The face looked familiar, but somehow, his having gone relatively unnoticed as he entered the media room at the New York Jets training facility in Hempstead, seemed incongruous for team great "Broadway" Joe Namath.

He'd slipped in the door shortly before the start of head coach Bill Parcells' weekly press briefing, and sat, just inside the door, on the end of the table that serves as a desk for reporters covering the team.

From time to time, as Parcells fielded the kind of vague questions typical of such sessions -- reporters would get nowhere, after all, asking about the specific strategy for the upcoming game -- the quarterback who brought the franchise its only Super Bowl victory sheepishly shook his head and smiled.

"Things," you could imagine him thinking, "really haven't changed all that much since my day."

Thirty years after audaciously bringing the National Football League into the modern age by guaranteeing a victory in Super Bowl III over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, Namath now has a ringside seat for the Jets play-off drive.

He's again a television personality; host and all-around spokesman for the new ESPN Classics network. And yet one could tell, as Parcells brought his press conference to a close and Namath began to prepare for a program taping, that the Jets will always have a special hold on his heart.

"I didn't miss playing football from the day I stopped, only because I knew I couldn't play anymore," he said the other day. "My body just couldn't overcome the physical toll anymore."

To be sure, Namath's knee injuries are almost as famous as his legendary arm. He suffered his first just a year after leading the University of Alabama to a 17-0 Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma, and underwent the first of several knee surgeries only 23 days after signing with the New York Jets in 1965.

Though he would play the game for another 12 years, closing out his career with the Los Angeles Rams in 1977, the fragility of his knees would be of constant concern to the teams he played on, to the teams he helped define.

"If I could still play, I think I would still be playing," Namath added, suggesting that, brave pronouncements aside, he does miss the game just a little.

"I love this sport, but I also love the camaraderie with the various teams and people that I work with."

Because the Jets have been so successful this year, the heroics of Namath, his teammates and coach Weeb Eubank have gained a new currency.

Where other Jets teams, haplessly struggling through their respective seasons, saw the ghost of the 1969 team as a heavy shadow to overcome, this year's 11-4 incarnation seems to be taking the legend in stride.

Asked about Vinny Testaverde, the Elmont native who has led the team to heights not experienced since Namath first became world famous, the Hall-of-Famer didn't hesitate to offer an opinion.

"I think Vinny is playing the best football of his career, for several reasons," Namath said.

"One of them, of course, is the experience he has accumulated over the years; two, there's the head coach, team, and system that he's working with right now.

"Vinny has a real understanding of what it takes to be a top-notch quarterback in this league; now he has a team to do it with."

Apparently, the Jets believe so too. As this newspaper went to press, Testaverde was reportedly offered a $6 million a year deal to remain the team's quarterback for the next five years.

(Though it would be bad form to mention this to Namath, that's more than 14 times what the Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania native received when he signed with the team back in 1965 for a then-record $427,000.)

In assessing the job Coach Parcells has done this year, Namath said the cornerstone of his success can be summed up in a single word: respect.

"Bill Parcells, as a pro coach, is respected tremendously," Namath explained. "He has climbed to the top and won a number of championships, been to the Super Bowl a few times, and proven his ability.

"Here, he has the opportunity to put a team together the way that he likes, and that's given him an opportunity to get it done faster than he probably would have given another situation.

"In addition, he has a wonderful football staff, particularly, his defensive coordinator, Bill Belichick.

"The bottom line though, is, he's running this football operation the way that he knows is best," Namath said.