The American Spectator

As a general point, the Super Bowls of the the last decade or so have been for the most part tremendously competitive (though last year's in the Miami rain and starring the woefully uncoached Chicago Bears offense was as ugly as any Toilet Bowl). For my money -- but again you have to be an oldster here -- the greatest ever will remain Joe Namath's beautifully engineered 16-7 Jet upset of the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in 1969. If you weren't alive then, you wouldn't know just how strong a bias existed against the upstart American Football League -- the conventional wisdom was that the establish National Football League was far and away the only genuine game around. The Packers' easy wins in Super Bowls I and II seemed to cement this perception. Then along came Namath, predicting a win, and pulling it off in the greatest performance of his career. He didn't throw for his usual, AFL style yardage. Instead he ball-controlled Baltimore to death, thanks especially to Matt Snell's running, and the wonderfully named Emerson Boozer's. On that Super Bowl Sunday, the Jets might as well have been the Packers.