Greetings, Eric Mangini....

We have been waiting for you.

We are the ghosts of a near and distant past. We are your predecessors. You thought your place in history would be different from ours. You were wrong.

We are lonely in this place. Join us, Eric. Join us. You are among the kindred.

Well, hey, kid. That's right. Weeb Ewbank. They called me "Weeb" because my little brother couldn't pronounce the name "Wilbur."

You like this? I'll bet you do. It's my Hall of Fame bust. Bet you'd like one, wouldn't you? Well, the world needs also-rans, kiddo. No offense. Literally.

I was the very first Jets coach, so I guess you could say that I am the father of this bunch. The only Jets' Super Bowl win is my work, and Namath's, of course. That boy was a crackerjack. But then I sold away many of the great players on that team because I wanted to save money. As punishment, I've been forced to walk around this place carrying this very same bronze resemblance that the Super Bowl earned me. One thing's for sure, though. This thing is Super Heavy. You wanna hold it for me? Just for a few minutes? Where you going?

Hello, Eric. I'm Charley Winner. No need to stay. You can keep on walking. Weeb might consider himself the father of us all, but I got the Jets' job because I was his son-in-law. Weeb won't admit to this, but like you, he didn't finish with a winning record as a Jets coach, either.

Of course, neither did I. I was around for two and a half seasons, and then they let me go when my players started fighting like a bunch of teenagers on the sidelines of a really bad loss at Baltimore in 1975. Ken Shipp took over for a couple of games, but who cares, right? It was a wash. I was a winning coach with the Cardinals organization in the 60's. Did you know that? Try naming anyone else other than Don Coryell who managed that. That's a different circle of hell, though. But fate was cruel to me. A Winner became a loser with the Jets. Sound familiar?

Hey! Anyone want to play coach? Ha! Just kidding, son, just kidding! You're probably not in the mood right now. You never seem to be.

Ah, but you have to admit - you're probably a little bit relieved right now. No? Well, heck, I know I was when I quit even before the end of the 1976 season. Just couldn't take it anymore, kid. I mean, the pro game just eats dirt, spits it up and dudn't grow nothin' where it's been planted. I'm TV's Lou Holtz, by the way. Sorry. Didn't mean to be rude. They used to make fun of the way I looked. Said I looked like Granny Clampett. Well, it's not like people ain't cruel. You know they are. They said you looked like a penguin.

They said, boy, that you was a genius.

Just stick with the college game, son. Kids'll do whatever you tell 'em. Just listen to some of the fellows that came after me. They'll tell ya. Better get going now.

Next!

Next!! Oh. It's you. Hello, Mangini. You're here already, are you?

I'm Walt Michaels. That's right. Like the name tag says. You know about me. I had a long career with the the team. My brother Lou threatened to wring Joe Namath's neck the week before the 1969 Super Bowl, but I was an assistant on the winning side. And then ten years later, I was the Jets' coach.

 Those were good years. We were on the brink of something, son, but then...

Ah, damn it. That playoff win over the Raiders was my last one in the league. Damn.

 How can a playoff win get you fired? It's just that I thought Al Davis was calling on the phone to heckle me at halftime. Sounded like him. It was just some drunk guy in Queens playing games with me. How the hell does some idiot in a bar manage to get through to the Jets locker room at LA Coliseum, for Christ's sake? You tell me.

And I believed him! Whole thing got me canned. Being a Jets coach does funny things to your mind, son. Well, anyway, fill out the forms I gave you and move it along. Next!

Out of my way, please. I've got parents weekend coming up. Can't talk now. Got me lecturing a class on physical education and Humanism. I don't even know what that means.

Oh..., wait. You're that Eric Mangini kid, aren't you? I'm Joe Walton. Pleased to me you. I coached the Jets from '83-'89. Yeah, sorry to hear about your troubles, son, but you know what they say.

No? Oh. Well, it's like what Lou Holtz said about the pro game. Can't...uh, grow shit, or something like that. That guy's a raving lunatic.

