30 Seconds With Joe Namath

Joe Namath led the Jets to an upset over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, the team’s only championship. This year’s Topps football cards capture the greatest players and moments in Super Bowl history. Some cards contain codes that can be entered in the Super Bowl Legends Giveaway at toppslegends.com for a chance to win prizes, including a card signed by Namath, 68, who was in Manhattan recently to promote the contest.

The Jets have appeared in the last two A.F.C. championship games but were eliminated each time. Are they talented enough to get to the Super Bowl this season?

I have my doubts, and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of people because I’m a real Jets fan. But I’ll tell you what; to get there three years in a row against all that competition, with Lady Luck and injuries involved, uh, the odds aren’t as good as you’d like them to be. I looked at their schedule from Day 1 with the Dallas Cowboys coming to town, and whoa, man, do they have some monsters.

Can you compare Mark Sanchez to a young Joe Namath?

He’s got pretty good feet and good arm strength, like I had, and he works hard, like I did. I was a workhorse; there was never a practice that I didn’t enjoy. Of course, in pro ball, they never hit the quarterback in practice.

When you were a kid in Beaver Falls, Pa., who was your football idol?

Johnny Unitas was my hero. In my senior year at Alabama, I got to wear No. 19. Johnny was on the Colts when we played them in the Super Bowl, which was one of the more surreal experiences of my career. Just walking out for the coin flip and seeing him there, that was kind of cool.

Any regrets from your pro career?

If I could go back and change one thing, it would be my nutritional intake. We didn’t have the kind of knowledge that we wised up with over the years. A pregame meal for me at 8:30 in the morning was a cup of coffee and chewing tobacco. It was only after I retired that I began looking back and asking myself, What was my physiology really like? In the third and fourth quarter of games, was I as strong as I could have been?

How come you never went into coaching?

Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant once told our whole freshman class at Alabama that if we could learn to do anything else in life besides coaching, go ahead and do it, because he didn’t get to know his children well enough when they were growing up. Weeb Ewbank told us the same thing. Coaching is so time-consuming, and it’s a hard job. If you have the passion, fine, you make it your life’s work. As a football coach, everything in your life comes after your football schedule. I just could not make that commitment.

Who were your best friends during your professional playing career?

I had a few good buddies on the Jets and some of us still maintain contact. Guys like Billy Mathis, Winston Hill and Don Maynard. You keep in touch not just because of the good times you’ve shared, but the lessons you learned and the values you shared along the way.

Tell us something no one knows about you.

Uh, no, and there’s more than one thing, so I’m never going to do that.