NY Jets #69- Part 2

Jeff Criswell wore #61 in his first three seasons with the Jets, and then wore #69 for the duration of his career, both with the Jets and the Chiefs. From little Graceland College in Iowa, Criswell was a 6'7" near 300 lb. offensive lineman who played seven of the most unhappy seasons in the franchise's history, 1988-94 - the end of the Walton era, the underachieving Coslet years and the first year of Pete Carroll's professional head coaching life.

That entire period marks the beginning of my life in the adult world. Western Civilization was still existing in a time before everyone starting looking for everything they needed on the Internet. There was nothing to watch on my 13" analog antenna TV. I drank watery beer advertised on television because that's all that the corner stores sold. Football was filled with steroids, mullets and embarrassing sideline hats. It was as if the world had run out of good ideas and was just waiting for a hit of some kind of new street narcotic that would take us away from the dreadful experience of being present with our own thoughts. All the photographs from that period that show up on friends' Facebook pages as "tbt" were taken with cheap little cameras, and the colors of the shots look faded, blurred and drab, as if Kodak knew the experiences we were having, and the pictures we were taking of them, would go lost in some box somewhere.

Jeff Criswell sits in the offensive line next to Dave Cadigan in my memory; Cadigan was a less effective, and a self-professed steroid user. The two were apparently called the "Penalty Pals," not because of steroids but because they were heavily penalized by officials during the 1992 season. It wasn't actually supposed be that bad a year for the team. There were signs of optimism. We drafted Johnny Mitchell out of Nebraska, which seemed like a good idea at the time; the previous season we drafted Browning Nagle. A person of generous spirit would suggest that neither of those picks was, in premise, bad - even if that's exactly how they turned out. But then we lost Al Toon and Dennis Byrd for good, forever, kaput. The year was a complete bust in so many ways.

Criswell and Cadigan had a short-lived radio show on WFAN in 1992 called In the Trenches, which was supposed to capture the nature of the offensive lineman's life. I always think of offensive linemen as the least verbose kinds of athletes, as resolutely stoic - frowning at the antics of the receivers, linebackers and secondary. The entire story of the show seems a little vague; perhaps they were taken off the air because, as Criswell says, "Dave and I tried to express some factual things that we knew were true."

On the surface, that sentence is a confusing redundancy that suggests some factual statements are not in fact true. But consider that he might have been talking about why he felt the team was still good even if it went 4-12 that year, or maybe he and Cadigan tried to explain away the high number of penalties they were given. In each case, perhaps the statistical facts and numbers do speak for themselves, but maybe each conceals some other truth lurking beneath the surface. In the 1993 link above, Criswell points out that he gave up only two sacks the season before, one of which was to Bruce Smith, which in 1992 was sort of like giving up a two-pointer to Michael Jordan. So, he wonders, where's the respect?

I've always wondered the degree to which a player gets labeled as a cheat for initially true reasons, yet then gets almost routinely penalized by officials without an extra thought - even profiled - the way an unimaginative teacher decides to label a particular student as "bad" because, well, somebody has to be the kid you complain about in the teacher's lounge. Clearly, in their effort to elaborate on the greater truths existing amid the facts and statistics, Criswell and Cadigan must have tried to defend themselves on the air. It didn't work. Criswell was benched by the end of the season. The WFAN show was abruptly canned.

He needs a lot less defending than Cadigan; Criswell was a reasonably good lineman on a badly injured, badly coached team. He and Cadigan resented Coslet, but it was Criswell who started almost all of his games with the Jets and then finished the last two seasons of his NFL career as a regular starter. Still, no matter what they may have tried to explain on the air as being true in the face of facts, or vice versa, their audience was still the tri-state area, a place (unfairly) derided by the rest of the country for its situational sense of moral right and wrong, yet one nevertheless unsparing its condemnation of athletes who fail to meet high expectations. It's a region for which schadenfreude is the local delicacy. As Criswell himself suggests says in the August 1993 link above (a few months after he had skipped minicamp for the way Coslet treated him the year before) had the Jets done better in 1992, then maybe the radio show would have done better, too. Both enterprises were doomed to fail, of course. (How could they not? And why would you listen to a show hosted by offensive linemen?)

