Puma

"Bill Mathis duly brought his new friend along to Beconta, but this athlete would come at a price. Namath’s agent obtained an unprecedented deal worth $25,000 per year, paired with a pay- ment of twenty-five cents for each Namath shoe sold by Puma. “It was most unusual, to say the least,” chuckled Karl Wallach. The deal proved most rewarding for both sides, as Namath en- raptured the football crowds in impeccable white Puma boots. Inspired by the stupendous Jets quarterback, players on many other teams, from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Miami Dolphins, began to wear the Formstripe. Beconta was selling Namath shoes by the hundreds of thousands."

"The Namath hit confirmed Armin Dassler’s thinking. While his cousin apparently wanted as much exposure for the three stripes as he could get, the Puma heir had another tack. He figured that he would be better off by concentrating on a handful of inter- national and charismatic players, the ones that grabbed all the headlines."