Speaker 1: Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place, world
Speaker 1: history examined and science explained. This is one day university.
Speaker 1: Welcome and we're back on the untold history of sports
Speaker 1: in America. I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we have
Speaker 1: a fun one. We'll be discussing the evolution of athlete
Speaker 1: marketability as TV revolutionizes sports and every home in America
Speaker 1: gets a TV in their living room. And who is
Speaker 1: the first professional athlete television star Broadway? Joe Namath, quarterback
Speaker 1: from My New York Jets. Matt also tells the story
Speaker 1: of Super Bowl three, one of the most famous and
Speaker 1: important professional football games of all time. It's also the
Speaker 1: last great memory in New York Jets history and lucky
Speaker 1: for me, it happened thirty years for I was born.
Speaker 1: Here's Matt with more. Okay, as a reminder, we have
Speaker 1: already talked about the role of radio in popularizing sports
Speaker 1: in America. Americans sitting at home and hearing the crack
Speaker 1: of Babe Ruth's bat at Yankee Stadium, or or the
Speaker 1: whole country coming to a halt and listening to that
Speaker 1: Joe Louis Max Schmelling fight, which also took place at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium. Well, if the radio helped popularize sports in America,
Speaker 1: the television transformed sports in America. The effects that TV
Speaker 1: had on sports in the United States were massive, and
Speaker 1: early on not all the effects were positive. The American
Speaker 1: TV boom began in the nineteen fifties, and I have
Speaker 1: some statistics for those of you who like your American
Speaker 1: history and numerical form. In one in five American families
Speaker 1: owned a television set by nineteen sixty. It was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, the same year that American voters watched the
Speaker 1: first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: More American families had television sets than had indoor bathrooms
Speaker 1: priorities baby Well, in the nineteen fifties, baseball was America's
Speaker 1: pre eminent professional sport, and it was Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: that was really the first sports league to test out
Speaker 1: the promise of television. In ninety three, CBS Television and
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball they launched the Game of the Week
Speaker 1: on Saturday afternoons. Those were the first regular season games
Speaker 1: available on TV, one game a week. But here's what
Speaker 1: baseball owners found out televised baseball cut into game attendance.
Speaker 1: Major league baseball attendance dropped during the nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that more and more of the
Speaker 1: games were beginning to be on TV, and the real
Speaker 1: disaster was in the minor leagues. Minor league baseball attendance plummeted.
Speaker 1: You know, faced with the choice of watching the Hopkinsville
Speaker 1: Hoppers live or the New York Yankees on TV, most
Speaker 1: people chose the Yankees, and minor league baseball dropped seventy
Speaker 1: percent in the nineteen fifties. The number of minor league
Speaker 1: teams it dwindled from four hundred and eight to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five. Minor league baseball attendants would really
Speaker 1: not rebound until the nineteen nineties, and that actually has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with a movie about minor league
Speaker 1: baseball called Bull Durham. The effect of TV on boxing
Speaker 1: was even more profound, and we might say even more
Speaker 1: damaging to the sport. You know. At first, boxing enthusiasts
Speaker 1: saw massive potential in television physical violence in a small, contained,
Speaker 1: easy to film squared ring. It seemed like a match
Speaker 1: made in heaven, and initially, TV boxing ratings were high,
Speaker 1: but like I just told you about minor league baseball,
Speaker 1: televised boxing led to the collapse of local boxing venues,
Speaker 1: those small local boxing clubs and gyms where fighters learned
Speaker 1: their craft and boxing fans connected with young fighters on
Speaker 1: a regional basis. People stopped going to those places on
Speaker 1: Friday nights. Men were staying at home and watching boxing
Speaker 1: from the comfort of their couch. Boxing fans abandoned the
Speaker 1: local boxing clubs, and the foundation of the sport eroded.
