Well, it’s that special Sunday again

Call me lucky, ancient, sports-minded, or whatever, but I have watched every Super Bowl.  I remember when people thought that having an NFL team play an AFL team was a joke or a gimmick.  I lived in Wisconsin back then, and talking AFL got you a funny look.

From the Green Bay–Kansas City game in 1967 to the last one, I’ve watched them all.  Frankly, most Super Bowl games have been boring and one-sided.  Maybe this is why so many people are talking about the commercials the next day at work.

What’s the most important game?  It has to be Super Bowl III, or the Jets upsetting the heavily favored Colts.

My brother, my dad, and I watched that one on TV.  Speaking of people being skeptical about the match-up, I remember how all the experts expected the Colts to blow up the young Jets.  So did everybody else:

The Colts finished 1968 with a 13-1 record and a point-scoring differential of +258, a number reached by only a handful of teams to this day. Eleven of their 13 wins could be described as “crushing.”

Instead, Joe Namath and the Jets pulled off the greatest football upset ever.  They beat Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts, 16-7.  They outplayed the Colts in every phase of the game.  It was the upset of upsets in NFL history!

Namath and the Jets never returned to the big game.  Unitas and the Colts came back to beat Dallas in Super Bowl V.

The Jets-Colts game in January 1969 changed everything.  It forced the 1970 merger between the AFL and NFL.  It also made a superstar out of Joe Namath.

Best of all, it won me $1, because I was stupid enough to bet on the Jets.  Honestly, I knew I’d lose the dollar but was happy to collect.

Happy Super Bowl, and may your favorite team win.

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Image: Marco Verch Professional Photographer via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).