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Joe Namath on Life After Football
Joe Namath, football superstar, actor, TV show host, restauranteur, author, philanthropist, pulls up in a gold Cadillac SUV with a Save the Seas shark license plate, and strides into the Jupiter Beach Resort. He’s wearing a smile, a greeting for everyone there he knows by name, and his Super Bowl ring.
You can’t really miss the ring — it’s gold and huge with lettering and big sparkly diamonds. On the 50th Anniversary of his team the New York Jets winning the 1969 Super Bowl against the Colts after a brash statement “guaranteeing it” — and the 100th Anniversary of the NFL, he has a lot of thoughts on football today.
“My 50 anniversary of the Super Bowl win? That’s a big scary number!,” he says, sitting in the resorts lounge, sipping coffee (with milk, no sugar). “Really makes me think how long it’s been. The sport has come far and the Super Bowl wasn’t called that the year we won, that happened the year after. I got a ring for the game win but a Dodge Charger for winning Most Valuable Player, I was happy to give it to my mother and see her driving around in it. I got a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate (The S. Rae Hickok Professional Athlete of the Year award, known as the Hickok Belt) in 1968. It’s solid gold with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, probably worth over 7 figures now. A few of the guys that won that took the jewels out and made necklaces for their wives. I keep it in a vault, take it out and look at it every now and then, then put it back in the bank vault. Can’t keep something like that lying around,” he laughs.
With the Super Bowl happening in Miami in February at Hard Rock Stadium, Namath says he would like to go “but only if I have something to do.” Sitting back passively and just watching a game he once dominated doesn’t interest him.
“I’ve been keeping my eye on the Ravens Lamar Jackson,” he says of the Ravens star quarterback of the moment who went to Boynton Beach High School. “He’s quite an athlete and has got what it takes but only time will tell. (Editors note: Within days of this interview the Ravens and Jackson were knocked out of the playoffs by the Tennessee Titans.) When I started we were introduced to the concept of ‘unblocking ourselves’, which I didn’t understand at first but came to realize it meant your mental attitude was as important as your physical state. You have to be confident. I kept that even through all my knee, shoulder and back injuries. Tom Brady, now there’s a confident guy. He’s played professionally longer than I did and you can see his dedication to the game.”
When asked if any rising quarterbacks ever call him to ask for advice Namath shakes his head no.
“Those guys learn from history,” he says. “The technology and coaching now is so advanced from what I had. After a game I would actually get a few reels of film of the game to lug home and study on my projector. The team only had four projectors and I was lucky enough to get one of them! I had to thread the thing and hope it didn’t catch and burn in the machine. I’d watch and takes notes about the plays. Now they watch instant replays on the sidelines on an iPad.”
The big anniversary spurred Namath to write a memoir, something that he initially didn’t want to do but soon saw the importance of. The book, “All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters” is an unflinching, honest look back at his career highs and personal lows. The book is structured in a way that draws out the story of the 1969 Super Bowl game, with details of the plays and the behind the scenes action in each quarterly section, leaving the final big payoff until the end of the book. He writes about it in a way that he is both in the moment and looking back with the perspective of time.
“I decided to look at my life as if I am going to live to be 100. So now at 76 I’m just entering my 4th quarter. I tried to make it conversational and honest.”
In between the big game replay, the book details his journey from Beaver Falls, PA to major league sports to TV shows, movies, Broadway musicals, relationships, his struggles with addiction, fatherhood and his quieter life now. His greatest joy is watching Harry Potter movies with his granddaughters. He supports local artists such as Jason Newsted when he hosted an exhibit to purchase the Lighthouse Arts Center, and when his friends Nick Korniloff and Pamela Cohen of the Palm Beach Modern & Contemporary Fair Art had famed street artist Shepard Fairey paint a mural of their son Perry at Jupiter High School.
He works with his Foundation joenamath.org that supports children’s charities and neurological research. There is a neurological center named after him at the Jupiter Medical Center. Having taken quite a few blows to the head, he says the research into using hyperbaric chamber sessions has literally reactivated his brain cells.
He recalls the halftime as an edgy break in the locker rooms — the players smoked and paced and were itching to get back on the field, where marching bands and floats were entertaining the crowds.
“I also insisted on recording the audiobook” he says. “I mean who else is going to read me? It took about three 8-hour days and my lifetime of vocal coaching helped me through that. I was shooting a movie in Europe with Linda Evans in the 70s when I got approached about a Broadway musical and I said man I can’t sing! Linda said ‘Yes you can if you want to’, so I took it seriously and took lessons and ended up in several shows. I’m a Gemini and I have these two sides.”
He had been nicknamed Broadway Joe long before he actually acted on Broadway when his Sports Illustrated cover came out depicting him ready to throw a ball while standing on Broadway in Times Square. His movie career was more checkered, but in the 1970s and 80s he was a huge cultural star and audiences just wanted to see him do just about anything from hawking shave cream with Farrah Fawcett to wearing pantyhose. In the HBO documentary Namath his co-star in “C.C. and Company” Ann Margret says “He was hot…and had those pretty eyes!”
Namath hung out with everyone from sports legends to singers to movie stars.
“I came to Miami when I was in high school and just loved the weather and how different it was from Pennsylvania. In the 70s I used to go to Dean Martins place in Miami on the 79th St. Causeway, Dino’s,” he recalls. “I walk in there one night and Dean is sitting at a table with Frank Sinatra. Frank waves me over and says ‘Hey Broken Knee have a seat!’ The bum knee was more famous than I was. I moved here in as soon as I could.”
With a major book under his belt, Namath is turning his attention to a new partnership with Charlie Modica, a Jupiter developer who has purchased a large 19-acre waterfront property along Jupiter inlet where the duo are building two new restaurants slated to open in May. Sport star restaurants are sprouting up in Jupiter as 1000 North, partly owned by Michael Jordan and Ernie Els, and Tiger Woods’ The Woods at Harbourside, have all opened in the last few years to great success.
This is not his first foray into the restaurant business, Namath owned a bar in NY called Bachelors III in the 70s with two fellow bachelor pals that became infamous for the clientele of showbiz and sports figures and eventually organized crime. It was billed as a pioneering singles bar. The club expanded to various cities including Florida but he had to bow out due to pressure from the football league. He also lent his name to a fast food joint called Broadway Joes that sold burgers and roast beef and whose servers wore number 12 football jerseys. At one point they had 11 franchises including one in Lake Worth, but the operations folded in 1970.
This time around looks to be a “guarantee’ (to quote his famous Super Bowl win prediction) as the partners are experienced and the location is prime — right across from the landmark Jupiter Lighthouse.
“Rather than one big restaurant we are opening two, one will be a casual place and the other more upscale,” he says. Namath eats clean and healthy these days and says the menu will have something for everyone with an emphasis on seafood and prime meats. He plans to be very hands on and frequent the place often as he lives nearby. The restaurant names, design and exact menu haven’t been released yet, but promise to be show stopping.
As he walks the Resorts lobby he is stopped by several people who recognize him and just have to shake his hand and gush a little. He passes a pool table and looks at it and smiles.
“Back in Alabama I knew a guy who was the One Pocket Billiards King. They called him the Tuscaloosa Squirrel. He bet me and I played him and I figured out there was a game I couldn’t play well enough,” he says with a laugh. Namath is full of great stories.
From Beaver Falls Joe (his mother called him that) to Broadway Joe and now Jupiter Joe, Namath basks in the life he has carved out for himself, realizing a trajectory that few if any in the sports world or entertainment world have taken.
As he says in his books dedication “To the underdogs and the favorites: It isn’t how we get knocked down that matters, it’s how we get back up.”
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