Friday, August 31, 2007

New York Jets By The Numbers: #1

This is the first entry which I suppose we could call "JBTN" were I not so self-conscious about appearing to rip off MBTN - Mets By The Number, the website that I am ripping off with this idea. But, anyway. It's a history of the Jets by the numbers, an arguably greater challenge than it is in baseball because football squads are larger and change so much. We begin with the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

First, a familiar face. Before he worked as a broadcaster for "American Gladiators," before he was a "correspondent" for NFL on NBC, Mike Adamle was a running back for the Jets from 1973-74. Adamle's career there is distinct only for being a prettier player than Joe Namath himself. I mean, look at that thick head of hair. And he wore #1 - a running back. I know. Obviously a pretty boy.

The current #1 is Mike Nugent, the coveted kicking draft choice from Ohio State whose field goal beat the Eagles in exhibition. He may be the first kicker the Jets have had in a long, long time who fills us with confidence. Now if Chad could just throw over the middle more often. But whatever.

My records may be a little limited here, and as always, I'm working with the nearly 1,000 names on the on the all-time roster of the official New York Jets web site. There's also Matt Turk, who punted for the Jets during the strange, beautiful and rending 2002 season. The only other intriguing #1 was Dave Jacobs, a Syracuse University grad who actually had a single moment in the sun in late 1979 - or more truthfully, his moment in the dark cold night of the home closer against New England. Back then, the drama of every Jets touchdown was only multiplied by the drama of the point after. For great kickers like Nick Lowery (a sometime Jet in the 90's), Morten Anderson, and David Akers, PAT's are an opportunity for the TV viewer to run to the can for a quick leak without worrying whether or not he's hexing his kicker by doing so. Not so for us.

During the late 70's and early 80's, I believed I could accidentally hex Pat Leahy by breathing, so I didn't breathe during the five seconds (I hoped) leading up to his point afters. For some strange reason during the 1979 season, Leahy was catching passes in practice, and Burgess Owens accidentally injured him in a tackle (I always wondered if that's what got Owens on the Jets' shit list; he jumped to the mighty Raiders the following year). I suppose Burgess was instinctively doing his job; that being said, my God, what the fuck? No kicker could be blamed for the 14-12 loss at home (and the two missed PAT's) to the Bills that season because the center and snapper Joe Fields was injured in the game. Overall, the Jets used four kickers in 1979. Courtesy of the Times' photographer Vic DeLucia, we have evidence of one of those four kickers during the 1979 season, #1 Dave Jacobs, in a heroic moment. He helped beat New England 27-26 with two kicks, one of them the game winner. Best of all, he knocked the Patriots right out of the playoffs, which if you do anywhere anytime actually gets you an automatic free pass to Gang Green Heaven. Who needs martyrdom when you can just end the Pats' season? J.E.T.S., baby.

Jacobs was not in the lineup the following year, but for one brief shining moment, the Loneliest Number must have made everybody think that he would be there again. That's a Jets story for you. Gone but not forgotten.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Jetskins We Have Known

Before and After:












Harry Frazee sold his best Red Sox players to the Yankees, most especially a rotund extrovert who was both a pitching and hitting prodigy. The early 1980's success of the Chicago Cubs (well, 1984) could be traced to several notable greats from Philadelphia, just as the Phillies' 1983 wheezers were composed of several members of the once indomitable Big Red Machine. See where I'm going? No? Well, no, I suppose not.

According to my research (all two minutes, online) a "Jetskin" is a manufactured Lycra garment that provides travel comfort and works to prevent deep vein thrombosis. It also helps slow the onset of jet lag. It's also the term we use to describe Jets players that have jumped or been dealt to the Washington Redskins, especially over the past five years.

We bring this issue up because Pete Kendall is the most recent departure to Washington, and I for one am a little sad to see him go. Remember that Kendall said he was promised an extra million by Eric Mangini for mentoring both D'Brickshaw Ferguson and Nick Manggold, which he did to great effect. At training camp, he is seen physically separating himself from the same young fellows whom he tutored. He did not see himself as a Jet any longer. I will miss Iron Pete, last year's offensive captain. Anyone who's learned a skill knows how edifying it is to mentor a young colleague, yet rarely does anyone appreciate the effort - not even in the financially saturated world of pro football. Weeb Ewbank was miserly with great players like Verlon Biggs. It happens. Kendall is also 34. Jeremiah Trotter was let go by the Philadelphia Eagles this past week, guilty of being the slightly less geriatric age of 30.