Speaker 1: Boxing today is pretty much at an all time low
Speaker 1: point in terms of modern popularity. I really believe that
Speaker 1: this is where boxing would have been sixty years ago
Speaker 1: had it not been for one guy, Muhammad Ali. Interest
Speaker 1: in boxing was drying up. But Ali reignited fascination with
Speaker 1: the sport, So bright was his star all least single
Speaker 1: handedly gave boxing another half century of relevance. So early
Speaker 1: on television. It was a problem for baseball and for boxing,
Speaker 1: but not so for football. Television turned professional football from
Speaker 1: a marginal game into America's game. Professional football had very,
Speaker 1: very very modest beginnings up until World War Two. Americans
Speaker 1: by and large were pretty suspicious of professional football. You know,
Speaker 1: football was supposed to be an amateur sport. It was
Speaker 1: the great amateur college team sport. And professional football, by contrast,
Speaker 1: it was hidden at the start of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: You might find evidence of it in the tough mining
Speaker 1: in mill towns in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. You know
Speaker 1: what today, I suppose is considered Pittsburgh Steelers in Cleveland
Speaker 1: Ounds Territory. Back then, local clubs were formed and they
Speaker 1: were sponsored by a particular company, like a coal mine
Speaker 1: or a railroad company. And these companies would pay men
Speaker 1: a few dollars to play football on Sunday afternoons. The
Speaker 1: players would wear the name of that company on their uniform.
Speaker 1: But no formal leagues existed. Each team scheduled its own matches.
Speaker 1: There was chaos, there was disorder. Then group of men
Speaker 1: gathered in a car dealership in Canton, Ohio, and they
Speaker 1: created a league, the American Professional Football Association, which two
Speaker 1: years later they renamed the National Football League the NFL.
Speaker 1: The teams of the early NFL, they were from the
Speaker 1: Midwest and the Northeast, I suppose what today we would
Speaker 1: call the Rust Belt. You know, there were teams you've
Speaker 1: never heard of. There were the Columbus Panhandles, and the
Speaker 1: Muncie Flyers, the Rochester Jefferson and said, I could go
Speaker 1: on and on, and it would take a while. And
Speaker 1: that's because during the NFL's first thirty years, over forty teams.
Speaker 1: Forty different teams joined, the league, struggled, and then folded.
Speaker 1: The Great Depression of the nineteen thirties wiped out all
Speaker 1: of the franchises in the smaller cities, but all except one,
Speaker 1: a team from a tiny Wisconsin town that was sponsored
Speaker 1: by the local Indian meat packing company. They went by
Speaker 1: the name that Acme Packers, and since they are in
Speaker 1: Green Bay, Wisconsin, they are now known as the Green
Speaker 1: Bay Packers. But other than tiny Green Bay, the only
Speaker 1: teams that made it through the depression were the ones
Speaker 1: in the big city. You had the Bears and the Cardinals.
Speaker 1: In Chicago, there were the Boston Redskins. This is a
Speaker 1: team that moved to Washington, d C. In n seven.
Speaker 1: There were the New York Giants, and there were the
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Steelers in the Philadelphia Eagles. These big city teams
Speaker 1: and the Packers, they were the early essence of the NFL,
Speaker 1: but the league could never get on firm footing, and
Speaker 1: then World War Two came and almost killed the NFL entirely.
Speaker 1: In fact, in order to survive in ninety three, the
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles they combined forces. Literally,
Speaker 1: they merged their teams and during the war they played
Speaker 1: as the Stiegels. This is how tenuous things were in
Speaker 1: the early years, that the league was always just one
Speaker 1: season away from folding forever. And to say that Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball was the more popular sport than the NFL
Speaker 1: is to suggest a hierarchy where there really wasn't one.
Speaker 1: I mean, professional baseball was everything, professional football was nothing.
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen fifties the NFL began to find
Speaker 1: it stride. And when people point to the moment that
Speaker 1: the NFL finally made it, they point to nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight and the nf FEL Championship Game, when the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Colts defeated the New York Giants three to seventeen and
Speaker 1: it was an overtime in Yankee Stadium. It's still referred
Speaker 1: to by many as the greatest game ever played. But
Speaker 1: the key factor is that the game was on TV.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just seventy thousand people who saw the game
Speaker 1: in Yankee Stadium. Eleven million Americans watched this game on
Speaker 1: their television sets. And this was the moment that NFL
Speaker 1: players were transformed in the American imagination. You know, playing
Speaker 1: this hard game on TV under the bright lights. This
Speaker 1: is when NFL players went from working men to American legends.
