“I got a return ticket…to enroll in the University of Alabama…As if to test my decision on that trip, as the bus drove through the town of Holt, I noticed a fire in a field….I looked at this big burning cross with around twenty Klansmen in their white cloaks and hoods. He was rejected because of low SAT scores, but an assistant coach who’d taken a liking to him called Alabama’s Bear Bryant, who recruited Namath for that school the following year: Namath’s first choice was the University of Maryland.

Bob.asked Mom what she wanted and when she said college, he slammed his fist down like a judge with a gavel. So we had a meeting and I talked it over with my mom and brothers and their vote was simple and unanimous: They all wanted me to go to college. “The divorce…had caused a rift with Frank so my dad stayed out of the decision about whether I should play pro baseball or college football. His parents’ recent divorce had turned a happy household upside down: It might be an army, navy, or marine one, or a baseball, football, or basketball one - it’s up to you’”Īfter Namath’s high school football team won the 1960 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League championship, he received a flurry of offers from Major League Baseball - sweetened with bewitching bonuses of $15,000 to $50,000 - that were rebuffed. Dads often said, ‘Son, you’re going to get a uniform when you get out of school. “Sports were taken very seriously in my area - they were a way to get into college and a better life. And though all of the siblings were skilled athletes, Joe was the early, luminous standout in basketball, baseball, and football for that, and more opportunities in the future, they pushed him to excel and win: They could have showed me once and left it at that, but they wanted me to do it perfectly.”Īccording to his new memoir, All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters, Namath’s hometown of Seneca Falls, Pennsylvania, was a baseball-loving community. “Bob and Frank were the ones who taught me how to throw a football from the ear to get a quick release…Bob played quarterback until he quit high school so he played the position best…Frank even developed his throwing style from studying Bob…Growing up with rough, all-American brothers, they were going to teach me things, sure, but in a rough do it now and how I tell you style. Joe Namath’s cosmic quarterbacking career with the New York Jets and the Los Angeles Rams might not have happened without help from his three older brothers:

Joe namath all the way