Before Joe Namath famously won the Most Valuable Player Award in the New York Jets’ shocking victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, he played quarterback for the 1960 WPIAL Class AA football title team in his hometown of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and the 1964 Alabama squad that captured the wire-services national championships.

During an appearance on last week’s “The Johnny ‘Ballpark’ Franks Show” on WUMP-AM/FM in Madison, Namath said he could not have won those championships by himself, and that’s a lesson that applies to the big game, too – “life itself.”

“You got to have a good coach and good teammates in any sport,” Namath said. “One guy doesn’t do it, unless he’s in a boxing ring, and he’s going to tell you his handlers got him ready for the fight. Life’s a team game in itself. Most things we accomplish – it could even be in your office, man – but I don’t know too many things where folks do it on their own, their very own. I’ve been lucky to be a part of some situations where we had in sports a terrific football coach in high school, college and pro ball. Three great coaches that knew how to get it together. …

“It doesn’t happen overnight. You work together. You have a leader or leaders plural, whether they’re players or coaches. But you have to have leaders with determination, with a lot of heart, with a lot of desire and are never going to give up. It’s about the people that you’re with and the people that are helping you. Again, the big game is life itself. Life’s a team game, man, and if you don’t have the friends or the family or folks with you, then it’s going to be tough.”

Namath said he had a front-row seat on good leadership in his first year at Alabama. When Namath was with the Crimson Tide, freshmen could not play varsity athletics.

“I was lucky,” Namath said. “I ended up at Alabama under coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, and my freshman year, we had a leader named Pat Trammell, our quarterback, and our varsity won the national title that year, 1961. I just tried to emulate Pat as much as I could with the type of play and caliber of leadership that he showed.

“And again, I was just fortunate to be with great coaches and great teammates and having some great players around me – at Alabama, for sure. We watched as freshmen as our varsity won the national championship, and, man, trying to do what they did, it was tough, but we got it accomplished, too.

“But Pat Trammell was a heck of a quarterback at Alabama – a terrific quarterback, an All-American quarterback.”

RELATED: IN ’68, A CHAMPIONSHIP ALABAMA QUARTERBACK DIED FAR TOO YOUNG

Namath led the Jets to a 16-7 victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969 – just as he had guaranteed they would three nights before.

At 18 points, Baltimore remains the biggest favorite in Super Bowl history. The Colts had lost once in 16 games on their way to the AFL-NFL World Championship Game and had avenged that 30-20 setback to Cleveland on Oct. 20, 1968, by beating the Browns 34-0 in the NFL Championship Game.

Baltimore’s loss came after the NFL’s Green Bay Packers had handily beaten the AFL champion in the first two Super Bowls.

It was the second time that Namath had put the American Football League on the map. The day after his final game for the Crimson Tide, Namath signed a three-year, $427,000 contract with the Jets rather than join the St. Louis Cardinals, who had picked him at No. 12 in the 1965 NFL Draft. The highest-paid player in the NFL in the 1964 season had been Cleveland running back Jim Brown at $60,000. Namath’s contract was the most lucrative to that point in pro football history.

Four years later, Namath and the Jets provided validation for the AFL – and for the coming merger of the two pro football leagues, a process that had been agreed upon in 1966 and completed in 1970.

When Namath retired after the 1977 season, his average of 197.6 passing yards per game was the best in NFL history, and he entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame with the Class of 1985. Namath (and Roger Staubach, who was in the same class) joined when there were only 10 quarterbacks in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Sammy Baugh, Bob Waterfield, Sid Luckman, Otto Graham, Bobby Layne, Norm Van Brocklin, Y.A. Tittle, Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, George Blanda and Sonny Jurgensen.

FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.