For many years, the Redskins organization has been where good Jets went to go to get kind of mediocre. Santana Moss, Laveranues Coles, John Hall, Randy Thomas, Chad Morton. All good, not great. I was always flattered by the notion that whatever the Jets had in the first few years of the century, the Redskins sought it, then purchased it with the idea of earning a Super Bowl. Someone needed to tell Daniel Snyder that it's hard to win a championship with only the particular strength of former Jets. It has gone both ways; Coles is back in New York (he is better than Moss, I believe) and the Jets were for a brief time the payroll for Patrick Ramsey who was previously one of Steve Spurrier's ill-fated starting quarterbacks. Kendall joins this dubious legacy, and though Joe Gibbs is there again, the word on the street is that the Jets still got better end of the deal with draft choices in exchange for Pete.

Jetskins have fared better in the past. Verlon Biggs went to two Super Bowls, one with the Jets and one with the Redskins. John Riggins' two Super Bowls were with the Redskins and long after the Jets. So long as Riggins was on the Redskins, I gave them my heart on loan, especially when it eased the grind of a long Jets season.
I'll never forget the strange feeling of forlorn pride I felt while watching Super Bowl XVI in 1983, sort of like a forgotten parent to a now famed progeny, when Riggins broke free of the Dolphins' defense and scrambled 43 yards on fourth down inside four minutes for the go-ahead touchdown. "I always knew he could do it," I said with tears in my eyes, looking over at the tattered poster of him playing for the Jets against the Dolphins in 1972. I always did.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Gestes Top Jints

Watch Leon Washington's cut on his touchdown pass as many times as you like. He made a cut that, I swear, split him in half. The Giants did not follow the half with the ball. Without that play, it might only have been a 13-12 game, which, as I said earlier, would have made it like any other preseason game between the two teams. Naturally, when I looked up stats and whatnot, all the buzz was about the kind of game Eli Manning had. Of course. And so it goes.

Not that anyone is reading this, but I like to pretend I have to be beholden to the truth. I mean, I write about my life as a Jets fan on this site, so how could I possibly be the kind of person who would hold to standards of the truth? I am not exactly consumed by guilt about this; as my wife said to me about my taking the rap for something dumb I did around the house (I don't remember what it was, but that could describe thousands of things): "Yeah, well, it wasn't like you killed dogs or anything." No. No I did not. Not even one dog, let alone more than thirty. What can I tell you. Michael Vick has raised the bar on horror.

So, what was I going on about? Oh, the truth. A correction on the stadiums to be at the Meadowlands. On Gardner's old rubric of intelligences, my spatial intelligence would have been good enough to find a good diner in Secaucus without knowing any better, but I'm not good with graphs, diagrams and mapping skills. It took me a second there, but now I realize that, contrary to what I earlier thought, the two shots of the stadium do correspond to one another. Let's take a look at those pictures of the planned facility again.


Three tiers of the stadium in the round can be seen, except that one tier is missing in the fourth round nearest us. That was what confused me. Once I corresponded the image above with the one below, I saw in each of them a tower that peaks with an art deco spiral staircase at the edge of an enormous luxury box structure overlooking a lower tier of stands.


Take a look at that. Impressive and profoundly elitist, but that's sports. I was initially confused because I would have thought that a smaller set of outdoor stands would have been used at the end zone, not along the sidelines. But there we are - that's the shape of things.

The staircase encased in the glass tower puts me in the mind of Ibrox Stadium (I realize I've had the Old Firm on the brain lately, but then I'm the only one reading this, so whatever). It's a characteristic touch that, as far as I can see, is strictly for show.


If you look closely at this shot, you see the beautiful glass block structure framed by red brick peeking out in the far corner, a stairwell that, although it's a little hard to see, puts me in the mind of our stadium to be. I love stadium architecture, and needless to say, it's been a long time since a football stadium was built in this country with aesthetic touches that were strictly non-utilitarian.


This is what the other side of the stairwell looks like from the outside.

