When N.F.L.

Ruled Airwaves With

Blackouts
TV Sports
By RICHARD SANDOMIR JAN. 22, 2010
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Joe Namath led the Jets to a 27-23 victory over the Oakland Raiders in the 1968 American
Football League championship game.
In the dark days of silly, anti-fan blackouts, Jets fans had to travel at least 75
miles outside the New York City market to watch their team beat the Oakland
Raiders in the 1968 American Football League championship game.

If the same restrictions were still in effect, fans in the Indianapolis market
would not be able to watch their Colts play the Jets in the American Football
Conference championship game on CBS on Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

The blackout rule enforced for years before and after 1968 by the A.F.L. and
the N.F.L. prohibited viewers from watching their teams play at home for fear
that giving away the games on television would hurt attendance.

It did not matter whether the game had sold out.

On that late December day, Jets fans could not tune in Channel 4 at 1 p.m. to
see the game at Shea Stadium; the station was carrying a movie, The Prince
and the Pauper.
So fans escaped to bars, friends homes and motels in Schenectady, N.Y.,
Hartford and Philadelphia to watch the Jets 27-23 victory. Or they waited until
11:30 p.m. for the tape-delayed NBC broadcast on Channel 4.

Elliot Baron was 19, but strep throat prevented him from going to the game with
his father.

My mother wouldnt let me go, he said. It was very cold that day, and Shea
was very windy.

He recalled that he did not listen to the game on the radio or watch other media
coverage, and he asked his father not to tell him what had happened when he
returned from the stadium.

He wanted to see it, as if it were live, on TV.

We were at the first game at Shea, he said, so it was so exciting to watch,

especially when Ralph Baker picked up the lateral. In the fourth quarter, a
lateral (intended as a swing pass) from Oakland quarterback Daryle
Lamonica rolled off Charlie Smiths hands, and Baker, a Jets linebacker,
recovered the fumble.

Paul Farash knew even at age 10 that if you did not go to a Jets home game, you
could not see it on TV. He and his father attended the A.F.L. championship
game, seated in Section 17 in the upper deck.

When they returned to South Jamaica, Queens, local TV news reported that the
taped broadcast would be on at 11:30.

I couldnt wait to watch a game from Shea, Farash said. You never saw one
before.

So he took a nap at 8:30 and was awakened in time to watch the game again. I
have indelible memories of plays from certain camera angles, Farash said.

He went to sleep satisfied, sometime after 2 a.m.

The Jets then beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in Miami; the NFL
Network is replaying NBCs coverage of that game at 8:30 Saturday night.

But a copy of the Jets-Raiders title game shown before networks routinely
preserved tapes and well before home VCRs were common has not been
found by the league or NBC.

We filmed it, said Steve Sabol, the president of NFL Films. The film was used
recently in an episode about the 1968 Jets in the NFL Networks Americas
Game series.
 The leagues blackout rule was challenged unsuccessfully in various lawsuits.
The N.F.L. vigorously defended the blackout; Commissioner Pete Rozelle
regarded it as a bedrock of the league economy. Although the A.F.L. was more
progressive in many ways than the older league that it merged with, it also
believed in the blackout.

Michael MacCambridge, the author of the book Americas Game, a history of the
N.F.L., said in an e-mail message that A.F.L. owners had survived the early
60s when crowds were relatively small, and they understandably viewed the
home gate as their lifeblood, even when the TV money was growing.

The blackout policy was on the enemies list of one prominent fan: President
Richard M. Nixon. His opposition led one of his former speechwriters, William
Safire, to criticize him in his column in The New York Times. Even the president,
who does not ordinarily favor government intrusion and economic controls,
Safire wrote, has let his fervor as a fan outweigh his somewhat battered
economic conservatism.

Congress overwhelmingly passed anti-blackout legislation in September 1973,

forcing the league to alter the policy to the version that still exists: the home
market is blacked out if the game is not sold out 72 hours before kickoff. The
legislation expired in 1975, but the league has complied with it voluntarily ever
since.

This season, amid fears that there could be as many as 50 blackouts because of
slow ticket sales in some markets, there were 22, including seven apiece in
Jacksonville, Fla., and Oakland, Calif., and four in Detroit.

