NY Jets #62 - Part 1

Roger Duffy, C

Roger Duffy #62 was born 45 years ago today in Canton, Ohio, the place where, in a couple of weeks, Curtis Martin will celebrate a high point in his storied career - his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Duffy played at center for the Jets from 1990-97, which means that he missed the Curtis Martin years at the Meadowlands. 

By the mid-1990's, Duffy was a starting center. This means that (with the exception of the 1974-5 season, when it was primarily Wayne Mulligan, and of 1986-87, when it was mostly Guy Bingham) the starting centers for the Jets were primarily Mike Hudock (1963-66), John Schmitt (1967-73), Joe Fields (1975-85), Jim Sweeney (1988-1994), and then Roger Duffy. After Duffy left for Pittsburgh in 1998, the incomparable Kevin Mawae became center.

Duffy's Wikipedia page is one of those unnoticed Internet gems that are allowed to persist without correction. It's like watching a scratchy public access TV advertisement. It reads as follows: 

Roger Duffy (born July 16, 1967 in Canton, Ohio) was a center and guard who played twelve seasons in the National Football League.Duffy just got back from an aninversary (sic) party where he re-met his cousins David Phillips, Chritopher Romano, Caroline Phillips, Olivia Romano and Regina Phillips. David and Christopher were very excited to see their football star cousin 

That's it. 

Duffy probably came back from this party - which seems like a family reunion - and either added the information above (which was last updated February 14, 2012), or maybe someone else in the family did. Had the Phillips and Romanos not seen Duffy in a long while? Why were David and Christopher only excited? Why is this all we know of Roger Duffy?

As always, it doesn't matter. What piques my interest, though, is that Duffy was drafted in 1990 by the Jets out of Penn State, which means as a sophomore he suited up for the 1986 National Champion Penn State Nittany Lions. I remember Penn State winning the Fiesta Bowl that season, just a day before the Jets would lose the AFC Divisional Playoff game in double overtime to the Browns. What a truly insane weekend of football that was. Look at the names at the bottom of the page and consider the legacy of that one Penn State team alone; look at the other future NFL players: Andre Collins, Shane Conlon, DJ Dozier, Tim Johnson, Steve Smith, Dave Szott (who finished his career with the Jets) and Steve Wisniewski. Of course Blair Thomas was drafted by the Jets the same year as Duffy. A backup quarterback on that team was Joseph Paterno, Jr., also known as Jay. The most infamous name is the last, and he's listed rather innocuously under "Assistant Coaches."

I've mentioned before that here in Philadelphia, among people from that place with that fabricated name of Happy Valley, there is an almost impossibly persistent denial - not of Jerry Sandusky's guilt, but of the culpability of administrators and faculty in enabling hero worship at a publicly-funded university. One former Penn State graduate I know recently wrote me an emotional e-mail characterizing the media's handling of Sandusky's conviction and the subsequent investigation by Louis Freeh as a "vilification" of PSU and a "witch hunt," which of course it's not. Still, if I can bring myself to have sympathetic feelings for Tim Tebow, I suppose my team's importance to me is as much a sign of my own broken compass as is my friend's insistence that Paterno's halo be restored to the Penn State mural. I grasp this. Still, the New York Jets are not an institution that purports to educate and enrich good values in people. If it were, my college degree would probably be worth about as much as Blair Thomas' rookie card on Ebay.

As it happens, I've just come back from driving across the long, long state of Pennsylvania to attend a Steelers fan's wedding just outside Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania is a quiet, rural, Evangelical Christian commonwealth, and it is welcoming. The first truly unfriendly person I experienced all weekend was after I returned from my road trip - that twerpy blonde haired creep who waited on me at Han Dynasty last night on Manayunk's Main Street in Philadelphia. By contrast, the rural people of the rest of the state are awfully nice. They're happy, even when a closer glance you see that many of its people are living in a broken-down poverty. 

Cloistered in majestic, misty mountains, Happy Valley is the real capital of this mostly rural state, but it harbors a myth. To me, the real world is represented by that creepy kid at Han Dynasty, with his little black earring, his possibly Russian accent, his mean little affectation, his absurd nastiness and indifference to conventional politeness. In the real world, there are no halos; the guy behind the counter doesn't even want to take the bagel you bought out of the toaster yet because "I don't wanna burn my fingers" (actually, that was from a South Philadelphia diner.) Yes, the world is peppered with profound iniquity, like Assad's regime in Syria, but mostly we human beings are mostly just short-sighted, small-minded, unambitious, petty, vulgar, and ignorant in a pathetic sort of way. There really aren't many real halos around. A desperate population demands them, though, and no one is more desperate for the belief in saints than the 18-22 year olds, the ones who make such good cult recruits. 