Anyway, he's right. I spent seven seasons of my career with the Jets. Can you imagine? I had to coach Mark Gastineau. Yeah. Exactly. Now, I've been coaching at Robert Morris University for almost 15 years, right here in western PA, where I grew up. It's been great. Named a stadium after me. Say, maybe someday you could coach a college team back home in Connecticut. Some pansy Liberal Arts college that needs to start offering football scholarships along with the rest of America. Like Yale, maybe, huh? Well, anyway, it's been nice chatting, but I have to go. Some kid's failing his Shakespeare seminar midterm. You know anything about King Lear, Mangini? Something about an old guy who's going insane near the end of his career. I keep telling those damn kids to just read the SparkNotes. Numbnuts.

Hey! Psst! Over here!

Hey, Mangini. Let me ask you something. Honestly. Is there something funny? Something that's making you laugh? Are you laughing? Why the hell not? I am. I mean, I spent sleepless nights trying to build the Jets into a competitive franchise once all the Michaels-Walton players wasted away. I was a rebuilding coach, Bruce Coslet, from '90-'93. The Jets let me dig my own grave for four seasons before I got canned. And what did we get out of it? One lousy playoff loss to the Oilers in 1991. And that year we went 8-8.

Hilarious, right? Look me up on Wikipedia one of those days. Under "References" - right? - there's one 2007 article from ESPN that puts nine losing teams under the "Bruce Coslet Division." Funny, right? Oh, real funny. I don't care what they say about you, pudge. There probably won't be an "Eric Mangini Division" for the lowliest of the low.

Ah, forget it. Just leave me alone. There's more of us down the hall. Just keep walking.

To be continued....

Jints

I post this picture because it is one of those unsung, unheralded moments in Jets history - the opening kickoff of the first Jets-Giants game, which Mike Battle ran back (leaping like a gazelle, actually) for a touchdown over the New York Giants in a hot August preseason game at the Yale Bowl in 1969. I was almost six months old, the nation had owned the moon for a month, and about 150 miles away from New Haven, both your uncles were looking for a Port-O-San at Woodstock. Once Mike Battle scored, the Jets then spent the rest of that humid, bright day pummeling the Giants into submission. Like Hal at Agincourt, it was a brief victory, followed by years attrition, illness and, ultimately, total loss. But for one moment, the Jets were the only football team in New York.

Oy me. Tonight's Jets-Giants game is not on in Philly. Instead, while following the game online, I will be watching the Steelers and Vikings in Minnesota. For the love of God, I hope that the Vikings will not be wearing their Bob Fosse outfits. I do not know what kind of pride you can have when you are taking on the Steelers in purple leggings. I don't know why I should care, except that I have a latent sympathy for the old Vikes from their days of unbeatable home field advantage. They were one of my three adopted proxy teams during the first great Jets miasma, the 9-43 years of 1975-77. Basically, I rooted for them in the playoffs, the one place where I knew I wouldn't find the Jets, and Minnesota was well in the thick of it back then. What clinched my proxy feeling was the loathsome outcome of the 1975 playoff game at Bloomington against the Cowboys, the game that is the titular owner of the first "Hail Mary" pass. Like anything else associated with the Cowboys, such a claim is a ridiculous fraud born of the worst form of American hubris. How could I ever root against the Vikings when they were victims of Drew Pearson's push off of Nate Wright?

This well edited tailgating retrospective on the moment epitomizes the kind of fans and game the Vikings were once known for. In the present, we see stout descendants of actual pillaging Norsemen drinking beer in a parking lot, dressed for the kind of shattering cold that, strangely enough, was not in evidence on the day of the 1975 game in question. Two things here: it is impossible to appreciate the madness of that playoff game without forgetting that the referee who blew the interference call was then tagged by a bottle to the head from one of the end zone fans. This is a remarkable detail often forgotten, one that transcends the Lake Wobegon stereotype of Minnesotans as withdrawn, shy, and largely harmless folk. Second, it is important to remind ourselves that since they left the frigid, abandoned-by-God confines of Metropolitan Stadium, the Vikings have never returned to the Super Bowl.

