I get lots & lots enjoyment out of life other then the NYJ shits. Some day hopefully the lite bulb will go off over your head & U will suddenly realize what I am trying to communicate to U. Again try twitter to get a much broader view of the NYJs
I do & there was a good reason cause I had to baby sit my g/daughters. To bad I am not yet underground heh?
I was 10 when the Heidi bowl was on; and my father and Uncle and a few others were watching the game against the Raiders. When they switched to the Heidi movie all hell broke lose and beers were flying all over, cursing, etc. My uncle went out to his car and listened to the rest of the game on AM radio and came back inside and told everyone they lost. They would both go to the Superbowl and paid like $25.00 for tickets and brought home some coconuts for us kids.
That's an amazing photograph. Look at the sky in the background! You just don't see Super Bowl pictures like this anymore, since they're all played in domes these days...
The Wikipedia page on the Heidi Bowl is a good read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game A sample- The 1967 game was one of the most vicious in Jet history. Namath was slugged to the turf; he was hit late, punched in the groin. They aimed for his knees, tried to step on his hands ... And Davidson got Namath. He got him on a rollout, with a right that started somewhere between [California cities] Hayward and Alameda. It knocked Namath's helmet flying, and broke his jaw, but Namath didn't miss a play, and he threw for 370 yards and three TD's in that 38–27 loss. ...The ill-feeling of previous years was resurrected by an immense blown-up photograph, posted at Raider headquarters, of Davidson smashing Namath in the head. The photographed play was said to have broken the quarterback's jaw (though Namath stated he had broken it on a tough piece of steak... Although the poster, which had been placed by Davis, was removed before the game, word of this "intimidation through photography" reached the Jets in New York. When the Jets went to Oakland in 1968, that photo on the Raiders' wall symbolized the rivalry as well as Coach Weeb Ewbank's distrust of Davis. Whenever a helicopter flew anywhere near a Jets practice the week before a game against the Raiders, Ewbank would look up and shake his fist. He just knew Davis had somebody spying on the Jets.
Ben Davidson Interview, nothing personal against Joe we all just resented all the money he was making and the only way to show it was rough him up, he actually praised Joe Willie's toughness...
Actually it was Ike Lassiter who broke Namath's jaw. The photo showing Namath getting cheapshotted by Davidson happened after Namath's jaw was already broken courtesy of Ike Lassiter on an earlier play. Not only did Namath stay in the game and throw for 370 yards and three TDs but the following Sunday in San Diego, wearing a special protector for his cheekbone, Namath completed 18 of 26 passes for 343 yards and 4 touchdowns, 3 to Don Maynard. With a total of 4,007 yards in 1967, he was the first pro quarterback to throw for more than 4,000 yards in a season. Not that it deterred him from his appointed rounds. That evening after the Oakland game at the Edgewater Inn's checkout desk, Namath was sighted wearing a swollen purplish cheek and a tuxedo. ''Where are you going in that tux?'' he was asked. ''To Vegas,'' he said. ''We're off till Tuesday.'' Namath, Jets recall the day they took fateful Super step in AFL Championship game vs. Raiders FARRELL FOR NEWS Joe Namath (r.) was battered and bruised in that AFL Championship, but that didn't stop him - nor did a late-night romp - from leading Jets to the Super Bowl. How could the legend of Joe Namath be complete if one of his greatest days had not been preceded by one of his best nights? As recounted in Mark Kriegel's biography "Namath," a rookie cop named John Timoney was exiting the precinct house at 8 a.m. on Dec. 29, 1968, just five hours before the Jets andOakland Raiders were going to do battle for the AFL Championship at Shea Stadium. There, across the street, leaving the Summit Hotel by a side entrance, was Broadway Joe, his arm around a young lovely in very memorable go-go boots. Timoney scrambled to get in a bet on the Raiders. He should have asked Namath first. He was in vintage form. A few months later, noted columnist Jimmy Breslin verified the encounter, quoting Broadway Joe himself: "The night before the Oakland game, I got the whole family in town and there's people all over my apartment and the phone keeps ringing. I wanted to get away from everything. Too crowded and too much noise. So I went to the Bachelors Three and grabbed a girl and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and went to the Summit Hotel and stayed in bed all night with the girl and the bottle." Namath was sounding as young as he was then over the phone earlier this week, his website BroadwayJoe.TV doing a brisk business these days. Slyly perhaps, he would only volunteer this about that Championship Game's eve: "What did happen was Weeb (Ewbank) had insisted that we approach this game as we did any other game or as we had been approaching the games in recent weeks to maintain our routine," says