The legacy of those college years, those years of manufactured innocence, never quite leaves the people of Happy Valley, even as they go out into the world as alumni and get waited on by some guy who doesn't like you because you ordered take-out and you're not going to tip. They think they can contrast the nasty world in which we all live to the perfect one that they believe they once knew. They want to believe that a university that holds classes in ice cream manufacturing is the best place on Earth, and unfortunately, because they believe it, a predator was then allowed to fall between the cracks, and the university's own janitors were too afraid to report his acts of repulsive sexual abuse for fear of being fired by Saint Joe. I'm glad Roger Duffy had good things to report from a reunion with a family outside his Penn State one. I don't envy people who feel dedicated to a Penn State ideal that had already died  the first time Jerry Sandusky was allowed to walk away from his crimes without such much as threat of prison.

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Sid Fournet with the LA Rams (1955)

Sid Fournet #62's last season of pro football was the first season for the renamed New York AFL franchise in 1963. The fabulously detailed 1995 Coffin's Corner history of the "First New York Jets Training Camp" by John Hogrogian mentions him several times. Fournet played a career in the NFL from 1955-59, then went to the Dallas Texans in 1960 and arrived in time for the Titans' last season in 1962. He passed away in 2011.

His LSU obituary reminds us that Fournet belonged to an entirely different age where you played both offense and defense in a game of football: 

The versatile Fournet played both guard and tackle in his All-American season and was credited with seeing action in 83 percent of LSU's total plays.

The only advantage to playing 83% of the time is that you avoid tightening up on the sideline; you stay loose. For workers in the contemporary office culture, or maybe for those of you working at home, laboring away for 83% of your day means less time reading Deadspin, checking out major league baseball statistics, downloading poorly written podcasts, Skyping (which is a word), or writing blog entries about people who worked harder than you and for much less money. Whom then should we pity most?

NY Jets #55 - Part 2

Mark Brown #55 played linebacker for the New York Jets from 2003-05. Then his career statistics end. Those three seasons, Herman Edwards' last as coach, were difficult for Jets fans because it seemed as if we were always one or two injuries away from ruin, and sometimes ruin was inevitable anyway. Then in 2005, the fragile apparatus finally gave way, and no amount of duct tape could keep it standing any longer. Consecutive losing seasons are difficult, but a 4-12 season after being a game away from the Super Bowl the year before was just too rough on the system. By the Bye, we were done. Brooks Bollinger started nine games at quarterback. Vinny Testaverde, who was 42 in 2005, started four. These were desperate times.

The 2005 season ended at the Meadowlands between the Jets (3-12) and Buffalo Bills (5-10). It was the kind of game that comes up at the end of every season between two clubs whose chances at the playoffs ended at least a month before. They're not the worst of the worst teams that'll have everything to gain in the draft (though the Jets drafted well months later); they're just two teams that'll end with a whimper, hoping to salvage what is often referred to in the locker room as "pride." It's really just an opportunity to clean out your locker. It's an existential crisis - what is the purpose of this? one is compelled to ask. Is anyone really watching? Does anyone care enough to pay attention if I do well? Should I even try? Why?

Mark Brown ending on
a high note.

On New Year's Day, a smattering of cold, loyal, hungover, disenchanted, or maybe just bored faithful came to the game. They came because they had tickets, because they didn't want to mingle at home with relatives over pork chops and apple sauce, because their friends would be there, or unfortunately because they wanted to enjoy the last of the season's as yet unpublicized horrors at Gate D. Watching Fireman Ed do his schtick that day is like watching a kid's clown perform at a wake. The game was mostly decided by the two placekickers, Mike Nugent and Rian Lindell. The Jets limped to one touchdown on offense, yet they won 30-26.

But for one man, there was something eternally meaningful. While the game effectively ended with Justin Miller's kickoff return for a touchdown, Jets linebacker Mark Brown intercepted one of Kelly Holcomb's passes in the second quarter and returned it 33 yards for a touchdown. The image of him in the end zone is forever frozen on the card you see above, and it seems particularly important because it was Brown's last game in the NFL. It gave the Jets a 17-6 lead that they would squander in the third quarter, but Mark Brown can rightly claim that he hit one of his professional highs in one of his very last opportunities. If only life were like that all the time, allowing us these dramatic chances to find meaning in a purposeless existence, then maybe we would try harder. Or maybe we wouldn't try as hard; we would just always wait idly by for our chance to come round. I don't know.

