Before the game many sports writers and fans believed that AFL teams were less talented than NFL clubs, and expected the Colts to defeat the Jets by a wide margin.

Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously made an appearance three days before the Super Bowl at the Miami Touchdown Club in which he personally guaranteed his team's victory.

His team backed up his words by controlling the majority of the game, building a 16–0 lead by the fourth quarter off of a touchdown run by Matt Snell and three field goals by Jim Turner.

Miami's hosting of sold-out Super Bowl II just four months earlier was seen by all accounts as a huge success, and owners elected to stick with a known commodity.

[15] Fearing that bidding wars over players would become the norm, greatly increasing labor costs, NFL owners, ostensibly[16] led by league Commissioner Pete Rozelle, obtained a merger agreement with the AFL in June 1966, which provided for a common draft, interleague play in the pre-season, a world championship game to follow each season, and the integration of the two leagues into one in a way to be agreed at a future date.

[17] As the two leagues had an unequal number of teams (under the new merger agreement, the NFL expanded to sixteen in 1967, and the AFL to ten in 1968),[18] realignment was advocated by some owners, but was opposed.

Eventually, three NFL teams (Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Baltimore Colts) agreed to move over to join the ten AFL franchises in the American Football Conference.

[6] This was seemingly confirmed by the results of the first two interleague championship games, in January 1967 and 1968, in which the NFL champion Green Bay Packers, coached by the legendary Vince Lombardi, easily defeated the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders.

[25][26][27][28] In 1968, Shula and the Colts were considered a favorite to win the NFL championship again, which carried with it an automatic berth what was now becoming popularly known as the "Super Bowl" against the champion of the younger AFL.

His performance was so impressive that Colts coach Don Shula decided to keep Morrall in the starting lineup after Unitas was healthy enough to play.

But he then made up for his mistake by completing 3 consecutive passes on the ensuing drive, advancing the ball 68 yards in just 55 seconds to score a touchdown to regain the lead for New York.

Future Hall of Fame wide receiver Don Maynard caught the game-winning pass in the end zone but strained his hamstring on the play.

Maynard had been cut by the New York Giants after they lost the 1958 NFL Championship Game to the Colts and had to spend one year playing Canadian football before the Jets (then called the Titans) enabled him to return to his home country.

[35] Meanwhile, New York in the AFL championship game faced a red hot Oakland Raiders team who had just defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 41–6 one week earlier, with quarterback Daryle Lamonica throwing five touchdown passes.

The momentum seemed to swing in the Raiders' favor when George Atkinson picked off a pass from Namath and returned it 32 yards to the Jets 5-yard line, setting up a touchdown that gave Oakland their first lead of the game at 23–20 with 8:18 left in regulation.

[42] Sportswriter Dave Anderson did not think that the remark was notable because, he recalled, Namath had said similar things during the week ("I know we're gonna win" for example), but an article by Luther Evans of the Miami Herald made the statement famous.

[46] While the Orange Bowl was sold out for the game, the live telecast was not shown in Miami due to both leagues' unconditional blackout rules at the time.

Astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission (Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders), the first crewed flight around the Moon, which had returned to Earth just 18 days prior to the game, then led the Pledge of Allegiance.

But his 112-yard, two touchdown performance against the Oakland Raiders in the AFL championship game made the Colts defense pay special attention to him, not realizing he was injured.

Quarterback Earl Morrall completed a 19-yard pass to tight end John Mackey and then running back Tom Matte ran for 10 yards to place the ball on the Jets' 44-yard line.

Although the Colts were unaware of Maynard's injury, the Jets were aware that Lyles had been weakened by tonsillitis all week, causing them great glee when they saw the one-on-one matchup with Sauer.

Two plays after the Jets took over following the missed field goal, Namath's 36-yard completion to Sauer enabled New York to eventually reach the Baltimore 32-yard line.

Some speculated that Morrall couldn't see Orr because the Florida A&M marching band (in blue uniforms similar to those worn by the Colts) was gathering behind the end zone for the halftime show.

"[30] After Turner's second field goal, with 4 minutes left in the third quarter, Colts head coach Don Shula took Morrall out of the game and put in the sore-armed Johnny Unitas to see if he could provide a spark to Baltimore's offense.

The Colts' inability to score made Namath so confident by the fourth quarter, that he told Ewbank that he preferred to run out the clock instead of playing aggressively.

New York then drove to the Colts 35-yard line with seven consecutive running plays, but ended up with no points after Turner missed a 42-yard field goal attempt wide left.

[30] In 1983 Bubba Smith contended that the game had been fixed, saying "I knew something was wrong, you know, through the whole day, because if you look back at the films, we were inside the 20 five times in the first half and came away with no points".

[75] This was the first of three occasions in which a team from New York defeated one from Baltimore in postseason play during 1969, as the Knicks eliminated the Bullets in the NBA playoffs, and the Mets upset the heavily favored Orioles in the World Series.

[72] In his 1983 autobiography and in subsequent media interviews, Colts lineman Bubba Smith alleged that the game had been rigged to allow the Jets to win so the NFL–AFL merger would proceed smoothly.

His old coach Don Shula flatly rejected them, accusing Smith of making them up to sensationalize his book, stating "The way I recall that Super Bowl is that everyone missed everybody all day long, including Bubba.