Joe Namath put down his glass of Johnnie Walker on the rocks and shuffled up on his bum knees to accept his award.
The New York Jets quarterback had been popping off all week leading up to the third World Championship Game, saying Daryl Lamonica of the American Football League’s Oakland Raiders was a better passer than Earl Morrall of the NFL’s Baltimore Colts.
In another interview, Namath said he could complete a higher percentage of his passes if he dumped off to his running backs like NFL quarterbacks do. And he nearly picked a fight with Colts place-kicker Lou Michaels in a bar by saying legendary Baltimore quarterback Johnny Unitas was over the hill.
Namath had been uttering verbal jabs because he took offense to oddsmakers listing his Jets as 18-point underdogs to the Colts. And also because, you know, the courage he felt from his good friend, Johnnie Walker.
It was Thursday, Jan. 9, 1969, and Namath was at the Miami Springs Villas because The Miami Touchdown Club was honoring him with its player of the year award. According to the biography “Namath,” a heckler yelled out “Sit down!” in the midst of Nam- ath’s acceptance speech.
That set up the most famous guarantee in sports history.
“The Jets will win Sunday,” Namath said. “I guarantee it.”
The next day, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle renamed “The Third World Championship Game” as Super Bowl III.
And two days later at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Namath completed 17-of-28 passes and led the Jets to a 16-7 victory over the Colts, the greatest upset in the history of professional football.
At 335 pounds, Terrance Knighton has little resemblance to Joe Namath, although the Broncos defensive tackle does have a goatee and he did make a boastful prediction last week by telling The Denver Post the Broncos were going to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy at the end of this season, even if it meant going through New England to do it.
Even if he didn’t actually say the word “guarantee,” Knighton is familiar enough with sports history to know he had ventured into sacred — or should that be un- holy? — territory.
“Yeah, he guaranteed it,” Knighton said of Namath last week. “They won it. I mean, he’s got a little bit more control of the game than I have.
“But I believe when you declare guarantees you have to be at a certain level to say that. When you have a top-five defense and a top-five offense, and me being one of the reasons we have a top defense, I feel like I had the forum to say it.”
Backing up braggadocio
Man has been squawking at his fellow man since the beginning of time. Cave man did not craft clubs for animals alone. During organized competitions, however, the 20th-century athlete was largely taught to be respectful of his opponent, humble about oneself.
Cassius Clay changed all that. For his heavyweight championship bout against menacing Sonny Liston in February 1964, Clay was an overwhelming underdog. Although an Olympic champion, Clay gained national prominence for his poetic pronouncements before his first fight with Liston.
“I predict that he will go in eight to prove that I’m great,” Clay said. “If he wants to go to heaven, I’ll get him in seven. He’ll be in a worser fix if I cut it to six.”
Liston didn’t answer the seventh-round bell. A nonconformist in a counterculture revolution, Clay took on the Muslim name of Muhammad Ali after that fight and continued to mock the likes of Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman — and usually backed up his braggadocio in the ring.
Ali made self-promotion popular.
“He was the first one to win before the fight,” Knighton said.
There have been many other proclamations of grandeur. Tim Tebow didn’t make a guarantee so much as a promise after his Florida Gators were upset by Ole Miss in a 2008 game, spoiling the team’s goal of an undefeated season. In his postgame news conference, Tebow first apologized to Florida fans, before continuing on with what has become succinctly known as The Promise.
“You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season,” Tebow said as he got rolling.
Florida won its next 10 games, including the national championship.
Before wide receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot away his career, he guaranteed during a Super Bowl media session that his underdog New York Giants would beat the undefeated New England Patriots. The Giants not only stunned the Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII, Burress caught the game-winning touchdown pass with only 35 seconds remaining.
“Yeah, but it’s easy to make a guarantee when there’s only two teams standing,” Knighton said. “We’re nowhere close to the Super Bowl when I made mine.”
Indeed, the Broncos have some work to do before they can make a prophet of Knighton, starting with their game Monday night against the 9-4-1 Bengals in Cincinnati. But the most daunting challenge, should the Broncos get the chance to meet it, would be to beat the Patriots in New England, where coach Bill Belichick no doubt will have Knighton’s statement shown on his power point.
“I don’t care if New England doesn’t lose again,” Knighton told The Denver Post after the Broncos defeated the Chargers 22-10 in San Diego last week. “I don’t care where we have to play. I don’t care who our opponent is. We’re not going to be satisfied until we hoist that trophy. So if we’ve got to go to New England and win somewhere we’re not used to winning, we’re going to make it happen.”
Then, in case anyone missed his gist, Knighton said: “Write that!”
Since that statement, Knighton said 500 to 600 fans of the Patriots have let him have it on Twitter or Facebook. Which Knighton finds rather odd, considering that he grew up loving all of the Boston teams, including the Patriots.
“We prefer not to incite”
Some guarantees have gone haywire. Before his Super Bowl XX game against the Chicago Bears, Patriots cornerback Raymond Clayborn said: “We are going to win this game. You can write that down. You can bank on it. The Bears are good, but we are better.”
The Bears — and their famed 46 defense — destroyed the Patriots 46-10 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
After Knighton’s pledge, Broncos coach John Fox addressed the team and the individual. The tenor of Fox’s message: Love the confidence, Pot Roast. And no doubt, winning the Super Bowl is the team’s goal. But let’s not distract from the primary focus, which this week is on Cincinnati.
“I think Terrance has a lot of confidence,” said Peyton Manning, the Broncos’ ever obedient quarterback. “I think it’s a good quality about him. As far as me, though, I’m on to Cincinnati.”
To a man, Knighton’s provocative prediction has drawn support from the Denver locker room. And not just because he can force any one of his teammates to beg for mercy merely by sitting on them.
“That is T; he does what he wants,” said cornerback Aqib Talib.
Jack Del Rio, the Broncos’ defensive coordinator, said he has seen bulletin-board material “wake a guy up and inspire him. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. I told him this when I was coach in Jacksonville — I told all our guys — if you have something to say, put your name by it.
“We prefer not to incite our opponent. But beyond that, I’m not going to micromanage each guy’s comments.”
Knighton’s pronouncement has made him a target, and if all goes well, he will have to carry around that bull’s-eye for another four weeks — when the AFC championship game will be played, most likely in Foxborough, Mass.
“The good thing is that I play defense,” Knighton said. “Usually, I’m the missile not the target, but it’s an overall consensus in the locker room. Guys might not say it, but we all feel the same way: Super Bowl or bust, really.”
More than 50 years since the man now called Ali predicted Liston’s demise, and nearly 46 years since Namath guaranteed the Jets would prevail against the Colts, Broncos fans are hoping a man named Pot Roast does not have to eat his words.
Mike Klis: mklis@denverpost.com or twitter.com/mikeklis