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Notre Dame used to make quarterbacks. USC used to make running backs. The University of Miami used to make receivers and defensive front lines. Penn State made linebackers. In the 60's the Jets had Ralph Baker #51, but then in the 70's and 80's, the team featured Nittany Lion linebackers like Dennis Onkontz #35, Greg Buttle #51, Lance Mehl #56, and Ron Crosby #55. I wonder if they all simply felt resigned to end up in Flushing. I've come to adopt Penn State a little bit as my local college football team, which means that I follow them when they're undefeated but don't when they're not. Alright, I'm a bandwagoneer. It's painful to watch Joe Paterno trying to coach lately, though, and it's too bad that young people in Happy Valley see him as a dithering old man propped up by coaches and players. At one time, he paced the sideline and gesticulated like a deranged math teacher, complete with pit stains, hard-frame glasses and a pocket protector (one of those is an exaggeration).

Rob Crosby

At the risk of generalizing, defensive lines are formed by men who, like Albert Haynesworth, simply move their mass against the offense. Secondaries are filled with roving, jittery, hectoring guys who must not allow anyone to get behind them, though receivers often manage to. But linebackers make the decision to go forward or back, entering entirely different zones of defense with disparate strategies of playing the game. Rob Crosby did this for the Jets from 1979-83.

In this image at left it looks as though Rob Crosby has suddenly thrust himself into the frame and is now eyeing your lunch. Near as I can tell, this photo was taken at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. This picture might be from the Jets' 17-14 loss to the Browns on December 7, 1980, a bad game in one of the most disappointing of Jets' seasons. It might be from the Jets' 14-13 win over the Browns on December 12th the following year. You can see Municipal's light towers reflected in his helmet. It's obviously cold out, Crosby's got his hand warmer stitched into his jersey, and there's an overcast, wintery afternoon light very like the kind cast at Cleveland Municipal in December. The light within the stadium in winter was always washed gray by persistently overcast skies, while the stands were made darker by Municipal's large overhang. The effect of watching a Browns telecast was such that you'd think the color had gone wonky on your TV. Colorblind players might have felt right at home in Cleveland, though I don't know if Rob Crosby is colorblind.

Like Rob Crosby, the wind-blown, tired-looking linebacker John Ebersole #55 (at right) also went to Penn State and ended up playing eight seasons at linebacker for the Jets, from 1970-77. In his 1977 card, he looks exactly like a man who's witnessed the deep decline of the Jets' franchise in the 70's. "O, woe is me,/To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!" A defensive rating of -7.1 in 1975!

Without many other statistics, it's still worth mentioning that Ebersole made three interceptions in 1974, one of which he apparently took for 41 yards. I've tried looking for it in the vast collection of 1974NFL's Channel without any luck. There is one moment of funny choreography from the Jets' final game of that season, a 45-38 win at Memorial Stadium. Go to 1:26 of the clip, and you see second-year Colts quarterback Bert Jones, who shredded the Jets earlier in the year, overthrowing his man and instead hitting Ralph Baker in the linebackers' no man's land. The ball then jettisons off Baker and high into the air, producing a Maculate Interception: under the ball are three men - Baker, Burgess Owens and John Ebersole. It looks like Ebersole's got it, but then Owens is faster; he gathers it and makes it into the end zone where he is upended by Jones. It's Baker's last game, and it's the last time the Jets will beat the Colts until 1978, when Bert Jones will be out of the picture with injuries.

Today, John Ebersole is listed as the Vice Chairman of the Celebrity Golf Board of Directors. I'm not sure what that means, but he looks like he plays the celebrity golf circuit. This spells hope for all of us, especially in the era where being a celebrity can be permanently defined by anything at all. Perhaps the Chinese are our economic overlords now because our most prescient prophet was Andy Warhol. At least Ebersole's LeeMo Marketing write-up grants him his celebrity status for toughness. "Once played almost an entire game with a separated shoulder and a broken hand," it says. (And a broken hand.) "Also had the dubious honor of leading the NFL in concussions in 1975 and 1976." I don't know why anyone would call that "dubious." I can see "unfortunate" maybe, but not "dubious." I'm just glad to see he's survived his injuries with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact. Not every player does, as we know.

