And finally, the column on Super Bowl III. The lead is a takeoff on Heywood Broun's famous lead about Babe Ruth that "Ruth is mighty and shall prevail.' That is a takeoff on the biblical line, "Truth is mighty and shall prevail." January 13: The Outrageous Kid Is Mighty and He Prevails Miami -- Youth is mighty and shall prevail. And Joe Namath, the outrageous kid of the moment, pulled off one of the most cocky and daring personal triumphs of this sporting time. He flew in the face of all the sober values and then led the New York Jets to a 16-7 victory over the Baltimoe Colts yesterday. He did it in the premier spors showcase of the 1960s--the Super Bowl. Call him Super Joe and steel yourself for preposterous lionization of the young man because all the front-runners will now run wild in the streets waiting to knock at his door. He's achieved a pinnacle reached by few athletes, and he's only 25, so he'll have plenty of time to acquire humility and live happily ever after.
Namath owns the raging little world of pro football. Until now the Super Bowl was the property of the National Football League. The Super Bowl was the Green Bay Packers and Vince Lombardi. Now the Super Bowl belongs to the New York Jets and Joe Namath. When the Jets came onto the field to warm up yesterday, Namath did not come out with them. A few moments later he came out by himself, the only one wearing a helmet. The effect was that of a great entrance befitting the prima donna; it was just the kind of thing Sonny Werblin envisioned for Namath when he signed him for an outlandish sum, and projected him as a star of stars. Not even Werblin, the show-business smartie, could have anticipated that he was landing not only an exceptional football talent, but a kid with a flambuoyant style that was socko show business. When Namath started warming up, he stationed himself on the five-yard line and lofted passes. He pantomimed taking a snap from an imaginary center and, with graceful ease, threw long, high spirals that floated down past midfield to the 40-yard line, 55 yards away. Those passes supposedly were the get-rich-quick bombs that made up the only potent weapon in the Jets arsenal. It was expected that the Colts would be ready for them. And the Colts were expected to have more than an answer because they didn't need 55-yard bombs. They could run the ball at the Jets and wear them down the way real football teams do, the way the Packers have set the style in the NFL. The Jets then went out and played exactly the kind of game that is assocated with the NFL. They ran through the Colts and they gave Namath the time to pass over them. The longest of Namath's 17 completions measured 39 yards. Still, there was one of those rainbows of a heave. The second time the Jets had the ball, they had a first down on their 35-yard line when Don Maynard, the pencil of an end, sprinted down the right sideline. Namath let one go high and far, and for a few seconds while the ball hung in the air, it was evident that Maynard had the Colts defender beaten. The ball was thrown into the wind, but it was thrown too far and it landed a step beyond Maynard. It was only in incomplete pass, yet it showed that this kid had the magnificent arm everybody talked about. The Jets went on to take charge and Namath never needed to throw one like that again. After a while, it was the Colts who lost their poise and went for the long bomb. Every smart-aleck crack ever made about the AFL as a basketball league came back to haunt the partisans of the old league. And the irrepessible Johnny Sample reminded everybody about that in the dressing room afterward. Namath stood up on a bench to say his piece. As he stood there looking down over his audience, he conjured up the image of another outrageous fellow who shook the world in a similar way in the same city five years ago. At that time, after Cassius Clay whipped Sonny Liston, Clay taunted a press corps that had pilloried him for boastfulness (this was before he became a Muslim and gave people a more intense reason for hating him). "All right," Clay shouted, "who's the greatest, tell me, who's the greatest? Grown men who knew this was a kid they would have to deal with because he was the heavyweight champion mouthed back the words, "You're the greatest." Namath was more subdued than Clay. But he did not choose to be a phony and come on with what he called "the humble bit." He never regretted saying all those grandiose things about how the Jets would beat the Colts. He said, "I always have confidence. If you don't have confidence, you shouldn't play this game. A guy who doesn't have confidence just doesn't come from a good family. "I was only sorry that the things I said about Earl Morrall not being as good as some of the quarterbacks in our league was taken as a rap at Earl." Was he sorry for Morrall? "Better him than me. What do you think people would have said of me if we had lost?" And when some "ifs" were raised about what would have happened if the Colts had held onto two near-interceptions, Namath said, "If? If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his behind." Johnny Unitas said that when he went into the game, Morrall wished him "good luck." Namath said, "There wasn't much to say. Yeah, I felt sorry for him, but that's the nature of the game. Earl will bounce back, you can be sure. It's the man upstairs who is really controlling the game, and if that's the way He wants it to be, that's the way it'll be. You know that." Does somebody up there like long-haired, loud-mouthed Joe Namath?"
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Jets Risk Offending; It Can't Hurt 
