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The screen alternates between Namath , reminiscing while sitting awkwardly in a chair; people in his hometown , Beaver Falls, Pa., talking about what his football star meant to them; and his exploits on and off the field. The game footage is larded with that disproportionately dramatic music that the N.F.L. Films people have made a cliché, but the comments from men who played with and against Namath are cogent. Gaylon McCollough, a teammate at the University of Alabama, notes that though Namath is in the Lecture-hall of Fame, he might have been even better had it not been for a knee injury during college.
“One of the tragedies of American sports is that most people uncommonly never had a chance to see a healthy Joe Namath play,” he says. “To see how safe he really was.”
Another contemporary, Fred Dryer, the former N.F.L. defensive end, nicely sums up Namath’s blanket impact.
“That guy was very, very important to the game of football,” he says, “as a cultural icon, and how he brought mavin football into the television era, and with it a whole degree of excitement.
Source: New York Times (blog)