****

In midseason 1965, linebacker Mike Dukes #55 was traded or released from the Boston Patriots to the New York Jets, perhaps to play alongside Wahoo McDaniel. The statistics show that he suited up for three games, and that is all. Sadly, he was killed in 2008 in a car accident in Beaumont, TX. On his memoriam page, you see him proudly displaying a championship ring from one of the first two AFL Championships in 1960 and '61 by the Houston Oilers, for whom Dukes also played at linebacker. A year before his death, his son Brandonn had written to the great site Remember the AFL and asked if anyone knew where he could acquire a game tape of the 1962 AFL Championship Game between the Dallas Texans and Houston Oilers. It's poignant that he was looking for something he thought would interest his Dad in retirement. I truly hope Brandonn Dukes found what he was looking for in time.

NY Jets #53 - Part 2

There is an extraordinary pipeline that runs back and forth between the Jets and the New England Patriots.  Since 1997, they have traded coaches and stars back and forth.  Most of it, of course, has been to the benefit of the good people of West Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont (I guess), Rhode Island and Massachusetts and all other bandwagoneers.  Belichick was defensive coach for both teams, Parcells was Head Coach for both, and so was Pete Carroll.  Eric Mangini was Belichik's protege.  Curtis Martin went from New England to the Jets, making him the most valuable acquisition we've gotten out of the pipeline, but of course New England has enjoyed the greatest benefits in the larger sense.  Belichick - whom Parcells presumptuously appointed as Jets Head Coach when the old man "retired" to become GM in 2000 - takes a perverse pleasure in snatching up our seconds and making them firsts.  Like Danny Woodhead.

Former Patriot Larry Izzo #53 came to us in 2009.  Izzo was one of those players whom you hoped would turn Belichick's stomach when he was dressed in green, but then Izzo was found to have a spine injury that forced him to retire a couple of months later.  It was not to be.  I liked Izzo because he represented a kind of player for whom no opportunity is ever turned down; in other words, he is a special teams man with more special teams tackles than any human being alive.  We assume that this would apply to anyone in the CFL.  No offense, fellas, and no pun intended.  Finally, the famous story about Larry Izzo is that at training camp in his rookie year with Miami (1996, undrafted) Coach Jimmy Johnson said that only two players were guaranteed to make the team - Dan Marino and Larry Izzo.  No one knew who the second guy was; they do now, mostly.  But I think Jimmy Johnson liked to say the name - "Larry Izzo," with its connotations, sounding like some guy fallen off a truck, like some nobody whose name sounds like "zero." His name has been bothering me for a long time because I could not remember the larger significance of it.  But now I remember.  Though there is no known relation, "Izzo" was Vince Lombardi's mother's maiden name.  Pedigree asserted, albeit nominally.  Larry Izzo was the omega to Marino's alpha.  Each of them would make it to opening day.  In the universe, one cannot exist without the other.

****

The 1975 Topps card of center Warren Koegel #53 immediately reminds me of a Presidential portrait, or even better, the famous painting of William Blake.  It's the image of a noble personage, a man looking hungrily beyond the the renderer's view.  Maybe that's the way he wanted it.  There weren't many "action" shots for that year's Topps cards.  Most of them were retreads from the years before or were reflective shots where the Jet players were asked to look off in the distance, and the players vacantly obliged.  Some have hands casually on both hips.  One or two try the lame, posed action shot - always amusing, for who are they defending against?  One or two look like they were taken during warm-ups at Foxboro the season before.  Among them all, Koegel's image looks like it belongs to a man who with a vision.  

His nickname was "Moose;" according to a rather detailed article on him for Coastal Carolina University in 2001 (where he was athletic director at the time), this nickname derives from the fact that he wore #14 as a Little Leaguer, the same number as "Moose" Skowron of the Yankees.  His Little League in Seaford, NY was very near the one I played for in North Merrick; what's incredible is that for someone as detail-oriented as I  (and about only a handful of things, mind you) I have no idea what numbers I wore in Little League, or even if I had a number at all.  That's bizarre.  It's another one for my mental health care professional.  

At any rate, Koegel (pronounced "ko-ghel," by the way) was director at Coastal Carolina and is apparently now in the same position at Jacksonville State.  Koegel was the offensive captain for Penn State in the late 60's and early 70's, with Jack Ham as defensive captain.  In the Coastal Carolina link above, there is an interesting detail about the end of Koegel's career in 1975.  He blew out his knee just before halftime in the away game against Kansas City, one of only three wins for the Jets that whole season.  His knee was repaired by Dr. James Nicholas, the eminent Merlin to Joe Namath's Arthur, the sports physician who enabled Joe to play longer than he could or should have.  "I haven't had any trouble with my knee since," Koegel says.  The irony is that Koegel's knee gave out before Joe's heavily braced ones did, which may be a testimony to Nicholas after all.  With the exception of John Riggins, the good doctor was sadly the most talented and able member of the team that year.

