Broadway's Lights Are Out

I'm one of those Fantasy Football dorks. Now, I don't pay very much money to do it, and I don't peruse through statistics for countless hours trying to chalk up a win. But I do look forward to it every week when it's here, and I watch a little more football on television than I otherwise would. I think my group does it right--We pay $10 apiece towards the champ's winnings, $5 barbecue money for our draft party, and we have a dinner at Outback Steakhouse with our own pocket money to celebrate the winner and another fun season. It's camaraderie at a low cost. I thought at this year's dinner I would pay tribute to a very good quarterback named Joe Namath. Joe was a guy who not only was known as a good quarterback, but also as a single, handsome, fashionable, famous sex symbol. He wore fantastic clothes (I love the pics here, especially the men's vintage pants in #4 & #7 and shirt in #8). He did several commercials, including a controversial one where he wore pantyhose.

He was on the front of numerous magazine covers. He starred in a movie. He owned several nightclubs. He dated famous and beautiful women. Broadway Joe was also known for wearing a fur coat on the sidelines during games, which later become popular among other players. So then, in tribute, I wore a fur coat to our dinner. Patched muskrat, mind you. My friends were a little weirded out by it, and I was a little afraid someone would dump their Aussie Cheese Fries on me in protest, but we were in a place that serves thick cuts of cow, so I figured I'd be safe from harm. Our waitress, Heather, said "eeew" when she got close to me. This would not have happened to the Joe Namath. I forgot my camera, something that Joe probably never had to worry about because everyone wanted his picture. Heather took our picture with her friend's camera and was supposed to email it to me so that I could put it on this blog. Three weeks later I still have not been emailed the picture. I can't get a girl to email a picture of myself to me, yet Joe would probably have been married to Heather by now. So all I have to show you is a lame picture of me in the fur (Curse you Heather at Outback!). Another favorite quarterback of mine played in the Super Bowl this past Sunday: Kurt Warner. Kurt won a Super Bowl here in St. Louis, and many St. Louisans miss him. We felt that this nice man, who had not only won a Super Bowl for us but was also very giving in the community, had gotten the shaft. There are questions surrounding whether or not Kurt at this point should be inducted into the Hall of Fame (Joe Namath was inducted in 1985), so the following is my official argument to the NFL by comparing these two quarterbacks. Kurt soundly beats Joe in almost every category there is, has played in two less seasons, and isn't even finished. I'm done. Okay, so Kurt's the better quarterback, but Joe's the better dresser. I mean, was the better dresser. After last Sunday's Super Bowl Joe stepped out to present the Vince Lombardi trophy. He was in a regular, plain old suit. I'm not saying he wasn't dressed nice, he was. But it wasn't the kind of dress that made the once hip Joe...well, Joe. It was disappointing frankly.
After a drunken debacle at a Monday Night Football game in September of 2007 tarnished his image, and made him look pathetic really, you might have thought he would have come out reinvented as the old Joe, in the fantastic clothes he once wore, to make up for lost luster. "Let's start over," he could have said. But I guess Broadway's lights burned out long ago. I leave you then with a hall of fame commercial of a time forgotten. Man, this guy was good.