Joe Namath, Jets recall the

day they took fateful Super
step in AFL Championship
game vs. Raiders

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Joe Namath (r.) was battered and bruised in that AFL Championship, but that didn't stop him - nor did a late-night romp -
from leading Jets to the Super Bowl.
(FARRELL FOR NEWS)
BY HANK GOLA
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, January 22, 2011, 6:15 PM
How could the legend of Joe Namath be complete if one of his greatest days had not been
preceded by one of his best nights?
As recounted in Mark Kriegel's biography "Namath," a rookie cop named John Timoneywas
exiting the precinct house at 8 a.m. on Dec. 29, 1968, just five hours before the Jets
and Oakland Raiders were going to do battle for the AFL Championship at Shea Stadium.
There, across the street, leaving the Summit Hotel by a side entrance, was Broadway Joe, his
arm around a young lovely in very memorable go-go boots.
Timoney scrambled to get in a bet on the Raiders. He should have asked Namath first. He was
in vintage form.

A few months later, noted columnist Jimmy Breslin verified the encounter, quoting Broadway
Joe himself:
"The night before the Oakland game, I got the whole family in town and there's people all over
my apartment and the phone keeps ringing. I wanted to get away from everything. Too crowded
and too much noise. So I went to the Bachelors Three and grabbed a girl and a bottle of Johnnie
Walker Red and went to the Summit Hotel and stayed in bed all night with the girl and the
bottle."
Namath was sounding as young as he was then over the phone earlier this week, his
website BroadwayJoe.TV doing a brisk business these days. Slyly perhaps, he would only
volunteer this about that Championship Game's eve:
"What did happen was Weeb (Ewbank) had insisted that we approach this game as we did any
other game or as we had been approaching the games in recent weeks to maintain our routine,"
says Namath. "Well, my routine was to go out and have a nice dinner and then go home. This
particular night before the game, I did have dinner with the young lady and sitting across from
us at a table for six or eight were the game officials.

"But as far as the next morning, I don't remember anything abnormal."

The reader can judge the exact truth of the matter but as far as the next afternoon was
concerned, there definitely wasn't anything abnormal. Battered, bruised but not beaten, Namath
led the Jets to a 27-23 win that made possible his guarantee in Super Bowl III. It was a game
that gets lost in the historic significance of what happened in Miami, but to today's Jets, it is a
template for how to beat a tough, nasty opponent even if Mark Sanchez spent all of last night
sleeping like a baby.
What Namath remembers as the "toughest, most physical game" he ever played was a tribute to
the grittiness that was hidden behind the bravado. In many ways, it was the ultimate test of his
career.
The Raiders didn't play nice. Their approach was best summarized by their ornery defensive
tackle, Dan Birdwell, who once said, "You have to play this game like somebody just hit your
mother with a two-by-four."
The way they always went after Namath, he must have owned the lumberyard. In their meeting
the previous year, defensive end Ike Lassiter tried to rearrange Namath's Noxema-smooth face,
breaking his cheekbone with a blow to the right side of the helmet. It's a hit the Jets insist came
after the whistle, or as Larry Grantham puts it, while Namath was "standing there watching
whoever caught the pass running with the ball." Namath stayed in the game only to be soon
separated from his helmet by Raiders end Ben Davidson's double-fisted blow to an aching chin.
Davidson ended up getting credit for the fracture, and a spectacular picture of the play earned a
place of honor on Al Davis' office wall.
"He could similarly have a picture of Ben Davidson running across the field and seeing George
Sauer, having thrown a block, laying on the ground," huffs Jets tight end Pete Lammons,
recalling another play that day. "You could see big old Ben running with his long stride. He saw
Sauer and he shortened his stride to be sure to step right in the middle of George's back. They
didn't have any trouble trying different things, legal or illegal."
If anything, the animosity was taken up a notch in the Championship Game, which happened to
be a rematch of the Heidi Game - the famous Raiders-Jets game that NBC cut away from to
show the film "Heidi," only to miss a remarkable Oakland comeback in the waning minutes.
The Jets wanted the Raiders, who had to win a one-game playoff with the Chiefs the week
before. As defensive tackle Gerry Philbin says, "For us, it was bring 'em on."
Raiders QB Daryle Lamonica threw for over 400 yards in game, but one backwards pass ended Mad Bombers' day.
(FOCUS ON SPORT/GETTY)

And so they came into Shea, where the winds were howling out of the open end of the stadium
at 35 miles an hour, where Davis had built a protective hut for his team that Ewbank had torn
down, and where the Raiders were up to their old tricks.
Namath came out of one pileup with a finger bent three different ways.

