Joe Namath, an image that still haunts Baltimore football fans.
"We'll win the game. I guarantee you."
So boasted New York Jets Quarterback, Joe Namath, on the eve of facing the highly favored, Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. No one could think that the toast of the NFL could lose to the upstart AFL team, but the Jets won convincingly against an ailing Johnny Unitas and Don Shula's Colts. The Colts favored by 19 points took the 16-7 loss made more painful by the boastful antics of the free-spirited "Broadway Joe's" brash comments.
The victory gave the AFL equal status to the well-established NFL as the pace toward total integration between the two rival leagues accelerated to the NFL configuration as it would exist for many years to come, two conferences, three divisions each, made equal with Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Baltimore moving to the AFC to begin the 1970 season to complete the merger.
Ironically, the following October, New York and Baltimore would meet again in the championship to decide it all, the 1969 World Series. The Orioles were highly favored to beat the expansion, New York Mets, who were still thought of as the bumbling expansion team that struggled to do anything properly just a few years early. The Orioles won the first game, but then dropped four straight to the New York Mets.
Baltimore fans would love to have such bad luck in baseball forty years later, right?
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