Jets’ super stud Namath scored in a snap

It was Sept. 21, 1969, the second game of the new football season, and the New York Jets were kings of the world, having won the Super Bowl 10 months earlier in the most magnificent upset in football history.

The champs were on the road in Denver, and it was late — 4 a.m., just a few hours before they were to take the field against the Broncos — when the phone rang in coach Weeb Ewbank’s room.

“Where’s Joe’s room?” asked the woman on the line. “I’m mad at my husband.”

“Lady,” Ewbank responded groggily, “go back to your husband. Joe’s asleep.”

Or, more likely, with someone else. For while Jets fans — excited about today’s playoff game — still revel in the team’s glory 40 years ago, there was as much action off the field for “Broadway Joe” Namath as on it.

He wasn’t just America’s first pop star in sports. He was everybody’s favorite bachelor, an unabashed swinger whose charm, dimpled chin and boyish glee melted hearts and stripped away inhibitions everywhere.

Mark Sanchez, take note.

The legend took root early, soon after the kid signed a then-record-smashing contract that paid him $427,000 for four years and provided him a penthouse pad on East 76th Street — a love shack he equipped with a leather bar, mirrored bed and llama rug whose shaggy strands were so long they looked like flowing tentacles.

In October 1965, a month into his first season, the Jets found themselves in sunny Southern California, preparing for a game against the San Diego Chargers, just like the current squad today.

While the team’s rookie signal caller ran drills, a Hollywood icon rolled up in a powder-blue Caddy, top down so as to flutter her platinum locks. She stepped out, shorts hugging hips, her sweater “unbuttoned down to here,” recalled a player.

It was Mamie Van Doren, star of “Sex Kittens Go to College” and seducer of Elvis, Clark Cable and Steve McQueen. She had come to make a pass.

“It was probably the most disorganized practice we had all week … Even the coaches were watching her,” his teammate said.

After the workout, Joe Cool sauntered over to Mamie and, still in uniform, slid into her ride. As the two motored off, his coaches waved farewell: “Have a good time, Joe. See you tomorrow.”

While rookie quarterback Sanchez has had his moments — a fashion shoot with a supermodel, chomping on a hot dog on the sidelines during a game — he has a long way to go to match Joe’s magic.

“Forty years later, they haven’t come up with a folklore as compelling as Joe’s,” said Mark Kriegel, whose critically acclaimed bio, “Namath,” was a best-seller. “It wasn’t just about him being a bachelor. The Jets and NBC needed a leading man, a star who could do for Sunday afternoons what other stars had done in prime time. They took the real person and made Broadway Joe, sex symbol. No one had ever seen anything like it.”

He had little in common with New York’s other sports heroes, straight-laced types like Frank Gifford.

Namath drank at clubs all over town, including his own place, Bachelors III, on Lexington Avenue at 62nd Street. He hosted a TV show, subbed for Johnny Carson, went around in a fur coat, and pitched panty hose by famously donning the stockings himself.

And did the ladies ever love him!

In 1969, the year of the great upset, Namath and two pals, Tad Dowd and Tom Jones, were at a Manhattan hotspot called the Phone Booth. They were leaving when they spotted two devastating dames seated at a table with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.

“C’mon, girls, let’s go,” Dowd told them. “We’re having a party at Joe’s place.”

The girls grabbed their purses and followed Broadway Joe out the door.”What were they going to say?” Dowd asked. “You want to be with Jagger and the Stones? Or you want to be with Joe Namath?”

That same year he was paired with his pal and fellow hard-drinker Mickey Mantle for a celebrity golf tournament in California. While out on the links, their cart picked up a tail: a pair of buxom blondes with a cache of cold beer.

The press was waiting to interview him in the clubhouse.

“But then they make a turn, go up a hill, leave the golf carts and disappear with the girls for about an hour,” recalled sportscaster Sal Marchiano.

“Finally, they come back down, half-crocked. The girls are still with them.” He added: “We all had this feeling that Joe could get laid any time he wanted. He was the bachelor.”

Among Broadway Joe’s conquests was Raquel Welch, whom he escorted to the Academy Awards in 1972.

Backstage before the show, Namath was mobbed by John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Angie Dickinson. “The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” said a bar-owner pal. “Every actor you ever saw, and they all came up to Joe and said, ‘I’d just like to shake your hand. I saw the Super Bowl, and it was the greatest game I’ve ever seen.'”

Namath received the compliments graciously — then went right back to his table, and Welch.

A similar scene played out in 1970 during a trip to the Playboy mansion — Hollywood’s biggest stars rushing the quarterback like giddy, screeching schoolgirls, Dowd told The Post.

“They became groupies, going up to him and saying ‘Hey Joe!'” Dowd told The Post. “It wasn’t that Joe wanted to be cool. He just was.”

