Book publishers like to time their releases to important events.

That’s why it surprised me that Little Brown released Joe Namath’s book, All the Way, this month.

It would have made sense and hyped sales had they released it earlier this year just before the Super Bowl. 

That would have made it 50 years after Namath, the star quarterback of the New York Jets, made what sounded like an outlandish claim in predicting his American Football League team would upset the mighty Baltimore Colts of the National Football League in Super Bowl III.

But Namath was right. 

His Jets beat the bookies and the Colts 16-7 in 1 of pro football’s most unexpected upsets.

$427,000 for 3 years

I remember it as if it was yesterday. We were living in New York when Jets owner Sonny Werblin took a chance on Namath’s bad knees and signed him for $427,000 over 3 years, a pro football record then.

That’s worth $3.5 million today, but it was Namath’s pay to take pro football punishment over 3 years for a little over $1 million a year.

Compare that to the money top pros in almost any sport are paid today.

This tells a lot about our heroes, our fascination with underdogs and the games we play, says Gerald Eskenazi who covered the Jets for the New YorkTimes and has written Gang Green, a book about the team’s history.

In All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters written with Don Yaeger, he reveals with candor the world where he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Beaver Falls, Penn., north of Pittsburgh.

3-sport star

In high school he excelled in football, basketball and baseball. In a time when dunks were rare in high school, Namath regularly dunked the ball.

After high school graduation in 1961, he received offers from Major League Baseball teams,  including the Pirates and Phillies. 

Namath decided to play football because his mother wanted her son to get a college education.

Alabama Coach Bear Bryant stepped in to give him a full scholarship and Namath helped him win another national championship.

With the Jets he became the first pro QB to pass for 4,000 yards in a season and “quit” a few months later when the commissioner told him to divest himself of a nightclub where unsavory sorts hung out.

Broadway Joe

He made news often, cavorting with movie stars on screen and off, drinking too much and saying things in public he later regretted. 

Despite his bad boy reputation as Broadway Joe, his mother had instilled in him a strong moral sense, but a rebellious streak. He was expelled from Catholic school after a nun smacked him for flirting with a girl. In response, he writes, he threw his books out the window. 

“I was not asked back for the 8th grade,” he said.  

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