I liked the lead on this column about the Jets seeming confidence going into the game. And I would daresay the last graph is worthy of a hindsight second look. January 11: Jets Risk Offending; It Can't Hurt Miami -- The Jets are the most overconfident 18-point underdogs in history. Pre-battle comic dialogue is the mark of any great sporting confrontation, and the Jets have elevated this Super Bowl production to the theater of the absurd. Instead of poor-mouthing, the way football underdogs are supposed to do, the Jets have taken the offensive and offended all those most likely to be offended. Joe Namath knocked the Colts defensive line. The Colts defensive line!?!? That's like saying King Kong was a shrimp. Preposterous. People react at the top of their voices to such statements, and it hardly seems to matter that most of the principals can laugh at them. For instance, Baltimore coach Don Shula was asked yesterday, "Namath has been building up a great deal of interest in this game. Is your team interestesd in Namth?" Shula said, "Anytime you have a colorful personality like Namath, you create interest. I think our players are interested, too. We have had a littl fun with the affair that was reported between Joe and Lou Michaels. If it's true that Lou threatened Namath, then Joe is the 827th guy Michaels has threatened to deck. And if he had decked Joe, he would have been the 38th Lou has decked." Shula agreed with Namath's comment that if the Colts needed to put newspaper clips of his remarks on the wall to get them up for the this game, they were in bad shape. "We're adults. The players know the magnitude of this game. They've worked a lifetime to get here," Shula said. There are hints of reaction, though. Baltimore's Bubba Smith, the greatest thing since peanut butter, said, "The Green Bay Packers were real champions. They never talked;they never had to. This the way I visualize all champions--solemn, dignfied, humble." Good thinking, Bubba. Except that the champion heavyweight figher in all the world now is Muhammad Ali--and he is not solemn, dignified, humble (nor were champions named John L. Sullivan and Babe Ruth). This explains part of the furor over Namath; he has assumed the role of Muhammad Ali, and many of the people offended by the former Cassius Marcellus Clay are indignant at Broadway Joe Namath. It is perhaps of some small interest that Namath will be operating in the same city where not too long ago Clay shook up a little part of the world by upsetting Sonny Liston. Namath's talk ("I guarantee you we'll win") and Johnny Sample's talk are in the verbal tradition of Vince Lombardi, the most exalted figure in proper football circles. Lombardi's approach to football was to run at the opponent's strength. He would take the battle right to the enemy'' strongest battlements on the theory that if you weakened that, you weakened the whole team. So Namath has knocked the Colts defensive line, the pride of Baltimore and all National Football League outposts. It was a far more interesting tack than trying to justify the American Football League's right to play on the same field with the NFL. Shula inadvertently displayed the kind of thinking the NFL still has toward the AFL when he praised the Jets with a faint damn. He said the Jets must be respected because they can strike long to "get the easy touchdown." He was referring to Mamath's great arm and the potentcy of receivers Don Maynard and George Sauer. Without trying to be too presumptuous in reading Shula's mind, I submit that the corollary to that proposition is a feeling the Colts are superior because they can get what can be called the "hard touchdowns." The Colts can drive down the field, keeping control of the ball and slogging it out, wearing down the enemy. It's almost like the Puritan ethic that to do something the hard way is better and more valiant, and that you have to be more worthy to be able to do it that way. Character building and all that. That is probably true. Hard work and dedication and patience are traits upon which to buld a man, a team, a nation. But football is only a game and it pays off on how many points are scored, whether they are scored the easy way or the hard way. If Joe Namath, with all his flaming youth and outrageous lack of humility, can find it in that powerful arm to strike for those long touchdowns, it will make for one of the stunning upsets of all time. End of sermon.
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Is Ewb Weebank a Jolly, Dirty Old Man? 