"I remember lying on the ground grabbing my hand and Birdwell was on his feet with a big grin
on his face, yelling, 'Hey Joe, look, you broke your finger.' And I didn't say anything," Namath
remembers. "I was a little bit in semi-shock when I saw it was pointing in the wrong direction."

Later in the first half, the Raiders made their only sack of the game count. Lassiter and
Davidson met with the quarterback in the middle, Davidson's airborne knee catching Namath in
the helmet. At halftime, with the Jets up 13-10, Namath had to be walked into the locker room
by trainer Jeff Snedeker. Ewbank told backup Babe Parilli he might have to go in.
Recalls Namath, "They were looking at my head. I got an injection in my finger and both knees
and it was fine. We were able to play."

Early in the fourth quarter, Namath threw an interception. Don Maynard had been beating
rookie corner George Atkinson all day, but this time the wind held the ball up and Atkinson
undercut it. Namath had to shoulder Atkinson out along the sideline.
"I remember that play well because when I did knock Atkinson out of bounds, he started yelling
at me, 'I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.' And my reaction was, 'Shut up, rookie, and play
football.' I remember going past my players going off the field and just thinking, 'God dang it.'
But after Oakland was able to score, I did let our defensive team know we were going to get it
back and sure enough . . ."

Trailing by 23-20 after a Pete Banaszak touchdown, Namath ran back onto the field for the
signature drive of his career. He played the Raiders like a fiddle in a three-note samba.
On first down, with the Raider corners strangely playing off, he hit Sauer on an out route for 11
yards. That set up his next play because it lured Atkinson and Willie Brown closer to the line to
do, as Namath says, "what they do best." That would be bump and run, or what Maynard called
"mug and run."
"Earlier in the game, I told Joe, 'Down the road sometime, I've got things set up pretty good and
I've got a long one if you need it,'" Maynard says. "So, Joe told us in the huddle, 'Hey we're
going to go for it, so make sure, no holding by you linemen, we're going after it.'"

"I can remember it clearly just like I'm describing it," says Namath. "The team was alerted, 'Be
ready for the check. If we check, we're going to go to maximum protection and run go (routes).
Maynard had told me he could get a step on that guy and sure enough, we broke the huddle and
came up to the line and I saw Atkinson and Brown come up, so we audibilized to the pass to
Maynard and you know the result."

Maynard calls it his "Million Dollar Catch" because of what it would mean. Here's how he
explains it:
"Joe threw the ball and I was going to catch it about 11 o'clock over my inside shoulder. The
wind was really blowing that day. I'm reaching out to catch the ball and all of a sudden I'm
looking up and the ball is kind of fading and it goes over to 12 o'clock and it goes over to 1
o'clock and my head's looking at the sky, just following the ball. I caught it at about 2 o'clock."

Maynard's momentum took him out of bounds at the 6. Namath says he thought of a taxi driver
who once told him the Jets get too conservative near the goal line. He thought the Raiders
would be expecting the run. He called a play-action pass. Maynard says he came out of the
huddle as the No. 1 receiver and ended up being the No. 4 receiver on his knees with the ball
in the end zone.

The play worked because the Jets line gave Namath time to find Maynard, after his first three
options were covered. Namath even tripped on the play, regained his balance and made his
throw.

"If you ever look at that film, just watch (Maynard)," Namath says. "He just sets up Atkinson
with his pass route prior to his break. Maynard had that clock in his head. He knew if I was
coming back to him how long it would take. He was biding his time, man, and made his break
at the right instant. He broke clean and I was able to see him and get it to him."

There were plenty of other heroes that day. Because rookie Sam Walton had been schooled by
Lassiter in the Heidi Game, Dave Herman had shifted over from his regular right guard spot and
was playing tackle for the first time in his life, giving away 25 pounds.
"Weeb asked me when I was driving him home if I'd do it and I said anything to help us win,"
Herman recalls. "Then I thought about Lassiter and said, 'God Almighty, this is going to be a
challenge.'"

