The Jets-Colts Super Bowl - a tangent

Yeah, I think so, AQB. Verifying the merger and the Super Bowl as an event is a HOF qualification no matter what AFL franchise you played for. If Dawson or Lamonica had beaten Lombardi's Packers, it would have been even bigger, because of how iconic that team was at the time.

 

No. Broadway Joe got in for two reasons 1) SB win and guarantee 2) he played in New York

That is it. He wasn't a great quarterback or close to it. He led the league in INT's four times and was top five a total of nine times. He only played a majority of the games in nine seasons. That's right! In every season he played in at least half the games he was in the top five in INT's every single time and led the league nearly half the time. Compare that with leading the league in TD's just once.

He has had more TD's than INT's just twice including the years he played in only a handful of games. Twice in a 13 year career. His per game averages for TD's and INT's is 1.24 TD's and 1.57 INT's. For a 16 game season of today that comes out to 19.84 TD's and 25.12 INT's. That is woeful and much worse than other HOFers from his era.

Sorry for all the stats. I keep an excel file with the top 60+ QB's in history. I plugged in all the stats and have a bunch of averages and formula's plugged in with their stats. Took me a long time to compile so I jump at the chance to use them.

 

I will only note the following. When NFL Network did its 100 greatest players list, Namath made it at 100. Sonny Jurgensen, about five times the QB, did not. The panel of electors included many people too young to have seen Namath play. NONE of them were HOF electors when Namath got in. This is clearly a tell your statistics to shut up situation (nothing against the statistics, mind you). Namath is the NFL's Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, except he really DID shoot Liberty Valance. He's a guy who grabbed a moment of real importance to his sport and made it his own.
Namath is in the Hall of Fame because he is FAM-ous. He deserves to be famous. He guaranteed the biggest upset in football history.
That's one day's work. But as they say, it's a game of big plays.

 

So being famous is enough? I eagerly await William Perry's induction.

 

Jason Sehorn likes this change in the rules too.

 

Oh for God's sake. That's so puerile. Namath was the WINNING quarterback of what is commonly assumed to be the most financially important game in the league's history. He was also considered the best AFL quarterback and one of the best quarterbacks of that period until injuries laid him low. OF COURSE fame matters in a Hall of Fame. What's next here, arguing Jackie Robinson shouldn't be in Cooperstown because his OPS wasn't good enough? Nobody had a problem when Namath was elected to the Hall. Nobody. That's a product of our age, when high school math skills allow people to think they know more about a sport than the people in it.

 

Namath making that 100 Greatest list damn near discredited the whole show (although the rest of it was well done). Inexcusable and wholly unjustifiable. Jurgensen was hardly alone, there's a long list of excluded players FAR more deserving than Namath.

It's like the voters just said "well, of course he doesn't deserve it, but he's just so damn much more famous than the players that do, we gotta put him in." Bullshit. Famous does not equal "Greatest."

 

It's not exactly the same, but it seems the baseball equivalent would be Roger Maris? Not a Hall of Famer. Not saying Namath shouldn't be. Maybe Maris should be.

 

Maris is more deserving than Namath. Far more, in fact. Maris at least has the career numbers of a good, if not great, player. Namath's don't even measure up to "average".

 

I have no problem with Namath in the Hall of Fame as a contributor more than a player. He was the pro game's first superstar, someone people who didn't know a football from a foosball had heard of. A lot the drag on his stats came post-1970, after his knees were absolutely shot. Some of his 60s numbers are crazy great.

 

au contraire, my good friend. many folks argued namath was not hof-worthy at the time of his induction. i was and remain among them. however, i understand why he is in. that is how important super bowl III was to the entire pro football landscape.

yes, the merger had been put into place prior to the game because the nfl owners were horrified by losing so many stars to the afl and that the war between the leagues led to salaries 'erupting.'

but before that game, the vast majority of folks in the country still saw the afl as a collection of second-rate teams with mostly second-rate players.NO WAY is namath in the hof if the jets had lost. but they won, and he became the face of the most important player the 'second-rate league' was bringing to the table when they sat down to eat at the adults' table.

it was the 'perfect storm' that led namath into the hall primarily for that one game plus his persona and celebrity, which at the time was off-the-charts AMAZING..

 

For the record, I have long argued Maris should be in the baseball Hall, a stance which earned me some real vitriol from members of the BBWAA Boston chapter who were and are otherwise my friends.