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Jets and the Game of Life on BroadwayJoe.tv

Broadway Joe can still light it up.

Joe Namath arrived at Jets training camp in SUNY Cortland on Wednesday night, and today he’s gone. But on Thursday he delivered his latest memory for all the folks gathered on and around the Cortland fields.

He made stops with Mark Sanchez and other players, on Radio Row and in front of the “Hard Knocks” cameras. He and head coach Rex Ryan bonded again — remember, they first met in 1968, when Rex accompanied his dad, Buddy, the Jets’ new assistant coach that summer — over a leisurely, memory-filled lunch in the players’ cafeteria.

Everywhere Namath went, you could see, if you looked, that glint from his finger, his Super Bowl III ring.

“I’m forever here!” he told beat reporters with that Namathian smile and that jaunty, often-imitated-never-equaled western Pennsylvania cadence. “No, I’m just visiting, of course.”

But what all natural, if not national, treasures do is to keep on visiting, keep on giving. And Namath at 67 has given all his fans — the young guns who never saw him play and the old-timers who remember every game of the ’68 season, every play from the Orange Bowl on Jan. 12, 1969, as if it were yesterday — one more thoughtful present in the form of BroadwayJoe.tv.

The Website, which opened for business on Wednesday night, has a seemingly simple goal: to provide a conduit for Namath’s “thoughts on the Jets, the Crimson Tide, some of life’s lessons & much more.”

“It’s a direct way of talking to the fans,” Namath told me after lunch. “This came about from being concerned with how I came across when I say what I want to say. It’s more comfortable for me to have shared something and not be concerned as it relates to the fans. It’s a direct way of answering their questions as well as sharing my thoughts.”

“Joe has transcended a lot of mediums over the years — professional football to commercials to network TV,” said Angelo Mandarano, president of the Website. “BroadwayJoe.tv is basically the next frontier for him. We have a brand-new logo, very iconic. And the messages he puts out there are very positive.”

As that mission statement atop the homepage indicates, he’ll be talking lots of football with his many followers, whether they wear green or crimson. Check out his Episode #2 video and try not to smile as Joe opens up with a show-tune-style snippet of “When You’re a Jet, You’re a Jet All the Way.”

And as Namath demonstrated with the reporters, although he’s not a contributor to the Jets’ inner sanctum, he still knows what’s going on with and has opinions about his pro team, as any Super fan would.

But the “life’s lessons & more” part is intriguing, too.

“There are a lot of big games in football and sports, but the real big game is life,” Joe said. “I want to touch on issues with people about children, home, drinking, divorce, things I’ve been through. I’ve reached people through Facebook and Twitter and now through this medium. It’s a direct one-on-one with me in a sense of being able to talk about life experiences that we all share.”

It sounds as if we can add another nickname to Broadway Joe and Joe Willie — Dr. Joe.

Namath even has some off-the-field football issues he wants to delve into on his new site.

“I can’t believe we can’t do a better job today of protecting our football players,” he said. “The animal’s evolved into quite a species but it has not evolved into being able to stand up under the rigors of American football. The longer we’re around, we’re witnessing fellows who are crippled such as Earl Campbell. There are the head issues. The last time I shook the hand of Johnny Unitas, he had a hand but it was shaped like [a claw]. You pay a price.”

That is part of the bargain for the participants in this game we love. But Namath, who seems now to be in a new and comfortable place in his legendary game of life, has never regretted the price he paid. He said he’s reminded of Super Bowl III on a daily basis by the smiles and the back pats from many of those fans, whether he’s in Florida, California, New York City or Cortland.

“I was with Don Larsen on a TV interview show once and he was asked again about pitching that perfect game in the World Series for the Yankees,” Namath recalled. “After the show, I asked him, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of talking about the perfect game? He waited about two beats and then he said, ‘Why should I?’ “

Joe is not tired and we are lucky. Check out BroadwayJoe.tv this summer, this season and you’ll see why.