Speaker 1: You know, this is when they became folk heroes. TV
Speaker 1: opened the game up. TV helped make football understandable to
Speaker 1: the masses. Put yourself in the place of a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties television view or what used to appear from the
Speaker 1: stands to be this distant, incomprehensible tangle of colliding bodies.
Speaker 1: Now you could see it up close. Now it started
Speaker 1: to make sense. And then, with the invention of instant
Speaker 1: replay and slow motion in the early nineteen sixties, the
Speaker 1: televised game became even more understandable. It made the game
Speaker 1: more intimate. Now on TV, we can literally see the
Speaker 1: whites of the player's eyes as he jumps for the
Speaker 1: ball or tries to elude a tackler. There's an undeniable
Speaker 1: allure about live games, the spectacle, the sensory overload, the camaraderie,
Speaker 1: and the stands. But There's also something to be said
Speaker 1: about watching a game on TV where each play has
Speaker 1: shown five times from five different angles, and where it
Speaker 1: is a very comfy seventy four degrees in your house
Speaker 1: and not well below freezing like it is in Green
Speaker 1: Bay where the meat Packers play. So that Baltimore Colts
Speaker 1: New York Giants game the greatest game ever played. Again,
Speaker 1: that was in the next year. Something else, very important happened.
Speaker 1: In ninety nine, another professional football league was created, the
Speaker 1: American Football League the a f L. This was the
Speaker 1: creation of a twenty seven year old Texas businessman named
Speaker 1: Lamar Hunt, and Hunt secured a TV contract for his
Speaker 1: new league right away. That was key. ABC Sports was
Speaker 1: locked out of the pro football game and they wanted in,
Speaker 1: so they gave a nice contract to this new league.
Speaker 1: And what happens in the nineteen sixties is this The
Speaker 1: two professional football leagues, the NFL in the a f L.
Speaker 1: They did battle with each other, not on the field,
Speaker 1: off the fields that they fought for the top players
Speaker 1: coming out of colleges at salaries for written players went up,
Speaker 1: and something interesting occurred. Though the NFL and the a
Speaker 1: f L owners they did not relish a bidding war
Speaker 1: with each other, the fight for the players and these
Speaker 1: escalating salaries, it attracted even more interest in professional football.
Speaker 1: Americans are fascinated with the question of how much money
Speaker 1: people meant, and suddenly there was a very public, open
Speaker 1: market competition between these two football leagues. But rather than
Speaker 1: escalating salaries killing one of these leagues, the competition for
Speaker 1: the players it seems to have increased interest in both
Speaker 1: leagues and so realizing that neither league was gonna outlast
Speaker 1: the other, it's gonna be able to kill the other
Speaker 1: league off. In nineteen sixty six, the two leagues agreed
Speaker 1: to coexist and they agreed to play an end of
Speaker 1: the year game between the best team from each league.
Speaker 1: When reporters asked Lamar Hunt about the championship game, a
Speaker 1: game called the a f L NFL Championship Game him,
Speaker 1: Lamar Hunt said that he jokingly called it the super Bowl,
Speaker 1: a name that he came up with after watching his
Speaker 1: kids play with a brand new toy, the super Bowl.