Namath. "Well, my routine was to go out and have a nice dinner and then go home. This particular night before the game, I did have dinner with the young lady and sitting across from us at a table for six or eight were the game officials. "But as far as the next morning, I don't remember anything abnormal." The reader can judge the exact truth of the matter but as far as the next afternoon was concerned, there definitely wasn't anything abnormal. Battered, bruised but not beaten, Namath led the Jets to a 27-23 win that made possible his guarantee in Super Bowl III. It was a game that gets lost in the historic significance of what happened in Miami, but to today's Jets, it is a template for how to beat a tough, nasty opponent even if Mark Sanchez spent all of last night sleeping like a baby. What Namath remembers as the "toughest, most physical game" he ever played was a tribute to the grittiness that was hidden behind the bravado. In many ways, it was the ultimate test of his career. The Raiders didn't play nice. Their approach was best summarized by their ornery defensive tackle, Dan Birdwell, who once said, "You have to play this game like somebody just hit your mother with a two-by-four." The way they always went after Namath, he must have owned the lumberyard. In their meeting the previous year, defensive end Ike Lassiter tried to rearrange Namath's Noxema-smooth face, breaking his cheekbone with a blow to the right side of the helmet. It's a hit the Jets insist came after the whistle, or as Larry Grantham puts it, while Namath was "standing there watching whoever caught the pass running with the ball." Namath stayed in the game only to be soon separated from his helmet by Raiders end Ben Davidson's double-fisted blow to an aching chin. Davidson ended up getting credit for the fracture, and a spectacular picture of the play earned a place of honor on Al Davis' office wall. "He could similarly have a picture of Ben Davidson running across the field and seeing George Sauer, having thrown a block, laying on the ground," huffs Jets tight end Pete Lammons, recalling another play that day. "You could see big old Ben running with his long stride. He saw Sauer and he shortened his stride to be sure to step right in the middle of George's back. They didn't have any trouble trying different things, legal or illegal." If anything, the animosity was taken up a notch in the Championship Game, which happened to be a rematch of the Heidi Game - the famous Raiders-Jets game that NBC cut away from to show the film "Heidi," only to miss a remarkable Oakland comeback in the waning minutes. The Jets wanted the Raiders, who had to win a one-game playoff with the Chiefs the week before. As defensive tackle Gerry Philbin says, "For us, it was bring 'em on."
….continued: And so they came into Shea, where the winds were howling out of the open end of the stadium at 35 miles an hour, where Davis had built a protective hut for his team that Ewbank had torn down, and where the Raiders were up to their old tricks. Namath came out of one pileup with a finger bent three different ways. "I remember lying on the ground grabbing my hand and Birdwell was on his feet with a big grin on his face, yelling, 'Hey Joe, look, you broke your finger.' And I didn't say anything," Namath remembers. "I was a little bit in semi-shock when I saw it was pointing in the wrong direction." Later in the first half, the Raiders made their only sack of the game count. Lassiter and Davidson met with the quarterback in the middle, Davidson's airborne knee catching Namath in the helmet. At halftime, with the Jets up 13-10, Namath had to be walked into the locker room by trainer Jeff Snedeker. Ewbank told backup Babe Parilli he might have to go in. Recalls Namath, "They were looking at my head. I got an injection in my finger and both knees and it was fine. We were able to play." Early in the fourth quarter, Namath threw an interception. Don Maynard had been beating rookie corner George Atkinson all day, but this time the wind held the ball up and Atkinson undercut it. Namath had to shoulder Atkinson out along the sideline. "I remember that play well because when I did knock Atkinson out of bounds, he started yelling at me, 'I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.' And my reaction was, 'Shut up, rookie, and play football.' I remember going past my players going off the field and just thinking, 'God dang it.' But after Oakland was able to score, I did let our defensive team know we were going to get it back and sure enough . . ." Trailing by 23-20 after a Pete Banaszak touchdown, Namath ran back onto the field for the signature drive of his career. He played the Raiders like a fiddle in a three-note samba. On first down, with the Raider corners strangely playing off, he hit Sauer on an out route for 11 yards. That set up his next play because it lured Atkinson andWillie Brown closer to the line to do, as Namath says, "what they do best." That would be bump and run, or what Maynard called "mug and run." "Earlier in the game, I told Joe, 'Down the road sometime, I've got things set up pretty good and I've got a long one if you need it,'" Maynard says. "So, Joe told us in the huddle, 'Hey we're