Criswell is quoted by Timothy Smith above as saying, "They got taken from the show that we did to the next show with Mike and the Mad Dog. And they just tore us apart." Obviously something is missing from that statement, so I'm not sure what he means. It's not even good grammar. Who's "They?" Was Criswell saying that Mike and Mad Dog tore apart the Penalty Pals on the air? It certainly seems conceivable that at least one of the reigning lords of New Yawk bombast would enjoy the Pals' failure, as fans so often do when highly paid athletes try to explain their sense of the truth and so unselfconsciously fail. It's a sport in and of itself.

****

The Jets' all-time database lists Steve Hammond as having worn #69 at linebacker in 1988, and the NFL's Database concurs that he was available for two games that year and did nothing else in his NFL career. At first I thought that maybe the NFL was wrong (wrong??) and that maybe his statistics indicate he played the two games of the strike season the year before. However, the Pro Football Database agrees that it was 1988, though it suggests that Hammond instead wore #96. In the larger sense, in a career spanning a mere fraction of a forgotten and barely successful team season, the truth of uniform number doesn't matter, except for our purposes.

Still, it's worth noting that Hammond, who probably graduated from Wake Forest and went undrafted in 1982, was 28 years old when he played his rookie season in the NFL for two games in 1988. So Steve Hammond's story is more interesting than that of the average washout in the league, and yet, like his uniform number, its whole truth gets lost. Consider that if Hammond gone on to play more a few more games than he did - or even better, a few more seasons - then his story would be deemed as extraordinary, and not just mildly quizzical to someone like me who apparently has nothing better to do. Much like our own struggles toward finding relevance in this world, his long odyssey toward the NFL must remain his property, mysterious and unknown.

NY Jets #66 - Part 1

While looking for information on Dave Cadigan #66, I thought about a variety of things. These are, in no particular order, the following:

1) When I was in college, I remember how steroids were discussed with such a lack of knowledge that everyone assumed that if they didn't find a manageable way of incorporating them into competition, then they would certainly be extinct by the 21st century. In 1988, Ben Johnson ran an enhanced 9.79 at the Seoul Olympics. Sports Illustrated ran a feature on a football player for the University of South Carolina that made the use of steroids seem so nightmarish that even the athletes in my dorm seemed thoughtful enough to wonder if they were worth it. Things had to change; surely they would. 

Earlier in that same year, Dave Cadigan admitted to using steroids just before the NFL tests in advance of a draft where he was selected by the Jets in the first round. According the link above, "...Cadigan, a 6-foot-5-inch, 285-pounder, outlifted every other offensive lineman. He also performed the most repetitions in lifting." Cadigan came out of USC, and more than one loyal Jets fan over the years has suggested we were hoodwinked as a result of his little pre-draft experiment. Still, the casual way in which it is brought up in the article testifies to the naivete of the Times (and the times) about steroids. "Steroids," the article says, "are believed to have potentially serious side effects, and their use is banned by U.S.C., the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the N.F.L." Indeed they are.

"Cadigan," it continues, "said he took steroids only after he and his father, Pat, had researched the subject, then went to a private physician for 'low-level doses.'" Cadigan seemed to suggest - and possibly believed back then - that there is such a thing as a "manageable dose" that might not be harmful or, probably, detectable. If he thought it wouldn't be effective, then he wouldn't have tried it. He says as much in the article. 

He also insists that he wasn't going to lose his chance at being drafted high up when he seemed to believe that others were using it, too (according to the report, 10 people were caught with steroids in that combine). I suppose the fear and lack of knowledge about its widespread use in professional sports made all such assumptions conceivable. If you researched it, learned about it, you would learn to control it. What stays with me, though, is the dismissive input from Mike Hickey, who ran the Jets' draft back then, who is quoted as saying, "Sometimes there's a look to a guy who's on steroids, and (Cadigan) didn't have it." I wouldn't fret, he seems to say. I know guys on steroids. I've seen guys on steroids. He didn't have it. Nah. 

2) If a Shakespeare character could come to represent a franchise, then maybe Henry V represents the New York Giants - even against the odds presented by his poor choices in life and by his grim prospects in a world where no one believes in him, he still vanquishes a powerful enemy (France, or the New England Patriots). The Jets are represented by Nick Bottom, from Midsummer Night's Dream, the simpleton who prepares for a great performance onstage while unwittingly wearing the head of an ass. 

3) Cadigan's career brings out mordant humor in the Jets fan. I look through discussions of Dave Cadigan, and his name comes to represent the bloated ambitions and limited output of a franchise known for making terrible decisions. At the periodically updated JetWiki, the entry on Dave Cadigan mentions the following:

"Cadigan was the Jets first pick of the 1988 NFL Draft. (sic) going eighth overall. Though, as it turned out, the Jets were suckered, as Cadigan had been chemically enhanced. Cadigan played 69 games in 6 seasons, and didn't do too much, to say the least."