Speaker 1: Hunt said, I know that's a ridiculous name, but the
Speaker 1: media like the name super Bowl, and so it became
Speaker 1: the super Bowl, a super duper championship football game. But
Speaker 1: it was not officially called the Super Bowl until Super
Speaker 1: Bowl three. This is when the owners also decided to
Speaker 1: mark the game with Roman numerals, thus giving the game
Speaker 1: gravitas and linking professional football with the gladiatorial spectacles of
Speaker 1: the Roman Colosseum. And the star of that game, Super
Speaker 1: Bowl three was Joe Namath. After the break, Joe Nameeth
Speaker 1: makes a guarantee. Joe Namath belongs in the pantheon of
Speaker 1: American sports stars, but but not so much because of
Speaker 1: his athletic accomplishments. I mean, don't get me wrong, he
Speaker 1: was good, but no one with any real knowledge of
Speaker 1: the game of football would call him one of the
Speaker 1: best quarterbacks of all time. Now, it's what Nameth brought
Speaker 1: to sports in a non athletic way. He was a
Speaker 1: different type of American athlete, not entirely different. I'll compare
Speaker 1: him to Muhammad Ali a couple of times. No Nameth,
Speaker 1: for example, he brought an Ali like style and and
Speaker 1: boastfulness to football. But I think more than any other
Speaker 1: athlete in this era, it was Joe Namath who expanded
Speaker 1: the idea of what the modern athlete could be. Joe
Speaker 1: Namath was a brilliant but often injured quarterback at the
Speaker 1: University of Alabama and then was onto pro football and
Speaker 1: the question was which league would he choose, or the
Speaker 1: NFL or the a f L, And most assumed it
Speaker 1: would be the established NFL. That's where most of the
Speaker 1: stars were. That was the the big boys league. Both
Speaker 1: the NFL St. Louis Cardinals and the a f L
Speaker 1: s New York Jets they both drafted Nameth, and Nameth
Speaker 1: shocked a lot of people by going with the Jets
Speaker 1: in the a f L. He wanted the bright lights
Speaker 1: of New York City and the Jets offered him an
Speaker 1: unheard of four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: three years. This was the largest rookie contract ever in
Speaker 1: any sport. The owner of the Jets was a man
Speaker 1: named Sonny Werblin, and Sonny Werblin had made his fortune
Speaker 1: in the music and television industries, and Sonny Werblin new
Speaker 1: star power when he saw it. When he met Nameth,
Speaker 1: he knew he had to have him. He knew this
Speaker 1: was the guy who could bring instant fame and credibility
Speaker 1: both to the New York Jets and the entire a
Speaker 1: f L. Werblin said that Nameth had the same qualities
Speaker 1: as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, two larger than life
Speaker 1: figures that we've talked about. The New York Press they
Speaker 1: got their first taste of Joe Namath when the Jets
Speaker 1: introduced him at a press conference, and sports reporters were
Speaker 1: clearly a gas that all the money Nameth was making,
Speaker 1: he hadn't even thrown a professional pass yet, and one
Speaker 1: reporter asked, suppose you don't make it now. Joe Namath
Speaker 1: is supposed to say, I don't know, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to try my hardest and God willing, I'll fit in
Speaker 1: and do okay, But he didn't say that. He just
Speaker 1: smiled and said I'll make it. You know, it may
Speaker 1: not seem like much today, but this ali like assured
Speaker 1: nous and boastfulness. This was new to the conservative team
Speaker 1: sport of professional football. All one other thing that happened
Speaker 1: today of the press conference, the Jets team doctor took
Speaker 1: Nameth into a bathroom stall and asked to see his knees,
Speaker 1: and he was shocked. Nameth, he said, had the knees
Speaker 1: of a seventy year old man, that he had torn
Speaker 1: so much cartilage in college that the team doctor thought
Speaker 1: Nameth would last two years tops. Joe Namath's ability to
Speaker 1: play through tremendous pain is going to be one of
Speaker 1: the things that will eventually win him fans and admirers.
Speaker 1: But not right away. No, no, no. The more traditional
Speaker 1: sports fans did not like Nameth. They disliked his cocky attitude.
Speaker 1: They hated his hair when he grew it long. No,
Speaker 1: football players were supposed to be square heads with military
Speaker 1: style crew cuts. Now, Joe Namath was no hippie, but
Speaker 1: he liked his hair in the longer, more modern style.
Speaker 1: The traditionalists dislike Nameth even more when he showed up
Speaker 1: on the field wearing horror of horrors, white cleats. Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, football players wore black cleats. White cleats were
Speaker 1: a flagrant violation of football's militaristic ethos. You know, everyone
Speaker 1: wore the same color cleats, and that color was black.
