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This Day In Sports…January 12, 1969:
This was the day—Super Bowl III, with the NFL champion Baltimore Colts 18-point favorites over the upstart AFL champion New York Jets at the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami. But “Broadway” Joe Namath guaranteed a Jets victory during the week, and he backed it up with a big day, going 17-of-28 for 206 yards. George Sauer caught eight of Namath’s passes for 133 yards, and Matt Snell rushed for 121. Snell scored the Jets’ only touchdown in the second quarter, but kicker Jim Turner later added three field goals, leading to pro football’s biggest upset ever: Jets 16, Colts 7.
The AFL was just over eight years old, but it had made waves to the point—especially via bidding wars over pro football players and draft choices—that the NFL had agreed to pit its champion against the AFL winner beginning after the 1966 season. The first two Super Bowls (not called such at the time) resulted in routs, with the Green Bay Packers dominating the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in the first one and the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in the second. The Colts were expected to wax the Jets, as they were coming off a 34-0 blasting of the Cleveland Browns in the NFL title game. But the Jets provided the AFL with the ultimate validation.
This was the first time the term “Super Bowl” was officially attached to the game, and in this case it was eminently appropriate. The first two title games were called the “AFL-NFL World Championship Game, but media and players were calling them Super Bowls after hearing Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt float the idea. There was a toy in the 1960s called the “Super Ball.” It bounced to the heavens, and Hunt’s kids played with them (I did, too). Hunt is credited with the Super Bowl idea.
On the sports history pages, the Jets’ accomplishment is right up there with the 1980 “Miracle On Ice,” the USA hockey team’s stunner over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Those two games are the ones that had Americans jumping right off their sofas. Honorable mentions go to UMBC’s upset of top-ranked Virginia in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, the first time a No. 16 seed had ever taken down a No. 1 seed, and FCS Appalachian State’s shocker over No. 5 Michigan in 2007 in the Big House. Boise State’s win over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl? Well, the Broncos were only 7.5-point underdogs.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