However, there is absolutely nothing to compete with the pointed roof structure of the new

Indianapolis Colts stadium to be - a football field house. Ridiculous, yes, but (and can one say this about anything in football?) exquisite, nonetheless.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Michael Vick Pleads Guilty

Well, the plea has been registered, he is suspended indefinitely, and with it the end of one public chapter in the nightmare Michael Vick inadvertently created for all of us. Soon new chapters will follow: books, interviews, self-reflections, jail house intimations, recriminations toward the media, rumors of religious conversions (Christianity or Islam optional; we assume that Hinduism's belief in the integrity of the animal soul disqualifies it from consideration), and some kind of unpredictable wild card. Even in media culture, there are things you cannot predict. Like Jim Brown actually saying on ESPN that Vick needs to make hansai.

Last year, the New Orleans Saints were one of my probational favorites. Vick's dog scandal is not exactly a Level 5 Katrina, but it has rendered the Atlanta Falcons franchise - one that has had a hard time maintaining a fan base - a deserving team. Normally, I wouldn't dream of rooting for them. Any team from a state that was once lead by George Wallace will always have a 50-year ban on my affections. Still, just imagine if Namath had been out of the Jets lineup for such an extended period of time. Actually that describes Namath from 1970-73. Oh well.

Even I am really, really ready to move on. It hasn't been easy. This is America, after all, and when celebrities collapse, it must "mean something" for all of us. It's just that usually when they fall, celebrities tend to behave not quite so monstrously as Vick did. Or maybe it's just that when famous athletes behave badly, they usually do so toward other people, and it ironically fails to disgust in quite the same way.

The controlled violence of football was not enough for Michael Vick, and in his case, he needed to literally kill the combatants who had lost their worth in his ring. Now he will have to face the metaphorical same in banishment (albeit temporary) from the league. The NAACP was hilarious in its defense of Vick's supposed dignity. According to R.L. White of the Atlanta chapter, the uproar over dogfighting is not fair "when hunting deer and other animals is perfectly acceptable."

This is absurd. No, I don't know how decent people go hunting, either. It's creepy. But a deer does not form a relationship of trust and loyalty with humans as dogs do, and I do think there is basic decency lacking in a human being if he or she is repeatedly cruel to a dog. Furthermore, if the person uses his extraordinary wealth to finance a miniature corporation of dog cruelty, then he has voluntarily shed the skin of his own humanity, and people like that are dangerous with money. He has abdicated his right to both wealth and freedom. Compassion and decency, not intimidation and fear, are at the core of real human dignity. Even rich people can find it within themselves to behave. It's been known to happen on occasion. Being nice to dogs is a good place to start.

Showing compassion to people like Michael Vick is also an interesting challenge for those whose spectator sport is reveling in the troubles of others. Me? There are other lost souls more worthy of my compassion than Vick - like Eddie Griffin, the kid who graduated from Roman Catholic High in Philly as the most highly touted high school basketball star in the country. He spent a little time at Seton Hall, then crashed to personal failure in the NBA. He died on a train track in Texas this week. He was a true lost soul. It seems only yesterday he was just some talented kid with his future ahead of him, and now it is over. There's someone worthy of sympathy - not that it can do him much good now.

Will Vick be a quarterback somewhere someday? Maybe in the CFL? Arena football? Certainly not with the Cincinnati Bengals. Will he professionally wrestle with Pacman Jones? Appear on "The Surreal Life?"

Will he try his hand at what it feels like to be in an ultimate fighting ring? To further appease the crude bloodlust of the common man, perhaps the fighting organizers will take a cue from Michael Vick and strangle their chronic losers in the ring. Football players occasionally batter their wives, but no one decries their actions with the same urgency as what people have shown Vick. I fear he is closer to the deep down norm of American violence than we like to admit.

I told you the temptation to read meaning into this madness was very strong, so I better stop now. Jim Brown - no slouch in the Big House - said that it is in these moments of bottoming out that people have the opportunity to literally remake the moral landscape of their lives - so too for Vick, I guess.

Who Manchu?

It kind of felt like football was back for real when I watched the Packers-Jaguars game last night. As lame as it can be, the greatest liability of exhibition football is its TV coverage, which becomes distracting and empty-headed. I have neither world enough nor time to discuss how self-referential the Fox broadcast was. The more the broadcast experienced technical difficulties, the more it made the technical difficulties the focus of the coverage. It's as if the networks want to talk about anything but the game. The play's the thing.

Anyway, "will Brett Favre play another then years or not?" "Isn't amazing how old he is?" "Let's chat with him about how the younger guys call him 'sir.'" "Will he be able to get into a rhythm with the new players who were in grammar school when he first started?" "What if he doesn't?" Repeat.