Then, "After the Jets," we see:

"Cadigan then spent a year at Cincinnati, and vanished into the mists of time, probably angry at the fact Bill Romanowski got away with it. Rumors persist that he has however, invented a record player that plays at 330rpm, he's reportedly calling it an anabolic stereo."

We could probably do an entire study of the tone of JetWiki, and in it find the voice that gave life to Bottom. We are the team that makes dumb mistakes, that plays week after week to the mockeries of others. Consequently, it's possible we Jets fans have (maybe not a better) a wider capacity for humor. Suffering breeds many terrible things in human life; it's why Buddha insists it's not compulsory. But if you are going to suffer, you might as well make jokes about it while it's going on, even if they are terrible. A terrible team deserves terrible jokes.

Starting Lineup's Dave Cadigan #66

4) At a forum on the Landing Strip for a discussion of Cadigan's career, somebody mentions Cadigan's Starting Lineup figure. Johnny Johnson's (#39) Starting Lineup action figure was given to me as a somewhat ironic gift toward the end of the 1994 season (I say somewhat because I was in grad school, and the person who gave it to me for my birthday thought it would be funny for a grown man to have a miniature version of a football player but he also knew that I would also be quietly and privately psyched about it, too.). While I know the figures were created as collector items, I sincerely never thought they would be of any value. The participants on the forum during the mid-2000's mention that Cadigan's figure was now running at $69 online, in no small measure because the combination of Cadigan's high promise in the early 90's and the general washout of his actual performance means that his Starting Lineup figure is rare and, therefore, valuable. Mediocrity has its merits. It's a strange world.

One visitor mentions owning Cadigan's Starting Lineup figure, and another asks, "When you took Cadigan out, did he immediately hurt his ankle?" Several of them were upset that someone took it out of the package to begin with. Several argue about the merits of Cadigan's play alongside Jeff Criswell. The discussions reads on the screen like bits of poetry, filled with the rueful tone of suffering Jets fans, an interior monologue tinged with perpetual regret. Of the entire Starting Lineup collection, papichango writes:

Damn I had all of the 89 collection. Even Alex Gordon.
$69.00
I should have kept them in their box.
Instead I took them out and they all became yellow.

***

Alan Faneca #66

If Dave Cadigan was the man with the suspiciously growing figure, then Alan Faneca #66 is the incredible shrinking man, and as such, is perhaps the best example of how a football lineman might actually save his own life after retirement. As several stories have shared, Faneca, one of the better offensive linemen of the last fifteen years, lost 100 lbs after he left football. Friends were worried he was gravely ill. He wasn't. He just lost a lot of weight. 

The photo above is of Faneca when he was with the Jets, looking like a beer-drinking roadie for the Allman Brothers. He was a crucial member of the 2008 team that went to the AFC Championship. Shonn Greene still has recurring dreams that he is running behind Alan Faneca and finding an absurd amount of daylight. Then Shonn awakens to find himself in his house, or maybe in a hotel, with an empty sensation that comes to all of us when we realize that the past is a cruel, irretrievable, glittering mirage of our old joys and regrets. 

A retired Faneca and his daughter

Faneca's contract was extraordinary, apparently the biggest for a lineman ever at the time, so when the Jets drafted Vladimir Ducasse, he was let go. He played the rest of his career with the Cardinals. Now here is Alan Faneca (right) after retirement, no longer a large man. The difference is amazing. He now weighs just about 20 lbs more than I do, which is a testimony to how much work he's done to make himself healthy and what more I need to do in order to get in shape. He's 6'5" and I'm 6'0", which means he's a lot healthier than I am. In all of the tales I encounter among the Infinites, there is so much suffering and misery, so many lost souls  who never quite find their place in the world after committing their bodies to a punishing game that takes up such a small place in the time of their lives. Seeing Alan Faneca like this is like seeing a superhero permanently shedding his or her secret identity and accepting life as a normal person. Even Superman wanted to just live as Clark Kent; it may have endangered Earth as it was thrown into the evil grip of General Zod, but luckily for Alan Faneca, real life doesn't require that you vanquish evil. After football, life simply asks you to be yourself. Underneath all the hair and muscle of his football life, Faneca was someone who didn't need to do battle anymore. He's just himself now.