Second things first. My relationship with Joe Namath as a TV football analyst and in social settings has always produced, for me, at least, peculiar results.
We were once seated at the same table at a formal fundraiser when he introduced his future ex-wife, Deborah. Later, after much cordial conversation, including wisecracks and shared laughter, I referred to Mrs. Namath as “Deb.”
Namath went cold. “It’s Deborah,” he scolded, and sharply.
My crime didn’t seem to fit my punishment, but okey dokey, Deborah it is.
The next year, same event, there’s Joe and Deborah. I made darned sure to call her Deborah.
“It’s Tatiana,” Namath snapped.
“Tatiana?”
“Tatiana.”
He said no more about it, as if I was supposed to know that she’d changed her name.
Peculiar, no? Yet that’s a piece — if not a side — of Namath that didn’t make the cut in the 90-minute HBO/NFL Films, “Namath,” which airs tomorrow at 9 p.m. on HBO.
First things second. If holding your full attention for an hour-and-a-half counts as good TV, it’s very good TV.
Landing somewhere between a documentary and tribute, “Namath” has failings. It’s stuffed with tributes from cronies, including his agent and his agent’s client and longtime Namath public defender, sportscaster Sal Marchiano. NAMANCO, co-owned by Namath and longtime agent Jimmy Walsh, is given a production credit.
But those failings are overwhelmed by fascinating content.
And, as always, HBO’s and NFL Films’ historical treatments of sports is made special by their specialty, the inclusion of fabulous photos and footage.
The sooty experience of Namath, or anyone else, being raised in Western Pennsylvania is nailed to a T (formation). Beaver Falls was one of 50 or more blight-straddling Western Pennsylvania towns that provided, as preferred entertainment, a barber shop, an American Legion hall or ethnic club hall, a pool hall and Friday night, pro-set high school football that would draw more people than the town’s population.
Namath speaks of what were, for generations, the two career options from which teenaged males could choose: Work in the steel (or coal) mill, or do whatever it took to avoid working in the steel (or coal) mill.
That a headline in a local paper pointed to “Namath, Krz,” leading the high school team to victory made perfect sense. I went to college in Western Pennsylvania, where I learned that the inclusion of vowels in last names was optional. Our field goal kicker was Bill Vrtr. And frat brothers worked weekends, summers and even in-semester night shifts in the mills.
Namath’s sister, Rita, is a pip, describing teenaged Joe as a PIA (pain in the arse) and a poor student, but with a gift for baseball (the Cubs offered him $50,000) and quarterbacking. The footage of Namath playing high school football shows him to be exceptionally fast and shifty, something unknown to many Namath followers who picked up his career after his first knee surgery, which happened while he was at Alabama.
Namath wore No. 19 in high school, chosen for his worship of another Western Pennsylvania QB, Johnny Unitas. (Kinda makes you wonder whether ESPN would make such a big deal out of either, given their low QB Passer Ratings.)
From there we’re taken to his curious recruitment to Alabama. Namath planned to accept a scholarship to Maryland, but didn’t have the grades. Grades, apparently, were no more important to play for Bama then than they are now.
Namath’s telling of his Yankee-at-Bama days is strong. Throughout his first, long conversation with Bear Bryant, says Namath, “I didn’t understand one word he said.”
Namath, who grew up with close black friends and teammates, says, and believably, that he was too naïve, too unworldly to know that the South in 1962 was still unable to reconcile the results of the Civil War. His astonishment at first seeing race-specific drinking fountains remains.
The Joe-to-Jets segment is comical, with Namath prepared to ask for $100,000, but settling for $400,000.
It’s loaded with neat stuff, even an interview with Namath’s infamous Raiders’ nemesis, the ungentle giant, defensive lineman Ben Davidson, who says: “We accidentally hit him after the ball was gone. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.”
And for all we recall about the Broadway Joe Era, most have likely forgotten just how sensational it was. He endorsed everything, was seen with everyone, drew pressing crowds everywhere. He was New York’s Elvis, our Beatles.
Although much of “Namath” seems to have been basted with a bit too much honey (Was there no one who didn’t love him?), his excessive boozing is not ignored. The 2003 Suzy Kolber episode, when Namath drunkenly and sloppily asked her for a kiss while she tried to interview him on an ESPN Sunday night NFL telecast, is included, as is Kolber’s gracious take on those moments.
Again, “Namath” seems too cozy and slightly too apologetic to be considered a pure, real-deal, warts-in-sports documentary, yet too honest to be seen as a whitewash. But, above and beyond that, it’s good, very good.
NFL on CBS: No guest too repugnant
CBS’s NFL studio postseason has been … well, you tell me.
First, the special pregame studio guest was Ndamukong (The Stomper) Suh, next a what-a-great-guy profile of head-hunter and obstructer-of-justice in a double homicide, Ray Lewis, and this week’s special guest on Showtime/CBS’s “Inside The NFL” was Lawrence Taylor.
* THE Cablevision/MSG/Dolan Gang continues to specialize in shamelessly disingenuous propaganda. This week it tweeted suggestions that Time-Warner subscribers demand rebates for lost MSG programming. Good idea.
But where were Cablevision’s rebates for seasons of lost telecasts of MLB (including Yankees), NBA (including Knicks and Nets) and NHL (including Rangers, Islanders and Devils) due to league lockouts, player strikes and Cablevision’s hassles with local teams’ rights holders and competing sports networks?
* The moment Mike Francesa authoritatively declared that Navy would never, ever join the Big East you knew it would happen.
* I erred here, Monday, when taking a poke at ESPN’s Doris Burke for her work on Villanova-Rutgers. That was Beth Mowins. Burke called Syracuse-Notre Dame. Sir, no excuses, sir!
* “Weekday” Boomer Esiason — completely different than Weekend Boomer — interviewed former Met and SNY Mets’ studio analyst Bob Ojeda.
Of the 1986 championship Mets, Esiason asked about the team’s “youthful immaturity.” What would Boomer call his check-out-the-hotties work on WFAN/MSG, “middle-aged immaturity”?