I was when I first saw a Razorback game in color. All my early memories are in black and white.

Most of my memories of Razorback Stadium also involve Frank Broyles because he was Arkansas' coach when I was growing up. He was always there, always on the sideline, always doing his weekly TV show on Sundays (which, in those pre–cable days when teams were limited to one or two in–season telecasts per year, was usually the only way I could see footage of the Razorbacks in action).

Once, when I was a student at the University of Arkansas, I did a brief phone interview with Broyles. I must confess, I was a bit starstruck. I mean, here I was talking to the man I had watched roam sidelines since I was a child. I can't really say I idolized him. But he was a familiar figure to everyone in Arkansas, and I felt like one might if speaking to a movie star.

Broyles was no longer the coach by the time I interviewed him. He was the full–time athletic director, but he patiently answered my questions (which I realized, at the time, could have been more professional — but what the heck? I was a student), and I wrote up a story for the school newspaper.

---

---

Interestingly, while the stadium is known, officially, as Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, the playing surface is known as Frank Broyles Field. That is something I have encountered at other schools, too — including the University of Oklahoma, where I taught journalism for four years. I never attended a football game at OU, but I was well aware of the fact that the football facility was known as Memorial Stadium at Owen Field.

It isn't new to me. It just seems kind of unnecessary, like hyphenated surnames.

But I guess both serve a purpose.

Anyway, it's been 75 years since Razorback Stadium opened its doors. I'm proud to have played my modest role in its development. I witnessed some great moments in Razorback history — and I saw a few Southwest Conference greats from other schools play there. Most of the people who read or hear of those games and players will not know I was there, but I was. I cherish the memories.

Happy birthday, Razorback Stadium — and many more.

The Start of the Ten-Year War

---

---

Forty years ago tomorrow, Bo Schembechler concluded his first regular season as head coach at Michigan with a 24–12 victory over top–ranked Ohio State that sent the Wolverines to Pasadena, Calif., for a Rose Bowl date with USC. The loss ended a 22–game winning streak for the Buckeyes.

The Wolverines lost that New Year's Day game, but the win over Ohio State was the first shot fired in what became known as the "Ten–Year War" between the schools. Ohio State and Michigan dominated the Big Ten in the 1970s. No other school represented the conference in the Rose Bowl in that decade.

Without a doubt, Michigan fans would have liked to have seen a repeat of that outcome on this, the eve of the 40th anniversary of Schembechler's landmark victory, especially since "The Game," as it is known, was being played in Ann Arbor, where Schembechler recorded that triumph. But it was not to be.

Ohio State already was assured of a berth in this season's Rose Bowl, although the Buckeyes' opponent has yet to be determined. Michigan, meanwhle, needed a victory simply to be bowl eligible. The Buckeyes won, 21–10, ending Michigan's football season and spoiling the occasion for Wolverines fans.

But nothing can spoil the memory.

An Amazin' Anniversary

---

---

It was 40 years ago this month that the New York Mets — known to history as the "Amazin' Mets" — shocked the sports world by beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

What made the Mets "amazin'," to use a word that was popular in the press at the time (it seems to me that Casey Stengel originally came up with the moniker), was the fact that they had only been in existence since 1962. And their first seven seasons were dismal.

But, with Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman anchoring the pitching (incidentally, the pitching staff also included a young Nolan Ryan) and Cleon Jones leading the batters with a .340 average, the Mets took control of the National League East in early September and never looked back, sweeping Hank Aaron's Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series and then topping the Orioles in five games.

I was in elementary school that fall. Like most boys my age, I collected baseball cards, and, also like most boys my age in central Arkansas, I tended to follow the St. Louis Cardinals. It was Cardinal games we could get on the radio in those days — cable TV and nightly broadcasts were still in the distant future — but the Cardinals didn't come close to making it to the postseason that year, finishing 13 games behind the Mets.

I remember that most of my friends were supporting the Orioles in that World Series — and, as I say, they were the heavy favorites. Baltimore won slightly more than two–thirds of its games in 1969, and its roster had three future Hall of Famers — Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer — as well as several other talented players. The Orioles won their division by 19 games and swept their opponents, the Minnesota Twins, in the American League Championship Series.

But I was backing the Mets. The only reason for that, I think, is the fact that I read an article in a Sunday newspaper supplement magazine about Seaver a month or so before the World Series. Maybe the fact that my father always liked supporting underdogs played a role as well.

My friends were stunned when the Orioles lost. Strangely, I was not. I guess I was too young at the time to appreciate how far they had come in so short a time.

A Painful Memory

Today, during the first half of the Alabama-Florida game, they mentioned that this was the first time in 39 years that the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the Associated Press poll faced each other in December.

I remember that game. It occurred exactly 39 years ago today, December 6, in 1969. It was the Arkansas-Texas game.

Some folks called it "The Game of the Century." And some folks called it "The Great Shootout."

I grew up in Conway, Ark., which is in the central part of the state, and the Arkansas campus, where the game was played, is in the northwest corner of the state, about 120 miles away.

But geography doesn't matter in Arkansas. Whether you live in Texarkana to the southwest, Blytheville to the northeast or Monticello to the southeast or anywhere in between, just about everyone pulls for the Razorbacks.

And, in 1969, there was no cable. There were only the three major networks — and some restrictive regulations that limited the number of TV appearances a program could make during the regular season.

ABC's Roone Arledge made a deal with Arkansas coach/athletic director Frank Broyles to move the game to the end of the season, meaning an exclusive national viewing audience — and Arledge threw in a pledge that the president, Richard Nixon, would attend the game in person.

Arledge also promised to televise Arkansas' season opener the next year, which was against Jim Plunkett and Stanford.

In return, Broyles had to assure Arledge the footing would be good, so he installed AstroTurf at Razorback Stadium.

It was a gamble that Arkansas and Texas would win the rest of their games and play in a showdown of unbeaten teams as the regular-season finale for college football's 100th season.

The gamble paid off. Both teams were unbeaten. Nixon arrived after the kickoff, but in time to see most of the game. He was accompanied by politicians from both states, including a young representative from Texas named George H.W. Bush.

It's hard to imagine, these days, how incredible the hype was for the game. In their book "The Razorbacks," veteran Arkansas sportswriters Jim Bailey and Orville Henry called it "The Day The Nation Watched," and it truly was.

The day was raw and damp, as I recall. We lived in a hilly area and depended on the old-fashioned TV antenna to pick up signals from the Little Rock stations. The weather interfered with the TV signals and, at one point during the game, the wind and the rain knocked it loose. The picture suddenly went haywire.

My father decided to climb up on the roof to re-attach the antenna. I remember watching him climb up the ladder and make his way to the apex of the roof while the wind swirled around him and a cold rain stung him from time to time. From below, my mother called up instructions to him, advising my father not to electrocute himself.

Somehow, he fixed the antenna and we watched the rest of the game from the comfort of our living room. In the cold and the rain in Fayetteville, Texas rallied from a 14-0 deficit with 15 unanswered points in the fourth quarter and won the game, 15-14.

Nixon came down to Texas' locker room and proclaimed the Longhorns the national champions — even though they still had a Cotton Bowl date with Notre Dame on New Year's Day.

The pain in Arkansas the following week was almost too great to describe.

Actually, a much better memory of a December 6 — for Arkansas fans — came six years later. In Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium, Arkansas upset previously unbeaten and second-ranked Texas A&M, 31-6, to win the Southwest Conference and advance to the Cotton Bowl, where the Razorbacks beat the Georgia Bulldogs, 31-10.