Super Bowl III

Just a classic.

[laughs] We have the 1969 Super Bowl, Super Bowl III, the massive upset where Joe Namath guaranteed a win for the Jets against the Colts.

Gremlins did it.

Then the East Coast power failure of November 1965, and the book specifically notes a lesser-known power failure a month later in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.

Right.

Did Steven Spielberg or Chris Columbus read this book and say, "Ha, yes.

The armored worms of Ukersian and the sabotage of Super Bowl III, this perfectly captures the essence of our Christmas movie"?

They absolutely did not.

It's only...

But my, so my point is the pre- the bold prediction, which in the 20th century ranks only with Joe Namath predicting they're gonna beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Which-

Yeah

You picked Coppin State outright.

What did you see in that matchup you liked? And Paul said, hey, Linda, what did you like about Super Bowl III? That was

like 1997, probably.

Yeah,

I'm glad I bailed on them.

But on Super Bowl III, on the other side of the field, there was a quarterback at the end of the game named Johnny Unitas.

I remember him.

He was a classic 1950s guy.

Believe it or not, Josh, I was at both events.

I was at Super Bowl III in Miami to see the Jets upset the Colts, maybe the most important event game in the history of professional football in America because it forced the AFL-NFL merger.

And I was also at Game 7 when the Knicks won their first championship.

My dad was a season ticket holder for the Knicks, became a season ticket holder for the Jets the year they drafted Joe Namath.

You know, I was at that game with my dad and we drove back to the hotel we were staying in in North Miami that night.

in a rented convertible, top down, and after the Jets beat the Colts, Don Shula's Colts that day, the heavens opened, it started raining on us, and we could have cared less.

My dad actually passed away right after Providence went to the Final Four in 1987, about a year, year or two before I got the job with the Heat, so it's, emotional, it's romantic, it's how it began for me at my dad's side, and that might have been the most amazing sporting event and life experience in sports, being at Super Bowl III with my pop.

After going to the AFL Championship game a few weeks earlier, on a freezing afternoon at Shea Stadium in New York when the Jets beat Darrell LaMonica's Oakland Raiders.

It was never actually the Super Bowl.

Um, the Super Bowl was the official term from Super Bowl III onwards.

Now, the story behind it is, uh, it was actually the AFL and the NFL, two competing leagues, um, and a man named Lamar Hunt, who is the founder and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, um, a great franchise, everybody knows about them.

Funny story, because his son was actually playing with a ball that was named the Super Ball, and Lamar Hunt made it a joke to say, "Well, why don't we just call, call it the Super Bowl?" And he wasn't actually a fan of it 'cause he thought it was quite cringey, but it actually stuck on.

You mentioned about the Packers there.

They won number one and two, and so the trophy now is named after him, the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

And so you go back now, it's now Super Bowl I, Super Bowl II, Super Bowl III onwards, where the name became official, um, un- until present, un- until present day.

It's, um, it's a really cool piece of history.