Joe Namath was known for being a ladies’ man throughout his playing career and shared some stories from back in the day about his conquests.
Deadspin dug up an old interview Broadway Joe did with Playboy in Dec. 1969, and it is fantastic. The interview delves into the workings of Namath’s New York nightclub Bachelor III and its potential mafia ties, Namath’s days in college, his time in the pros, and sex. There’s a lot of talk about sex.
Reading through the interview, Namath’s classic confidence shines through, as does his knowledge of football. You can really understand what made him so successful as a quarterback.
There are a ton of great nuggets in the interview that would make for great blog posts. For instance, Namath was a great baseball player and said he wanted to turn pro and “take the money and run,” but his family wanted him to go to college instead. He says he didn’t consider Notre Dame for college because they didn’t have any girls on campus. He ended up at Alabama because he didn’t qualify academically for Maryland, so former Terps coach Tom Nugent passed him along to Bear Bryant. If you have time, you should really read the whole thing.
But let’s get into the really juicy stuff.
Namath famously loved women. He was Broadway Joe. He says he was with women the night before the AFL championship game and the Super Bowl, and that he usually was with women the night before games. The interviewer also asked how many sexual conquests he’d had, and he estimated the number at 300 by the time he finished college. Broadway Joe said when he was bored in class, he would make a list of all the women he’d been with, and the number was beyond 300. Namath even provided sex tips, saying he just worried about getting off when he was younger, but as he got older, he became concerned with making sure his partner was satisfied, too.
Another interesting tidbit revealed in the interview is that Namath’s nickname at Alabama was n—er.
Namath came from Pennsylvania and attended college at Alabama when segregation was still in place, so he had a much different viewpoint about race than most of his teammates and classmates. Namath says he got the nickname because of a miscommunication. He says he was sitting in his dorm room and someone grabbed a picture of his high school’s football queen. Namath’s girlfriend won football queen, and the crown bearer was a black girl. The person grabbed the picture and asked if the girl was Namath’s, and he said yes thinking the person was pointing to his girlfriend. But the person was pointing to the crown bearer, and went around telling everyone Namath dated a black girl. That’s how he got his nickname.
“I had a lot of bad times in the beginning, but it all changed. They got to respect the way I felt and I think I might even have turned some of them around on a few things. In my senior year, they voted me captain of the team; and when I think about it—about me mixed in with a bunch of guys from Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida—I consider it a very high honor,” Namath said.
So how about that? Namath was progressive and may have helped teach his teammates a little something about equality. Major respect to him for that.
