Sports: Johnny Unitas

Johnny Unitas won MVP honors three times, played in 10 Pro Bowls (three-time MVP), and won the NFL Championship in 1958 and 1959. Uploaded by dpatsblog.blogspot.com.

Johnny U. can’t be credited with single-handedly making the NFL into America’s favorite sports league. Nor was he the league’s first superstar. But he did lead his Baltimore Colts to a sudden-death overtime victory over the New York Giants in the 1958 Championship Game. And he did revolutionize the position of quarterback, helping to make the forward pass the game’s most exciting play.

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Unitas played collegiately at Louisville. At that time, the Cardinals weren’t exactly in the upper echelon of college teams – they played (and often lost to) such powers as St. Bonaventure and Eastern Kentucky. Unitas played both offense and defense and proved to be quite an athlete. Still, no pro team wanted him after graduation, and he worked in construction to get a paycheck. In one of their all-time smart (lucky?) moves, the Baltimore Colts invited him to try out before the 1957 season. He made the team, and became a starter midway through that campaign. Neither the Colts nor the NFL were ever the same.

Unitas set a boatload of records, most of which have been exceeded by pass-happy offenses of recent years. One remarkable one stands, however. He threw a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games, something Marino, Fouts, Bradshaw, Montana, Brady, and Manning have been unable to match. Unitas was named league MVP three times, and NFL.com selected him as the sixth-greatest player of all time.

Sports: Joe Namath

 

How does a guy with a record of 62-63-4, 173 touchdowns and 227 interceptions make it into the Hall of Fame? One way is to be bigger than the game, which Joe Namath was. Uploaded by freefootballwallpapers.com.

Before I get specific about Broadway Joe, let’s give a shout out to western Pennsylvania for its unbelievable string of great quarterbacks. Joe Willie Namath is one, but the list also includes Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Johnny Lujack, George Blanda, Jeff Hostetler, and others. Namath grew up in Beaver Falls, about 20 miles from Pittsburgh. He received several offers to play Major League Baseball, but chose to play college football for Bear Bryant at Alabama.

That’s a little bit of a puzzler, looking back on it. It’s not that Namath couldn’t play within a team concept, but his personality was so large that it might have been expected to conflict with his coach’s. He was suspended for a couple of

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games once, but he came back the next year and helped the Crimson Tide win the national championship. Instead of signing with the NFL, he chose the rival AFL, whose New York Jets had made him the first pick in the draft. He was a four-time all-star, and led the Jets to the AFC championship in 1968.

1969 was the third year that the AFC champion took on the NFC champ in the Super Bowl (the leagues merged the following year). The first two games were NFL blowouts, and Namath’s Jets were huge underdogs in Super Bowl III. In one of the great upsets in sports history, Namath guaranteed that the Jets would beat the Baltimore Colts – and he made good on his promise. It’s no doubt the single game he’ll always be known for.

Namath was a party guy, and he got in trouble for opening a bar in New York City called “Bachelors III.” What you might call your “unsavory types” became regulars, and the NFL ordered Namath to sell his interest in the club. But far from ruining his reputation, this walk on the wild side actually enhanced it. He’s now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame despite what are actually very ordinary statistics. But he was a legend, and even today, everyone still loves Broadway Joe.

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• Namath heads first group inducted into Jets’ Ring of Honor (nypost.com)