Fox is nattering like fools the entire night, and what is the one inane, superfluous sideshow matter they entirely neglect? Aaron Rodgers' moustache. I mean, as a rule, they're supposed to neglect him because he's Favre's backup, but he's #12 and he has a fu manchu. Doesn't that signify anything to football people? Am I the only one who's seeing this? I am so alone.













You be the judge. Can a man destined to play Richard Todd to Brett Favre's Joe Namath be conjuring the 1968 Joe Namath voodoo? Aaron Rodgers: you manchu. That's who.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Exhibition Bowl!

In Glasgow, they call it the Old Firm. Between the Dodgers and Yankees in the 50's they called it the World Series. Between the Niners and the Raiders, I don't think they call it anything. I think San Franciscans just want Oakland people to stop using the term "Frisco." If I lived there, I'd probably be a Raiders fan, but don't tell my Dad that.

Anyway, if it's a matchup between the New York Giants of New Jersey and the New York Jets of New Jersey, then they call it week 3 of the preseason. Pretty hot, huh? How about "Exhibition Bowl?" Yeah, that sucks, too. The game is almost certainly designed to suck. It's typically agonizing, slow, and inept preseason.

The last Giants-Jets exhibition my wife and I went to was only memorable for the halftime entertainment, which featured a field goal kicking contest for selected fans sponsored by Levitra, a drug that treats what we now so mannerly refer to as "erectile dysfunction." Imagine the winking looks the sales reps gave as they unfurled the Levitra banners just as one unknowing kicker after another failed to "get it up" through the crossbars. "Get it?" the guys in the Levitra t-shirts seemed to say. "C'mon, fellas. Don't let the signified object of this otherwise harmless-looking metaphor happen to you. Go the distance."


Once, the game was the thing. Many a moon ago, in the time of my forefathers, two teams met for an exhibition game in August 1969 on neutral ground, the Yale Bowl, and the New York Jets beat the snot out of the only remaining NFL team to doubt the legitimacy of the AFL. The Jets beat the Giants 37-16. There was no pragmatic decision to bench the starters. Larry Grantham has said that players put off retirement just to play that game. Talk about workers putting their muscle behind the corporate brand. It was a religion, not a job. Mike Battle leaped like a gazelle over Giant defenders in his touchdown return of the opening kickoff. Dad still talks about that move. Only proud devotion could shoot a man so elegantly high in the air.

Dad also talks about going to the Yale Bowl for other Jets-Giants exhibition games in the early 70's whose drunken conflicts in the stands were very much in the style of scenes at Ibrox and Celtic Park. The bowl's construction itself meant that if you lost your balance, you were tumbling for a long, long while down. He says that civil wars broke out all around, and the only thing keeping the drunk guys above from rolling onto the field were guys lower down the bowl. Hot, sunny, fights, beer. That's pretty much all he recalls from it.

I have one other memory from the Levitra game that proves that some things don't change as readily as treatment for erectile dysfunction. My wife and I wore our jerseys to the Meadowlands amid a sea of red, blue, green, and white. At one point, every human soul there stopped to watch two fans, one Giants, one Jets, get hauled away from their business of battering one another. The fight was close to the field, which probably explains why so many players found it intriguing to watch, too. As the Giants fan in the Jeremy Shockey jersey was brought away by an impressive number of Meadowlands security staff, Jets fans along the way up took free shots at him. Then, in quick succession along the same route, Giants fans returned the favor to the pugilist in the Wayne Chrebet jersey when it was his turn to be arrested. It really isn't a rivalry until somebody gets hurt.

The two exhibition matchups I have been to at Giants Stadium were field goal fests decided by an unexciting point or two. When you leave, you actually find yourself asking, "Wait. Who won again?" 13-12, 16-15, 10-0. Real nail biters, especially for a guy like me who really doesn't need an excuse to bite his nails. I'm chomping on them right now with the fear that Pennington will be lost again for the season with yet another ridiculous injury against the Giants like he was three years ago. So who the hell cares about a good game? Stay healthy.

Then every four to five years, we meet again in the regular season, an honor we will repeat this year. If I'm not mistaken, the series is just about even. The first regular season meeting was a 22-10 Giants' victory in 1970, which I didn't even know about until I read about it. The critical moment in that game at Shea was when Fran Tarkenton partially instigated a goal-line fight with Jets players that cleared the two benches. Yeah. I know. Fran Tarkenton. That's how serious these guys were.