****

Out of Michigan State, drafted by the Jets in 2000, #53 Courtney Ledyard's KFFL profile through news releases looks like a journey back in immediate time.  In an instant, we know all the history we need to know, but nothing essential about the man - only the "transactions" of the quickly summarized past.  No looking through microfilm for us, or scrolling through the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, searching for "Ledyard, Courtney."  Those days are gone.  One link, one source.  That seems to be what it's all about.  At the above link, we begin with NFL Europe, where he was consigned in September 2001, and then to injuries earlier at the August 2001 camp, then his earlier re-signing in the spring of that year.  Such is Courtney Ledyard, whose name sounds like a band that toured with Lynard Skynard and Molly Hatchet.

****

Mike McKibben #53 arrived at Kent State two years after the shootings that marked the university in the historical mind.  What was it like then, and how did the jock culture at Kent State imagine itself in light of the countercultural community that the Troop G attacked?  How quickly did people need to move on there in order to move on with their lives?  Was it just a peripheral thing after a while, the way it is, probably, for students today?  People pass by the Prentice Hall parking lot to get to class and get on with their destiny.  


Mike McKibben graduated at a good time to join the Jets.  It would have been a good year for my Dad to join the team, and he was 41.  The jobs were available.  In 1979, McKibben's rookie year, the Jets broke even but could have done much better if not for the injuries that wore the team down to a nub.  Missing Pat Leahy alone cost them at least two games.  Mike McKibben became a starter very quickly, and it looks like he played at linebacker in all 16 games of that season.  He played less the year after that and then was out of the NFL.  He then played for Pittsburgh and then Denver in the USFL a year or two later.  Or vice versa.  

Oh c'mon, don't act like you remember their names right off the bat.  The Pittsburgh Maulers and the Denver Gold.  There you go.  There are no stupid questions here.  No one's judging you.  The interesting thing is that the Denver Gold practically replicated the Pittsburgh Steelers' uniform, while the Pittsburgh Maulers' purple logo looked like something out of the WPA.  Remember that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

"Ledyard, Courtney"

NY Jets #51 - Part 1

Rogers Alexander #51 was drafted in the fourth round by the Jets as a linebacker - as all #51's are - in 1986. He came from Penn State, a school that has produced linebackers the way that USC produces running backs, the way Tibet produces sherpas, Kenyans marathoners, and Romanians gymnasts. His career in the pros was a spare number of games started for the Jets and then the Patriots in 1987. Rogers Alexander and I took the same journey from New York to New England, from one stage of learning to another - me from high school, he from one professional team to another.  I discovered New England for the first time. No matter where I went, there were people who talked about Buckner's blunder, Bobby Orr, or Havlicek's steal. They asked, like half of Glasgow, if anyone could understand their struggles against a great adversary - against the Lakers, against the Canadiens, against the dread Mets and Yankees. But no one talked about the Patriots. Why would you?

The Celtics were trying to eke out one more good season from Bird, Parrish, Pudge and McHale, while Cam Neeley played for the Boston Bruins. When I moved to Rhode Island, and Alexander played for New England, the Patriots were an embarrassment, an afterthought.  The Patriots were a ruin, as we hope, God willing, they will be again someday. Alexander is still alive and well, and his Facebook page features his devotion to his alma mater, Penn State.

Tuineau Alipate #51 was not a dictator of a Francophile nation, but rather a linebacker for the Jets in 1994. This Times article from that year reveals his true lineage is as the nephew of the then Queen of Tonga. Yes. He recovered a fumble that season and, as Eskanazi writes, he rented place with his wife and children at Point Lookout, a Nassau County Long Island beach where my family would go sometimes go when we lived 15 minutes away. The tone of the article is exactly the kind you find mid-season, usually when the team isn't doing well, and the reporter has some space to fill. Nobody did that better than Eskanazi.  Alipate played another year in the NFL with the Vikings and, near as I can tell, he currently works in real estate in Minneapolis. How can a man from Tonga, located in an archipelago in the beautiful South Pacific Ocean, be happy settled in the frozen place where Roger Staubach's wild throw reached Drew Pearson on the day Fran Tarkenton's father died? I understand nothing.


(Slimbo makes reference below a link to the AFL Title Game and to the Jets' '74 season review I have moved above in #51 - Part 2)