He even won over Peggy Fleming, the Olympic skating champ with the squeaky-clean image, after she ripped him in print for being a “mess.”

She was booked as a guest on Namath’s TV show, and one of his producers pulled out the offending newspaper clip and showed it to him just as Fleming arrived for the taping. Did the host still want her to go on? “Sure,” Joe said. “I don’t care.” As the cameras rolled, the 20-year-old ice queen, wearing a mini-skirt and looking like a “green-eyed China doll,” according to one account, revealed that she grew up a tomboy, playing baseball and climbing trees.

“There’s no trouble telling that you’re a girl now,” said a smiling Broadway Joe.

Fleming blushed.

After the show, she pulled out two copies of his book, “I Can’t Wait for Tomorrow … “Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day,” and asked him to sign them for her sister. He obliged and said,

“Say, Peggy, by the way, what are you doing tonight?” he asked.

His candor was part of the appeal. “Mickey Mantle always had to pretend he was a faithful husband,” Kriegel said. “Joe never had to pretend. He was free of all that. They were similar: bad knees, both alcoholics. But Joe didn’t have to lie.”

Namath did a number of provocative TV commercials, including one for Noxzema shave cream with an aspiring actress then working as the Ultra Brite toothpaste spokesmodel. Joe showed up for the shoot at a Manhattan studio with a six-pack of beer — and was wowed by his gorgeous co-star: Farrah Fawcett.

Her first line in the ad was, “I’m so excited, I’m going to get creamed,” after which she lathers up Namath with a dollop of foam. He flashes his megawatt grin and replies, “You’ve got a great pair of hands.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing.

Not long after the Super Bowl, Joe was drinking at a place in Miami — “drunk as I’ve ever seen him,” a pal said — when Frank Sinatra walked in with a bodyguard.

The rumor was that Sinatra had lost his shirt betting on the Colts in Super Bowl III. But when he saw Namath, the singer put out his hand.

Joe got up to shake it and somehow knocked over every drink on the table, soaking Sinatra. A tense moment passed — people there knew about Old Blue Eyes’ legendary temper.

Namath began to apologize, but Sinatra stopped him. “Ah, Joe, don’t worry about it,” he said.

The easygoing quarterback often found himself rubbing elbows with unsavory characters. The FBI even rigged up Bachelors III with a wire and sent in undercover agents after an incident involving President Lyndon Johnson’s daughter, Lynda.

The White House called with a heads-up that she was coming, and Namath’s partner, Bobby Van, reserved a big center booth.

Lynda arrived while Bobby and Joe were drinking with Bing Crosby at the bar. A Secret Service man asked Namath if he could clear the tables on either side of the first daughter.

Fine, Joe said — until he noticed that one table was occupied by a group of mobsters, including future Colombo family boss Carmine “Junior” Persico, a steady customer who’d never caused a problem. What to do?

“I got no problem if you want to move them,” Namath told the feds. “But you’re going to have to ask them yourself.” Everyone at the bar laughed.

The FBI file on Namath made mention of his frequent trips to The Pussycat, a lounge owned by Luchese boss Carmine Tramunti.

“Namath has been observed intoxicated on several occasions and also reportedly had an affair with an airline stewardess who became pregnant as a result of this association,” the report said.

“It is alleged that an abortion was arranged for this girl by the wife of Jilly Rizzo, the operator of a restaurant-bar in New York. It is understood that the abortion had to be postponed due to the arrest of Jilly Rizzo’s wife on charges stemming from an abortion ring operating in the New York area.”

The NFL’s bigger concern was Namath’s regular contact with Mafia bookmakers. League commissioner Pete Rozelle eventually forced Broadway Joe to sell his share in Bachelors III.

“Namath put himself into very close proximity to some shady characters,” Kriegel said.

When the Jets beat the Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969, they were huge underdogs — as much as 20 points. If they make it to the Super Bowl this year, they’ll again be huge underdogs.

Can Sanchez orchestrate a second miracle?

He and Namath do have similarities.

Both their dads battled fire (Namath’s melting scrap metal for a Babcock & Wilcox mill; Sanchez’s as a fire captain in California).

Each player got a huge first-year contract, suffered knee injuries, and threw too many interceptions, often winning thanks to a strong running game and defense.

And did anyone notice that this year’s college championship pitted Alabama against Texas — just as it did in 1965, Namath’s final year with the Crimson Tide?

And while Sanchez is showing more confidence with every game, he has stopped short of issuing a Namath-like Super Bowl “guarantee.”

When the idol and the kid finally met in September right before Sanchez’s debut, Namath did bring up the Super Bowl win, but stressed, “It ain’t about me, either. It’s about you today. It’s about you playing for these guys.”

Said Sanchez: “To hear that from a legend like that, it kind of gives you the chills. I mean, what a pep talk.”

brad.hamilton@nypost.com