My favorite remains the infamous moment back at the Yale Bowl in the middle of the 1974 season when Joe Namath crossed the end zone by himself against the Giants after faking the handoff to Emerson Boozer, much to the surprise of even Boozer himself. Joe walked into the end zone, signifying his simultaneous desire to stop and not be stopped by offering the famous palm raised upward in fragile defense. "OK, guys," he seems to say, "play's over. Don't blow out what's left of my knees. OK, dudes? We cool?" Brad Van Pelt certainly thought so, and he was the guy Namath wanted to fake out with the move.

When the Jets lost 20-10 during the regular 1984 season, I was invited to watch the game on a large scale projection TV with my friend Doug and his family, all insane Giants fans. They made it clear that my presence there was an act of generosity. With me around, they were slumming. I kept getting the feeling that I needed to get up and take everyone's snack orders. When Freeman McNeil went down in the game, injured for the year, Doug forced only the slightest note of compassion out of grudging appreciation for our friendship.

Junior was a Giants fan on my floor in college who taunted me all week leading up to the last game of the 1988 regular season, a matchup between the Jets and Giants. He and I had a deal. If the Giants won, then all week I would wear his Giants mesh hat that was frankly deformed already by his misshapen head. The unthinkable for him occurred when the Jets won with an O'Brien to Toon touchdown, 27-21, and the Giants were forced out of the playoffs. Our deal stipulated that he wear my Jets t-shirt all week. He regarded it with disdain when I handed it to him, and that's even before he realized it had skipped many washing cycles, as was the case with most of my clothes back then.

Such moments of conflict can hardly be compared with the legendary cultural divide between members of the Old Firm. Indeed, the Jets and Giants share the Meadowlands, both present and future. The nameless stadium to be has no real coherent design. Take a look at the pictures below. Each seems to manifest an entirely different design. The second picture appears to put the field in the wrong direction, actually.


This is what happens when you have corporate park architects render their idea of a football stadium. Check out some of the other pictures of the proposed facility, and you'll only see more pictures of the proposed parking lot.

So now, amiability prevails. There are otherwise no distinctive markings on the arena, which might actually be a good thing, because if this is a joint Tisch-Johnson venture in the truest sense, then maybe this time the stadium won't be the sole nominal property of the Big Blue, the so-called flagship organization, the stuck-ups. Those bastards.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Don't Panic

What the hell is preseason for, except to hector us with irrational hope and despair. Trying to discern the future season from exhibition is like trying to figure out what your week is going to be like from your dreams. I mean, it might have worked to predict Egyptian droughts in the Axial Age, but in an age of pragmatic reason, aren't there better ways? Like, just waiting to see what happens? Still, it needs to be said that what I saw against Minnesota was clearly not just a bad dream, but a certifiable nightmare. Scary, yes, but remember (I tell myself) it was just a bad dream. Bad dreams can't hurt you. Go away, bad dreams. Go away.

The preseason has a difficult history for all clubs. How many favorite players through history were injured badly at some point in the preseason? How about Joe Namath being lost for most of the the 1971 season after being injured in an exhibition game against the Detroit Lions as he tried to react to a turnover. OK, I don't remember that. I was two. Dad still cared about the Jets back then so he must have lost his mind. Bob Davis and Al Woodall managed fairly well, but if Namath had been there before he returned in week 11, then maybe he could have lead the Jets to three more wins and maybe a wild card, where they could have had the honor of getting their asses beaten by Miami in the playoffs. I can see it clearly. Stop laughing.

How many empty promises were first made in the exhibition phase? In 1975, the Jets went 5-0 in exhibition. Then they lost 42-14 against Buffalo in the opener. The big talk that year was they were for once all healthy, ready to go. Then there was Browning Nagle, the future of The Future in 1992. He looked awfully good their undefeated preseason games that season and then went on to a 4-12 finish. His is now now a name synonymous with mistaken impression in Gang Greendom. I mean, he didn't throw away his greatness into a deep chasm of dogfighting, so he had that going for him. And he eventually had some very nice arena football stats with the Orlando Thingywidgets.
The preseason only illustrates the fragile nature of promise. This is why we hate preseason games - for that and for all the stupid sideline interviews and endless discussion of off-field politics as the third-stringer throws another interception - or in the Jets case, as Marques Tuiasosopo throws a touchdown near the two-minute warning to Jason Pociask. The promise of total self-destruction is also a potential illusion, maybe a self-hating delusion. Look, as bad as Chad Pennington played in the first quarter, perhaps it was just one of these selfsame illusions. I even wondered if his dinky passes and two interceptions were just diversions to lead defenses in future games to play him soft, although I think such strategies are more the property of the football game played by the 4077th in the MASH movie. Next time, Mangeniuses, try injecting guys like Darren Sharper with morphine in warm-ups. Works every time.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Hello, Boys!