going to go for it, so make sure, no holding by you linemen, we're going after it.'" "I can remember it clearly just like I'm describing it," says Namath. "The team was alerted, 'Be ready for the check. If we check, we're going to go to maximum protection and run go (routes). Maynard had told me he could get a step on that guy and sure enough, we broke the huddle and came up to the line and I saw Atkinson and Brown come up, so we audibilized to the pass to Maynard and you know the result." Maynard calls it his "Million Dollar Catch" because of what it would mean. Here's how he explains it: "Joe threw the ball and I was going to catch it about 11 o'clock over my inside shoulder. The wind was really blowing that day. I'm reaching out to catch the ball and all of a sudden I'm looking up and the ball is kind of fading and it goes over to 12 o'clock and it goes over to 1 o'clock and my head's looking at the sky, just following the ball. I caught it at about 2 o'clock." Maynard's momentum took him out of bounds at the 6. Namath says he thought of a taxi driver who once told him the Jets get too conservative near the goal line. He thought the Raiders would be expecting the run. He called a play-action pass. Maynard says he came out of the huddle as the No. 1 receiver and ended up being the No. 4 receiver – on his knees with the ball in the end zone. The play worked because the Jets line gave Namath time to find Maynard, after his first three options were covered. Namath even tripped on the play, regained his balance and made his throw. "If you ever look at that film, just watch (Maynard)," Namath says. "He just sets up Atkinson with his pass route prior to his break. Maynard had that clock in his head. He knew if I was coming back to him how long it would take. He was biding his time, man, and made his break at the right instant. He broke clean and I was able to see him and get it to him." There were plenty of other heroes that day. Because rookie Sam Walton had been schooled by Lassiter in the Heidi Game, Dave Herman had shifted over from his regular right guard spot and was playing tackle for the first time in his life, giving away 25 pounds. "Weeb asked me when I was driving him home if I'd do it and I said anything to help us win," Herman recalls. "Then I thought about Lassiter and said, 'God Almighty, this is going to be a challenge.'" Namath remembers Herman coming back in the first series, saying, "I think I pissed (Lassiter) off," but he won the day as he would against Bubba Smith in the Super Bowl. Then there was safety Jim Hudson, who had been ejected from the Heidi game, making stop after stop as the Raiders threatened but were turned away with a field goal and a failed try on fourth-and-10. But the Raiders kept coming. Daryle Lamonica who had been sacked by Verlon Biggs on an earlier fourth-down try and could feel him coming again. He had Charlie Smith on a swing pass but threw behind him, a backward lateral. Jets linebacker Ralph Baker picked it up. Today, he would have scored a touchdown. Then it was a dead ball. But the Jets had it back and Oakland would eventually run out of time. According to Baker, it was the same play Oakland used to score in the Heidi game when they sent two backs out of the backfield, one up the seam and the other into the flat. Smith went up the seam the last time and scored. This time, the backs reversed positions. "They wanted to get the ball to Charlie Smith out in the flat," he recalls. "He circled out there and I was waiting for that play all game because it was burning in my mind from the last time. I kind of jumped on the guy out in the flat right away and for whatever reason Lamonica threw behind him. I knew it was a free ball." The postgame celebration was wild. It was against AFL regulations to have champagne in the dressing room, but 25 cases were smuggled in anyway. Namath poured some of it on talk show host Johnny Carson's head. "It was especially satisfactory," Namath says. "It was only my fourth year in the league but my experience with (the Raiders) and their players wasn't always good. You just didn't like 'em. I just didn't like 'em and you know what, if they were a poor team, I probably wouldn't have cared. But something happens when a team is good. Then you start to get personal about things. "It was," he says, "a joy."
And you don't see Super Bowl teams like that anymore. The year after the Jets won the Super Bowl they opened the season up in Buffalo. As the Jets came onto the field at War Memorial Stadium, they received a standing ovation from the Buffalo fans in appreciation of them beating the NFL. While NE's won their share of Super Bowls, you'll never see a Patriots team cheered by an opposing fanbase. On the contrary, the New England Patriots and the New England Patriot organization are viewed by many of the other fanbases nowadays as rule bending d-bags and the faux noble "Patriot Way" as the sham that it is. The Super Bowl Jets represented the anti-establishment and anti-NFL while the Patriots (in spite of their fan's attempts to portray themselves as victims who are unfairly in the crosshairs of Goddell) are the team whose owner hosts his puppet Goddell at his house on the eve of a playoff game.
