Among the pleasures of the prelude to next Sunday’s Super Bowl are 50-year anniversary flashbacks of Super Bowl III. Joe Namath and the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts, 16-7, to change the course of history.
You’ve probably heard that the Jets were 18-point underdogs. Betting markets didn’t have much to go on when evaluating the NFL vs. the AFL at that point. The only relevant meetings were Super Bowls I and II. Green Bay was roughly a two-touchdown favorite in both. The Packers beat Kansas City, 35-10, and Oakland, 33-14. Nobody watching thought those were flukes.