As we know, the inevitable is here. Preseason games. Darrell Revis signed. Eric Mangini discussed Thomas Jones' injury with the press. These are not the issues at hand, though. No, the New York Jets have cheerleaders - a "Flight Crew." Some fans have said, "Finally," with nothing more than a sense that at least the Jets can be a more legit team. We have cheerleaders. That's how we know we're the real deal.

What's kind of funny is that my wife initially bought into the Jets when she found out that they didn't have cheerleaders. The Dallas Cowboys, the Great Satan, set the gold standard for modern cheerleaders being candy. Right in the midst of the movement for women's liberation, the bedrock of the Southern Baptist Convention produced a phenomenon that got its own TV special, as well as a porno homage. Whatever it was, it made Dad think he needed to change the channel whenever they appeared on TV. Remember who has cheerleaders. The Oakland Raiders have cheerleaders. The Miami Dolphins have cheerleaders. Hell, even the the Green Bay Packers have cheerleaders now. Rather than looking like waitresses from Hooters, they are a demure bunch that resemble what real gals from Wisconsin actually look like.

In the admittedly narrow world of the male football fan, women get put into categories of hot, from zero representing "Mom," to ten usually being a dancer at Club Risque. The women in between are likely teachers from high school or college, neighbors' wives, co-workers, their own wives, Jennifer Aniston. And yet, I'm not sure that male football fans spend much time dwelling on where to place NFL football cheerleaders on that rubric. The game itself is so important that, here, sexy women become like garnish. Cheerleaders are a part of the NFL "product," and therefore part of the corporate scenery. The gals are basically mascots - they're even beneath mascots, actually because I think I pay more attention to the Philly Phanatic than I would, say, to the Miami Dolphins'...um, Fin Chicks.












But let's be honest. The AFL made cheerleaders what they are today. Granted, cheerleaders in 1960's professional football were the traditional kind you still find in high schools or colleges.

No hot pants, no lobster bibs. And, yes, the New York Jets did have cheerleaders back then - probably Catholic high school grads with majorette outfits, spinning batons, big sweaters, pom-poms the size of small shrubs.


But put it into perspective. This was at the same time that the Jets had a jet car - a go-kart, basically - that they would race across the highly uneven half-dirt field of Shea Stadium. This was all part of Sonny Werblin's idea to market the game in as many ways as possible. A bonus baby quarterback, a big stadium, a jet car, girls. Now that's entertainment. In fact, if there hadn't been those pom-poms (and the jet car) there might never have been "Debbie Does Dallas."

OK, that may be an exaggeration. But the Flight Crew is coming to the franchise that set the standard for sport-as-entertainment. "That's probably the best thing you can say about it," my wife replied. That and the fact that, for the moment, they don't look like hookers, which is more than I can say about the Fin Chicks.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Ah, Jets Crap

When I was a young man in college, my friends and I would put off studying until very late in the evening and then go over to 7-Eleven, and buy something sugary to keep us awake. Coffee was a must, but so too were things like Hawaiian Punch and coffee cakes. I remember once making myself laugh one night walking in and asking aloud, "Hmmm, what do I need?"

What indeed? The whole point was that there was nothing there that I actually needed. What I "needed" should have happened hours before: turn off that TV, eat a decent dinner, study, go to bed. "But I was one and twenty," A.E. Housman writes, "No use to talk to me." What would have been the point? Where was the fun in that?

It occurs to me that although married and with a responsible job, I have avoided parenthood, in large measure so that I can still buy myself toys that I won't have to share with an urchin. Thus, I was like a big child wandering around the shop of Jets Fest the other day, wondering for what I would shell out my good American dollars in order to show team pride. What do I need? The obvious answer is nothing. My father was content with one of those great wool hats they used to wear without any logo when he went to the games in the 60's. Me? A Darrell Revis jersey? When he wasn't even signed yet? But I was eight and thirty. No use to talk to me.

