Joe Namath and the Jet-Propelled Offense

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Debaucheries. No, you can't, and Joe most decidedly did not. Even as his tactical wizardry turned the stiles at Shea Stadium, his caterwauling got more and more notice from the New York fans and press, who had not had a bona fide rakehell hero since Babe Ruth. Namath helped embroider his image with statements like, "My weaknesses are clothes and blondes; I like any place in New York where there are girls and pleasant company." He also set himself up in the shooting gallery by snapping at reporters who quizzed him about a bad game: "Booze and broads, what else? We were out all night getting drunk."

Unsurprisingly, Joe had become something of a living legend by the time he was 25. When sportswriters got tired of extolling his exploits on the field, they zeroed in on his between-games lifestyle. There were photos and stories about his bachelor pad on Manhattan's East Side, which featured a white llama rug-and, purportedly, some of the unholiest debaucheries since Petronius' last house party. No American beauty could regard her career as complete without a date with "Broadway Joe" (a bad geographical misnomer, because Namath's favorite haunts—Dudes 'n' Dolls, Mister Laffs, P.J. Clarke's—were many blocks and light years away from Broadway). He made guest appearances on television talk shows, where writers provided him with merry bedfuls of double-entendres. He starred in a Grade Y potboiler called The Last Rebel (in which he actually said out loud, "All right, men. Guns on the table!") and a Grade Z film, C.C. Rider, with Ann-Margret.

In 1969 he also co-starred with N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle in a less amusing real-life gambling drama set in the commissioner's office and a Manhattan pub, Bachelors III, of which Namath was part owner. Rozelle's office had determined that hoods and gamblers were hanging out in the bar, and the commissioner ordered Namath to sell his interest. Namath replied by tearfully—and very publicly—retiring from football. If he meant to bluff, it did not work. Within two months he huddled with Rozelle and emerged after a lengthy session to announce that he would give up his interest in the bar and return to football.