Today’s blog will be about how we make fantasies in our heads about others, and how we judge people nonstop. On the eve of the NFL Playoffs, I want to share this story with all of you:

1968 AFL Title Game: New York Jets 27—Oakland 23

“Six weeks earlier, the Raiders triumphed in the classic “Heidi Bowl” game. Now the Jets and Raiders would play a rematch in the AFL championship game, the biggest game in the young career of football’s most famous and highly paid player: Joe Willie Namath. The crushing pressure on Namath had really gotten to him by the eve of the game. So how did he deal with it? How else? He went to his bar, “grabbed a girl and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and went to the Summit Hotel and stayed in the bed the whole night with the girl and the bottle.” The next morning, about five hours before game time, an off-duty police officer stood at a crosswalk and saw Broadway Joe with a girl on one arm and whiskey bottle in his free hand.

Namath looked tired, messy and drunk. The cop knew what he had to do–he “raced to the closest sportsbook he could find and bet everything on the Raiders.” And how’d that work out for him? Well, in a seesaw game Joe Willie played through his hangover and tossed three touchdowns, the final one coming when he hit Don Maynard for a 6-yard touchdown with 7:47. Jets up 27-23. Still, plenty of time remained for a Raiders comeback and Daryle Lamonica, who threw for 401 yards on the day, used that time to drive his team to the New York 12 with just over two minutes remaining. Now it was time for a special play, a play the Raiders had worked on all week for just this type of situation: a quick screen to Charlie Smith. Lamonica blew it though; he floated the ball over Smith’s head for an incompletion. Or rather, Lamonica threw what appeared to be an incompletion. In fact it was a lateral, not a pass, meaning the play was still alive. Unfortunately, the only people on the field who realized this wore Kelly green not silver and black. The Raiders stood there flatfooted while Jets linebacker Ralph Baker scooped up the ball and clinched the game for the Jets. The next week, the Jets, not the Raiders, made football history by shocking the Colts and winning the AFL’s first Super Bowl.*”

I remember that play. It was great!!! This story demonstrates something else that is so true.

Namath was drunk, hungover and got laid before the game . . . and he still made it into the Hall Of Fame. Now a guy does steroids or smokes some weed, and he can’t get elected into the Hall Of Fame.

Give me a break. It shows what geeks most sports writers are, and how much they really wish they could hook up with the girl.

It’s funny. It is their dream to be able to hook up with the “hottie,” drink all night and then lead their team into the Super Bowl. It’s the little boy fantasy in all of them.

Now with today’s bullshit double standards, a player could do what Namath did and it would be fine. If someone shoots steroids trying to maintain his body, however, he is banished.

Why? It’s not part of that little boy fantasy of banging the hot woman before the big game (and, in reality, we are all just little boys).

What if Bonds had a hot woman inject the steroids and then he banged her all night long? Do you think the geeky sportswriters would have voted him in after they heard how sexually satisfied she was and how many orgasms she had?

Think about that. We spend so much time emulating others and creating fantasies in our head that we think are so cool, that through that process we actually judge others. We judge them without even thinking about why they do things.

To top it off, an athlete can get drunk and bang hookers all night long (which is illegal), and he will be described in the press as a “cool partier” and ultimately make the Hall of Fame. Prostitution is illegal. Steroids were not.

It all, however, comes down to the little boy and his fantasy of being the sports star (or rock star). Namath was both.

So my blog today is about this, but also about a deeper question. I think we need to ask ourselves why we look up to some people and judge others.

(*Story quoted from: https://miamimigraine.blogspot.com/2007/05/toughest-raider-losses-part-iv.html)