Speaker 1: But name of thought, he looked better in white shoes,
Speaker 1: so he went with white. And he might as well
Speaker 1: have showed up in a mesh bikini. Fans yelled anti
Speaker 1: gay slurs at him from the stands. I mean, they
Speaker 1: really did. But Joe Namath just smiled, winked, and kept
Speaker 1: slinging the football. Call him what you wanted. What did
Speaker 1: he care? After all, you were paying your hard earned
Speaker 1: money to watch him play, and people watched him play
Speaker 1: at home on the road on TV. New York Jets
Speaker 1: games were not New York Jets games. They were Joe
Speaker 1: Aimeth games. They just happened to be other guys dressed
Speaker 1: in those kelly green uniforms that were playing with them.
Speaker 1: The TV cameras especially, they followed Joe Namath everywhere, but
Speaker 1: when he was captaining the offense, of course. But they
Speaker 1: showed him getting more eye black applied to his face,
Speaker 1: talking on the phone to his offensive coordinator, getting his
Speaker 1: knees looked at by the trainers. They showed him when
Speaker 1: he was injured, sitting on the bench in his fur
Speaker 1: coat and his and his sunglasses. Joe Namath was the
Speaker 1: first football player to be shown for any significant amount
Speaker 1: of time without his helmet on. He was the first
Speaker 1: football player to be given a face and identity separate
Speaker 1: from his team. It was Joe Nameth first, the football
Speaker 1: game second, and then there was the sex. Previously, athletes
Speaker 1: wanted their sex lives to be very, very off the
Speaker 1: record and sports writers that subject was taboo. Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: was legendary among the sportswriters for his sexual exploits. But remember,
Speaker 1: in the age of gee whiz journalism, the point of
Speaker 1: sports writers was the turn players into gods, so sexual
Speaker 1: indiscretions went unreported. But Joe Namath didn't care. In fact,
Speaker 1: he wanted the ladies of the world to know that
Speaker 1: he was single and interested in mingling. And the sports
Speaker 1: writers followed him along his name Hath drank and caroused
Speaker 1: and shot pool. They lived vicariously. Day after day. There
Speaker 1: were photos of Joe Namath socializing with models and actresses
Speaker 1: and for the record, and we know this because he
Speaker 1: told us Joe preferred blonds. He did advertising that played
Speaker 1: on his sex appeal. He did a shampoo commercial showering
Speaker 1: with the TV star in nineteen seventies eight girl Fara Fawcett.
Speaker 1: Very famously, he did an advertising for pantyhose. He put
Speaker 1: those old Nora old knees of his and legs panty
Speaker 1: hose and showed women how pretty their legs could be.
Speaker 1: So like Muhammad Ali, who liked to call himself pretty,
Speaker 1: Nameth blurred gender lines. He was both hyper heterosexual, but
Speaker 1: he was also willing to reject that conventional masculine model.
Speaker 1: So look, Joe Namath was not Mohammed Ali critiquing the
Speaker 1: war in Vietnam. He was not Tommy Smith or John
Speaker 1: Carlos critiquing racism in the United States. He was not
Speaker 1: Billy gene King attacking sexism in America, her story still
Speaker 1: to come in this course. Joe Nameth's radical nous was
Speaker 1: the way in which he challenged the stereotype of what
Speaker 1: the successful athlete was supposed to look like and how
Speaker 1: he was supposed to act off the field. NFL quarterbacks
Speaker 1: were supposed to be humble, crew cut, god fearing field generals,
Speaker 1: and Joe Namath looked and acted like he belonged on
Speaker 1: a Hollywood movie set or or at Woodstock. Nameth's moment
Speaker 1: in the Sun came at the aforementioned Super Bowl three,
Speaker 1: which was between the very established Baltimore Colts of the
Speaker 1: NFL and the upstart Jets of the a f L.
Speaker 1: The NFL's champion team had demolished the a f L
Speaker 1: champion in the previous two Super Bowls, and oddsmakers thought
Speaker 1: this would be exactly the same. The Jets were huge
Speaker 1: seventeen point underdogs. The week before the game, Nameth was
Speaker 1: speaking at a press conference and he guaranteed a Jets victory. Now,
Speaker 1: he did not say the Jets had a chance. He
Speaker 1: did not predict a Jets victory. He said in front
Speaker 1: of the nation sports writers, We're gonna win the game.
