Joe Namath and the 4 Longhorns
Professor Larry Carlson and TLSN have chronicled a part of Longhorn sports history that will NEVER occur again. To my knowledge, there has never been a Super Bowl winner with 4 players from the same college who won a national championship and who then all started and won the Super Bowl. Horns Up!
All four played with Joe Namath and the New York Jets to win the Super Bowl. At the end of Larry’s article are four links to articles of the 4 Horns, who have now all passed away with Pete Lammons’s recent drowning at a fishing tournament.
Enjoy the story of John Elliott, Pete Lammons, Jim Hudson, and George Sauer as presented in Larry’s recent article titled “Joe Willie & UTNY Longhorns Win Super Bowl III”
Joe Willie & UTNY Longhorns Win Super Bowl III
by Larry Carlson for https://texaslsn.org
It was the sun-splashed Miami day in which the Super Bowl first seized the undivided attention and full-blown imagination of America. Give Joe Namath credit. The white shoes, the gimpy knees, the full-length fur coat, and the Fu Manchu mustache. And, ooooh, that arm and the quick release.
Namath was way beyond the fame and football buzz of T-Swift and Kelce long before either was born.
But football experts, analysts, and pundits – and the brains in Vegas – expected the mighty Baltimore Colts to rout Broadway Joe’s team from Gotham. The odds, favoring Baltimore by almost 20 points, made it look like another championship blowout, even though the third NFL-AFT title game itself would –- for the first time – be billed as “The Super Bowl.” These Colts had gone 13-1 and then bludgeoned the Cleveland Browns, 34-zip, to advance to the game.
Joe Willie’s Jets, known as UTNY to many Longhorn fans, featured four stellar Texas exes as starters on their AFL championship team. George Sauer, Jr was the wideout who ran routes with the precision of a Swiss watch, and Pete Lammons was the bruising tight end. Jim Hudson was the smooth, savvy safety who had picked off five passes on the season, and DE John Elliott, in just his second pro year, anchored the defense that led the league against the run. All four had played vital roles on that same Orange Bowl turf just four years earlier when Texas beat Namath’s national championship Alabama team to ring in 1965.
If you can’t beat ’em….well, Joe was sure glad the Jets drafted all those Longhorns.
Namath commanded media attention during Super Bowl week, guaranteeing an upset victory. The Colts were reserved, likely seething a bit but smugly smirking about the opportunity to tee off on Joe and his band of pretenders. Behind the scenes, the Jets echoed Namath’s bold prediction. It was later revealed that Lammons, the tough East Texan from Jacksonville, crowed a bit to his teammates after studying game films of the Colts. “Damn, y’all, we gotta stop watching films. We gonna get overconfident,”
You know what happened. The Jets shocked young Don Shula’s proud team, controlling the ball and the tempo, steadily building a 16-0 fourth-quarter lead while intercepting three Earl Morrall passes (one was by Hudson) before Johnny Unitas came on in relief and led the Colts to a TD as the clock melted away.
Namath, cool under pressure, sliced Baltimore, completing 17 of 28 passes. Lammons caught two and Sauer led all receivers with eight catches for a staggering 133 yards. The Jets won it, 16-7, and Joe jogged off the field, wagging a “number one” finger to the sky and the sporting world. Number 12 and those UTNY Jets had swaggered their way to a victory that caused seismic changes in the football world, spurring a merger between the NFL and AFL and rearranging the football world’s order.
It has been 55 years since the most famed Super Bowl game took place. Sadly, all four Longhorns who shined brightly that day have passed away. Namath, now 80, and a small troop of teammates endure.
So, too, do the memories of the day that Joe and his friends from Texas changed pro football forever.
https://www.texaslsn.org/george-sauer-conflicted…
