Fifteen years ago, I was in Denver for a real estate event. We went to lunch at the Brown Palace.
In the lobby of Denver’s 132-year-old Brown Palace hotel is a shadowbox display of two football helmets and a plaque that explains that in 1959, Lamar Hunt, a billionaire Texas oil man, met there with another rich man named Bob Howsam to discuss forming the American Football League. Howsam would own the Denver Broncos and Hunt got the Houston Oilers. What they proposed at the time could come under the heading “Impossible Dream”. You see, the National Football League had a 37-year monopoly on professional football and others had tried and others had failed to compete with the all-powerful NFL.
But Lamar Hunt and his merry band of dreamers went on to hire 75% of the top college players as they graduated each year, including Heisman trophy winner, Billy Cannon. They got a television contract with ABC, then NBC, and by 1966, the public cried out for a true National champion. The NFL had theirs and the upstart AFL had theirs, but who was the best? The Super Bowl was born and for the first two meetings, the NFL teams proved what everyone knew, the AFL just wasn’t up to snuff. It could have been the end of Lamar Hunt’s impossible dream but for the emergence of one man, a cocky young quarterback from Alabama.
At that time, Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show in New York City and when the New York Jets
were to compete in Super Bowl III, Johnny invited their quarterback, Joe Namath, on the show. As a young man,
I remember watching Johnny ask “Well, how do you think you’ll do against the Colts?”.
Joe Namath replied, “We are going to win.”.
In an effort to be kind, Johnny actually stuttered, “You mean you, you, you’ll hope to win? You, you’ll do your best?”.
“No”, Namath said, “We are going to win. I guarantee it.”.
They chatted a little more, but the statement had been made. Joe Namath guaranteed victory against the mighty Baltimore Colts. What followed was a week of skepticism, bordering on heckling, by the entire sports writing community. No one believed the Jets could win except Joe Namath and his 32 teammates, who watched his persecution. Namath never backed off and these young, fresh out of college football players came to believe in their quarterback and themselves.
The game was played on January 12, 1969. The Jets won 16-7. And the Super Bowl became super. David had beaten Goliath. The dreamer had achieved the impossible. The shift was complete a year later when the AFL Kansas City Chiefs, one of this years’ teams, won Super Bowl IV.
As you watch America’s game this Sunday, remember what dreams are made of and that one person can change the world.
– Joseph Callaway