Bizarro

Jets fans are not Packers fans, and maybe it's in their nature. Join with me right now as we imagine once again the parallel universe that Earth occupies somewhere in the cosmos where Al Gore won the 2000 election and the Jets have not suffered the misfortunes, mismanagement, bad coaching, bad drafting, bad luck of their post-1969 history. In this alternate universe, Brett Favre was drafted by the Jets in 1991 and not by Atlanta. Of course as Favre himself admitted, had he been offered the chance to play in New York, he might not ever have had a career anywhere at all. I don't think he meant any disrespect by that; yes, it would have meant being coached by Bruce Coslet and Ritchie Kotite. But without the aid a good front line to protect him, his career might well have gone the way of Browning Nagle's. As he himself is aware, Favre might also have killed himself with the reckless abandon and self-destruction that the city that never sleeps offers to the kind of hellraiser he was reputed to have been when he first broke into the NFL.

Still, let's say things worked out swimmingly for Favre and the Jets back in the Bizarro Jets world of the 1990's. By 2008, Bizarro New York Jets legend Brett Favre leaves the Meadowlands this summer (actually, the Jets would probably have had their own Lambeau by that time, maybe even at Willets Point) after hemming and hawing over his retirement and ends up somewhere else for the beginning of the season. I propose that even then, Jets fans would not have worn his jersey in an act of grateful respect the way so many Packer fans did to the second preseason game in the real world of last week. Even in their Bizarro world, Jets fans are not good sports. It's in their blood. They are not polite or respectful. I suppose it would have been easier and nicer to have been a Packers fan, a Chiefs fan or the 12th man of the Seahawks organization. No dice.