Namath remembers Herman coming back in the first series, saying, "I think I pissed (Lassiter)
off," but he won the day as he would against Bubba Smith in the Super Bowl.
Then there was safety Jim Hudson, who had been ejected from the Heidi game, making stop
after stop as the Raiders threatened but were turned away with a field goal and a failed try on
fourth-and-10. But the Raiders kept coming.
"Their whole thought process was we're going to stay close to you and then the last two
minutes, we're going to beat you," said offensive guard Randy Rasmussen. "Well, I tell you
what, we were going right down main street for them. They were right on script"
Daryle Lamonica, who threw for over 400 yards, drove the Raiders to the Jets' 12. Verlon
Biggs had sacked him on that fourth-down try and Lamonica could feel him coming again. He
had Charlie Smith on a swing pass but threw behind him, a backward
lateral. Jets linebacker Ralph Baker picked it up. Today, he would have scored a touchdown.
Then it was a dead ball. But the Jets had it back and Oakland would eventually run out of time.
According to Baker, it was the same play Oakland used to score in the Heidi game when they
sent two backs out of the backfield, one up the seam and the other into the flat. Smith went up
the seam the last time and scored. This time, the backs reversed positions.

"They wanted to get the ball to Charlie Smith out in the flat," he recalls. "He circled out there
and I was waiting for that play all game because it was burning in my mind from the last time. I
kind of jumped on the guy out in the flat right away and for whatever reason Lamonica threw
behind him. I knew it was a free ball."

The postgame celebration was wild. It was against AFL regulations to have champagne in the
dressing room, but 25 cases were smuggled in anyway. Namath poured some of it on talk show
host Johnny Carson's head.
"It was especially satisfactory," Namath says. "It was only my fourth year in the league but my
experience with (the Raiders) and their players wasn't always good. You just didn't like 'em. I
just didn't like 'em and you know what, if they were a poor team, I probably wouldn't have
cared. But something happens when a team is good. Then you start to get personal about things.

"It was," he says, "a joy."

Joe Namath, New York Jets benefited

from a backward pass recovery in
1968 AFL Championship
Daryle Lamonica had the Raiders en route to a game-winning drive until the wind blew at Shea Stadium.
Focus On Sport/Getty Images
Barry WernerJan 24, 2016 at 4:32p ET
The New England Patriots recovered a backwards pass on Sunday in the AFC
Championship in Denver. After a challenge by Bill Belichick, the Pats were given the ball
and subsequently scored a touchdown in the first quarter.

While the turnover may not determine who wins the contest, it was an uncommon play.

To find another backwards pass that played a memorable role in an AFL(C)

Championship one has to go into the wayback machine to 1968.
Joe Namath and the New York Jets upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III is
historic. However, Broadway Joe & Co. needed a recovery of a backwards pass in their
championshp battle with the Oakland Raiders to secure their spot in the Super Bowl.

The game was played at Shea Stadium. The Jets led 27-23 after scoring midway through
the fourth quarter in what was a rematch of the Infamous Heidi Gameearlier that season.

But Daryle Lamonica aka the Mad Bomber moved the Raiders to the Jets 12 when
the big play happened.

From AFL anthology:

After getting the ball back, the Oakland Raiders used big pass plays by Daryle Lamonica to drive down to the
New York 12-yard line. However, a swing pass from Lamonica to Charlie Smith turned into disaster as a rush
of wind blew the ball backwards and it became a lateral instead of a forward pass. Pouncing on the ball was
Ralph Baker who preserved the championship victory for the New York Jets.

And the New York Daily News:

According to Baker, it was the same play Oakland used to score in the Heidi game when they sent two backs
out of the backfield, one up the seam and the other into the flat. Smith went up the seam the last time and
scored. This time, the backs reversed positions. "They wanted to get the ball to Charlie Smith out in the flat,"
he recalls. "He circled out there and I was waiting for that play all game because it was burning in my mind
from the last time. I kind of jumped on the guy out in the flat right away and for whatever reason Lamonica
threw behind him. I knew it was a free ball."

The Jets went on to beat the Raiders, Namath made his prediction and a 16-7 victory over
the Colts at the Orange Bowl in 1969 was the game that went a long way toward having
the NFL realize the AFL was legit and eventually led to a merger.