Namath speaks

The most famous Jets of them all, Broadway Joe Namath, held his annual football camp last weekend in Connecticut, and here is some advice he gave the kids.

"If you don't have a desire, a passion to play this sport, you're not going to play," said Namath. "It's hard, it's hard, and in life there's a lot of hard things you've got to do. I had a college coach that told us this as freshmen. He said 'Guys when you're out of here, and you're gone 10, 15 years from now, you get up in the morning your wife's sick, your two children are sick, and you've got the same damn cold, you're not going to stay in bed, you're going to go to work.' I'm going to teach you how to do the hard things in life.

"Usually the hard, a lot of people shy away from, understandably to some extent. And you know, you play football - it's hard. But the key is balancing - use football to learn life. Life's experiences are not taught in school, you get yours on the road. I got mine on the road, you know. It was John (Dockery's) idea initially to use football to teach youngsters about life, how we do get knocked down, how we do make mistakes, and not to hide from them but to learn from them."

For many years Namath worked on the Jets preseason TV broadcasts as the color analyst. That job is now held by Greg Buttle.