The Vintage Sports Then and Now Athlete of the Month was the
key weapon behind the most important upset in pro football history.
While Joe Namath was the face of the 1968 New York Jets and
Super Bowl III, Matt Snell was the backbone of the New York offense and primary
weapon during the shocking victory.
In many ways, the foundation for the 1968 championship squad
started to be built in the 1964 AFL Draft when the Jets selected Snell, a star
at Ohio State, with the third pick in the first round. Occurring at the height
of the AFL-NFL player war, Snell was also drafted by the New York Giants in the
4th round of the NFL Draft (49th overall pick).
Joe Namath dominated the attention prior to Super Bowl III, but few expected his team to win.
With apologies to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, the most shocking sports victory of the 1960s took place 50 years ago on January 12, 1969 when the underdog New York Jets lifted the fortunes of an entire league by defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
Though the American Football League (AFL) was completing its ninth season and the champions of the AFL and National Football League (NFL) were meeting for the third straight year, most people did not consider the two leagues to be equal. In fact, it is reported that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle believed it might be another decade before the AFL would be an equal to the NFL and that a new format for the Super Bowl might be needed.
In hindsight, we know that the two leagues were indeed much closer in competitiveness than Rozelle believed, but at the time his reasoning was hard to argue against. The NFL Champion Green Bay Packers had claimed the first two Super Bowls by a combined margin of 68-24 and the current NFL Champion Baltimore Colts were perhaps an even more dominant champion than Green Bay.
While the Colts were an established NFL power, the New York Jets were an AFL upstart that had just completed the second winning season in franchise history and were making their first-ever trip to the playoffs.
However, one “ace in the hole” for the Jets was roaming their sidelines. Head Coach Week Ewbank had won two NFL Championships during his nine year tenure as coach of the Baltimore Colts. After moving to the Jets, he had taken the team from a basement dweller to league champions.
During both his time with the Colts and the Jets, Ewbank had the benefit of having an elite franchise quarterback leading the offense.
In Baltimore, he turned Johnny Unitas into an all-time great. Though New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath had not yet reached that status level, in 1967 he did become the first quarterback in pro football history to pass for more than 4,000 yards in a season. Read the rest of this entry →
In recognition of the start of football season, the Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month is one of the original stars for the defending Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.
In many ways, Gino Cappelletti epitomized the early years of the American Football League. While the NFL was becoming more specialized and tougher to break into, the AFL provided former college stars with a new place to play and its “wild west” mentality allowed players to contribute in a wide variety of ways. Read the rest of this entry →
Before Dan Fouts and Philip Rivers gained fame slinging the football down the field for the San Diego Chargers, the Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month quarterbacked the high-flying lightning bolt offense during the 1960s.
Drafted by both the Detroit Lions of the NFL and San Diego Chargers of the AFL in 1962, John Hadl chose to join future Hall of Fame coach Sid Gillman and the perennial AFL contending Chargers. Read the rest of this entry →
The Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month is a former major league baseball player who came into the game as a teenager and stayed until he was in his 40s. In between, Rusty Staub put up a solid career that was primarily spent on expansion or rebuilding teams.
Originally signed by the Colt .45s at age 17, he made his major league debut as a 19-year old rookie and became only the second player in the modern era to play in more than 150 games as a teenager.
Though he hit only .224 splitting time between first base and rightfield, Staub did start building a foundation that would turn him into an All-Star by 1967 when he finished fifth in the league with a .333 batting average.
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