Let's peruse a few items at the Jets Shop, and just see how crazy we really are, shall we?

How about the $290 Authentic Riddell Throwback helmet? Under the Jets Fest tent, I saw this in its box, and my first reaction was little giddy. I look for the tilted logo, the little football inside the logo with the strings pointed upward. And then I looked at the price and exclaimed to my wife, "Three hundred bucks? Are you kidding?" Some guy overhears me and says, "Yeah, but it's a savings if you can get Namath to sign it." Really? I guess I'm just not an autograph hound. When I was 10, my Uncle Mike got me the late great Matt Snell's autograph when he chanced to run into #41 at a bar in New York. The signature is on a bill receipt. Now that has value - not just because Matt Snell scored the only Jets touchdown in Super Bowl III, but because Uncle Mike chanced to run into Snell and also remembered how much I loved the Jets. Three hundred dollars for that, though? I'm glad it's not an issue. I'm just cheap.

The $19 Jets Rubiks Cube is fascinating to me. Who came up with this? Who still plays with a Rubiks Cube? Children, right, but the only reason not to get the original Rubiks is if your kid's color-blind. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. I know that the NFL also merchandises a cube with a Bengals' logo, or a Rams logo, but is there marketing data to go along with this concept? Would I be met with a straight face if I pitched something as silly as marketing a velvet portrait of Marlene Dietrich in a Curtis Martin jersey if there were data to support it?

I don't own a gym sack, and since I'm not as savvy a consumer as I should be, I didn't really know that gym sacks existed. But like a typical American consumer, my previous lack of general knowledge about this product is now making me all the more certain that I need it. Sure, sure, I could put my sunglasses in there, and my keys and then hang that on the coat rack at the gym! The only trouble is that using NFL stuff of any kind at the gym conjures the image in people's minds that you think you're working out like a football player. If I walked in with a Jets gym sack, I think I might be posing just a little. I can assure you that if you saw me on the treadmill, you'd say to yourself that it was nice to belong to the kind of gym where sweaty, heavy-set, middle-aged straight men didn't feel self-conscious working out. So I'll pass.

This is a no-brainer. It's the $6 "Jets Can Cooler Can-In-Ball." I don't drink alcohol anymore, and this item is certainly not to keep your soft drink cold, so I don't need it. For your tailgate, it's compulsory, though. I grasp the pun-in-name, but the English language affords even more delight in being able to say the words "can," "in," and "ball" together. Probably the only reason why is because it ends in "ball."

So, hats. I have a size 7 7/8 head, so I can't really order a hat online, but for you, I suggest that each of these hats makes a mark. First, there is the $22 New York Jets Straw Hat, complete with logo on the trim.


Then there is the $35 New York Jets Collage Flexfit Cap, complete with logo, like, everywhere. Seriously now, do the men sporting these respective hats have anything in common? If they had a chance to sit down together, might they not develop a constructive cultural and economic conversation that would help bridge some chasms in American society? Straw hat man: "I enjoy playing golf. I watch the Jets while surreptitiously sipping beer out of my Can-In-Ball. I also sell insurance." Collage hat: "Well, I frequently kick it by leaning with my homeslices and, when not watching the Gang Green, I remain, overall, a baller." Fandom - bringing people together. That's what it's all about.

But a treasured tool? Wouldn't you feel a little foolish if your next door neighbor asked to borrow your hammer, and you gave him your New York Jets hammer? "Yeah, well, I love the Jets." Maybe you wouldn't feel foolish. Maybe your neighbor has a Giants Swiss Army knife. Here's where the NFL has mastered the art of marketing to the hidden world of men. Grill covers, desk clocks, checkbooks - all have the capacity to be embroidered with the logo of our beloved team. And you thought the lady who collected things with nothing but schnauzers on them was weird.

However, I know where to draw the line. The "Lil Pro" Collection freaks me out beyond belief. I guess I wouldn't even get it for a child because, for some reason, it depicts the pro as a child, and some of those depictions are downright creepy. I think some wear diapers. I realize it's supposed to make kids understand that even their favorite stars were once children themselves, but I think as a kid I wanted to imagine myself as one of the stars - not as one of the stars depicted as a child imagining himself as a star. Any adult who orders this kind of thing for his own Jets'ed out basement is a person who needs to reassess his priorities. But, of course, he can certainly keep the Jets drapes and valance.