Randy Rasmussen participated in perhaps the most memorable Super Bowl of them all.
How bold were the New York Jets leading up to their appearance against the National Football League champion Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III? Three days prior to the game in Miami’s Orange Bowl, representing the American Football League, Jets’ quarterback “Broadway Joe” Namath promised his audience while speaking at a banquet that his team was going to win, and he was so confident to guarantee victory.
With the NFL’s Green Bay Packers winning the first two “World Championship Games” over representatives from the “junior league,” Namath and his Jets were determined to change the course of professional football superiority. With the Colts and Jets Jan. 12, 1969, matchup officially being tagged “Super Bowl” for the first time, New York arrived in Florida a 19-point underdog by oddsmakers.
When the dust settled at the end of the game, Baltimore, who finished off their 1968 season at 13–1, fell to the Jets 16–7. New York’s victory is still considered by many as the Super Bowl’s greatest upset.
“All the time,” Rasmussen told The Epoch Times of being reminded of the NFL versus AFL clash that he participated in. “It was a lot of fun winning that game.”
Rasmussen, 79, today lives a quiet life with his wife in Northern Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. 15 seasons of football Sundays, three with the AFL (1967–1969), and 12 with the Jets when the two leagues merged beginning in 1970 into the NFL, at the conclusion of the 1981 season, Rasmussen was the last of the starters from the Super Bowl III team when retiring.
For as historic the Jets’ 16–7 win over the Colts is, who would call Baltimore home through the 1983 season before relocating to Indianapolis, Rasmussen doesn’t discount the competition that led New York on the road to Super Bowl III. He tells with pride in his voice of how he and his teammates battled their way to the AFL Championship two weeks prior to the Jets’ date in Miami with the Colts, at home, at Shea Stadium against the Oakland Raiders.
“Believe me. [The Raiders] were so hard to beat. The game was close. The Raiders just kept coming at us.”
At a 5oth Super Bowl reunion arranged by the Jets, nearly 30 players from that squad traveled to New Jersey in October 2018 to be honored. At the Jets’ MetLife Stadium, the home playing field they share with the New York Giants, Rasmussen recalls being eager to spend a weekend around so many familiar faces of years ago.
“Honestly, we didn’t talk much about the game. We know that the Super Bowl win was the cherry on top of our careers. It was a great time just to catch up on how we were all doing. I just looked around at everyone and saw how we aged. Inside, I'd say we all are still feeling like we did in January 1969.”
Super Bowl III ticket prices ran at unheard-of prices of $12, $8, and $6. Ticket prices for the upcoming Kansas City Chiefs–Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl LIX to be held in New Orleans on Feb. 9 at 6:30 p.m. range from $4,000-plus to as high as $31,000-plus on resale sites.
After being conditioned to survive the often brutal physical requirements of season after season of football, beginning first at NCAA Division-II University Nebraska at Kearney and soaking up contributing to the Jets’ one and only Super Bowl victory in the franchise’s 65-year history, stepping away from the game wasn’t easy after completing in 207 regular season games.
“The first three years in retirement, I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I was stumbling and bumbling around, and it cost me my first family,” confesses Rasmussen, a 12th-round draft pick by the Jets in 1967. “Finally, I got the hang of it, and went into the insurance business. I had to make money. Those were the ‘dark ages’ for me; trying to find a new purpose. Physically, it was hard getting up in the mornings.”
In attempting to detox himself from the game that consumed his life from his high school days in Elba, Nebraska—population 300 in 1967—Rasmussen didn’t want to watch the NFL on TV anymore. The self-imposed boycott of following football was short-lived. His past was now carrying Rasmussen with potential insurance clients. There were a few seasons where Rasmussen improved his presence in the Jets’ universe while serving as a member of the team’s crew of radio broadcasters.
Rasmussen’s closest friend and Jets’ teammate of eight seasons John Schmitt, Namath’s center and protector, were roommates on road games. It’s obvious in Rasmussen, recalling their offensive line battles with the best from both the NFL and AFL, he is happy that the two remain in touch.
“[Schmitt] is a wonderful guy. I’m so proud of how everything came together for me lining up alongside John, and how the team as a whole came together in a couple years. We had some real war games against the NFL teams, but we won the biggest of games against the best they had to offer in Super Bowl III.”
Coming out of college, after playing in the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association, Rasmussen chuckles when remembering that his first Jets’ contract paid him $12,000 for the 1967 season. When he questioned Jets’ Director of Player Personnel George Sauer Sr. about the “hefty” $3,000 signing bonus head coach Weeb Ewbank was offering, Rasmussen remembers the advice offered.
“George suggested I not push the issue, and sign before Weeb could change his mind. He thought that Weeb was being generous, and few others were going to get this offer.”
The 15 years of AFL/NFL football, from training camps at Long Island’s Hofstra University to the Jets’ final game of the 1981 season (Wild Card postseason loss to the Buffalo Bills), according to Rasmussen went by as fast as a “lightning bolt.” No doubt, as Rasmussen will be watching on TV the same as tens of millions of other NFL fans on Super Bowl Sunday next month, flashbacks of teammate Matt Snell scoring the sole touchdown against the Colts on Jan. 12, 1969, and “Broadway Joe” passing at his best on the way to being a hall of famer will surface.
Once a Super Bowl champion, always a champion. More than a half-century later, Rasmussen is still proud of the success on the NFL’s grandest of stages.
