Now 74, Namath is ready to open up, brilliantly using the four quarters of Super Bowl III as the narrative backbone to a life that was anything but charmed.Īs much about football and fame as about addiction, fatherhood, and coming to terms with our own mortality, All the Way finally reveals the man behind the icon. When failing knees permanently derailed his career, he turned to Hollywood and endorsements, not to mention a tumultuous marriage and fleeting bouts of sobriety, to try and find purpose. However, early on in the book, the title proved to be misleading.

By 26, with a championship title under his belt, he was quite simply the most famous athlete alive.Īlthough his legacy has long been cemented in the history books, beneath the eccentric yet charismatic personality was a player plagued by injury and addiction, both sex and substance. All The Way: My Life In Four Quarters Hardcover About the Author, Don Yaeger is an award-winning speaker, business leadership coach, a nine-time New York. The book’s title, All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters, lead me to believe that Namath would be using the quarters of a football game as a metaphor, similar to the seasons, to tell his life story: 1st Quarter (Birth to age 25), 2nd Quarter (age 26 to 50), and so on. Namath was instantly heralded as a gridiron god, while his rugged good looks, progressive views on race, and boyish charm quickly transformed him - in an era of raucous rebellion, shifting social norms, and political upheaval - into both a bona fide celebrity and a symbol of the commercialization of pro sports.

When the final whistle blew, that promise had been kept. Three days before the 1969 Super Bowl, Joe Namath promised the nation that he would lead the New York Jets to an 18-point underdog victory against the seemingly invincible Baltimore Colts. In the wake of the 50th anniversary of his legendary Super Bowl 'Guarantee,' the NFL icon who first brought show business to sports shares his life lessons on fame, fatherhood, and football.

All the way my life in four quarters