Speaker 1: I guarantee it. You athletes are semi reluctant to do
Speaker 1: this today. But back then this was unheard of, and
Speaker 1: worse than unheard of, this was stupid. Everyone knew it.
Speaker 1: There was no way the Jets could beat the Colts.
Speaker 1: But of course that's exactly what people said about Cassius
Speaker 1: Clay against Sunny Liston Super Bowl one and Super Bowl two,
Speaker 1: they had not sold out, not even close, but seventy
Speaker 1: people packed themselves into the Orange Bowl in Miami to
Speaker 1: see if Joe Namath could live up to his boast
Speaker 1: or to watch him get flattened by the Colts. More
Speaker 1: people would watch Joe Namath playing Super Bowl three on
Speaker 1: TV than watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon later
Speaker 1: that summer. And there's a lesson here, and it's the
Speaker 1: same lesson we saw with Muhammad Ali. Flapping your lips
Speaker 1: sells tickets. The iconic quarterback of the other team, the
Speaker 1: Baltimore Colts, it was Johnny Unitis, and with his military heuristic,
Speaker 1: buzz cut and quiet attitude, he was like Gary Cooper
Speaker 1: in high noon in a football uniform. And he was
Speaker 1: everything Joe Namath was not. And so this football game
Speaker 1: was sold as a battle between sensibilities, between generations. You know.
Speaker 1: It was crew cut versus long hair, tradition versus rebellion,
Speaker 1: square versus cool and cool. One Nameth and the Jets
Speaker 1: beat the Colts sixteen to seven. Joe Namath had backed
Speaker 1: up his guarantee and as he ran off the field,
Speaker 1: he held up his index finger were number one? Or
Speaker 1: was he saying I'm number one? Holding up your finger
Speaker 1: in this boastful manner. This was also something athletes didn't
Speaker 1: do back then. There was a Philadelphia sportswriter named Larry
Speaker 1: Merchant who was at the game, and I just love
Speaker 1: how he described the impact of Joe Namath and the
Speaker 1: Jets and Super Bowl three. I'm going to quote him.
Speaker 1: For three hours, seventy million viewers on television saw the
Speaker 1: end of the world as they knew it, and it
Speaker 1: blew their minds. They had been convinced by the pro
Speaker 1: football mystique that a quarterback had to be Bart Star
Speaker 1: or Johnny Unitis to win championships, leading by example, modesty, discipline, character,
Speaker 1: and attendance at communion breakfasts. For the fans who bought
Speaker 1: that theology whole, it was a three hour horror show.
Speaker 1: Nameth changed the face of professional football with one or
Speaker 1: gasmic victory. Man, that is a great paragraph of writing,
Speaker 1: but I actually think he's under selling it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Joe Namath did more than just changed professional football. He
Speaker 1: changed American sports. You know, I like compared Daring Nameth
Speaker 1: with Ali. Clearly, I've done that a couple of times today.
Speaker 1: But let me end by contrasting them. Even Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: for all his boastfulness and radical nous, he was spartan.
Speaker 1: Ali did not drink. You know. Sure he caroused, but
Speaker 1: it was all done in private. And when it was
Speaker 1: time to train for a fight, Ali went up into
Speaker 1: the mountains and isolated himself. But not Broadway, Joe. All
Speaker 1: their lives, American athletes and sports fans, they've been told
Speaker 1: that modesty and hard work and sober living, these are
Speaker 1: all requirements for athletic excellence. Well, hard work still was.
Speaker 1: But it turns out you could be a hard drinking
Speaker 1: out all night on the make Playboy and still win
Speaker 1: the biggest game of the year. It was, as they say,
Speaker 1: a whole new ball game. That's all for now. Next
Speaker 1: time on the Untold History of Sports in America, presented
Speaker 1: by One Day University, The Battle of the Sexes h