Back to our heroes: An uncanny number of the past and present preseason squabbles between Jets-Giants have been humdrum, awful games - usually won by a point, a touchdown, or by apathy - 16-15, 15-14, 16-14, 10-0. Nothing at all like the circus Aaron Rodgers and Jay Cutler apparently put on display last night. Whereas during that hot weekend in 1969, as his country transformed all around him without his really understanding it yet, my father saw Don Maynard leading a chorus of "Goodbye Allie" for Jets fans to sing at the conclusion of the game at the Yale Bowl. Maynard sang it for Allie Sherman, the coach who cut him from the Giants in the late fifties. Jets 37 Giants 14. Dad still remembers it.

True to the drama of the moment, Sherman lost his job that season and never made it to the Hall of Fame. Maynard kept his job, and his bronze bust is visible in Canton, Ohio. I will take whatever belated pride I can. Beat the Jints.

Worthy of the Hall (or Maybe Worthy-ish)

So for once, I will not talk numbers. Today, I wonder aloud (to obviously no one in particular other than myself) as to who among the Jets family deserves to go to the Hall of Fame. Here I mention six candidates total, knowing that one should be considered a lock, another being a good choice that might take time, another who will require a generous but unlikely senior vote, two more that are admittedly debatable choices, and one more who is simply in poor taste. (Note: all images from Ebay)

Exhibit A: Curtis Martin. I have heard some people suggest that Martin's limited playoff experience makes his case a harder one to argue. I have heard people say that the relative brevity of his career disables him from a shoe-in induction. I have heard people from the New England area malign his candidacy because he gave up three big ones with the Pats in favor of a near decade of the Jets' own schizophrenia. Simply put, no matter how history plays out, each of these arguments is essentially wrong-headed and misjudged. As a player, a teammate, a star on teams that have middled their way through time, Curtis Martin is the absolute, consummate sportsman. Yuz all haytuz. Retire his number, forge the bronze.

Exhibit B: Joe Klecko. The Jets are aggressively pursuing his candidacy. His number retired, Klecko was the player chosen to lead the recent Jets rookies on a tour through Canton (this is a yearly NFL trip for all its rookies). Click on "Jets" and check out how goofy he looks in the group picture. He resembles a man who has not been seen by his son in anything other than a business suit for some time, and now the boy realizes his Dad hasn't any sense for comfortable weekend clothes. God help me, the son thinks. Is this my destiny, too? Klecko's also had experience doing the public speaking route, whether he is talking about Catholic values or talking to the Teamsters; often such audiences overlap. He has had his share of personal suffering and has managed to turn his life around by becoming a more virtuous citizen. Though he was less talented than Gastineau in terms of sheer speed and stealth, Klecko was the strongest player of his time, and he went to the Pro Bowl several times on the basis of playing multiple positions at the front line - something which very few players at the defensive front can claim. Put him in, baby. And buy him some comfortable-looking pants.

As every Jets fan who cares about this issue will tell you, a recent discussion between Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated (a voting Hall of Fame member) and Ron Wolf (once a member of Jets management many a moon ago) raised the issue of who deserves a shot at the Hall. They both agreed that two Jets deserved the honor. Both said Klecko deserved a chance, but they also argued for Exhibit C: Winston Hill. At this link, you'll see that Hill's analysis of his own name is humorous. I saw him play in his very last season for the Jets in 1975, but his career spanned back to 1963. Of Winston Hill, the late Matt Snell once said, "So graceful, so light on his feet." And from a bruiser that's a rave. Was Snell being facetious? Was he ever? Such an unlikely characteristic (Hill's lightness, that is; not Snell's humor) for one so large as Hill was not so easy considering that Winston topped the weight class of his time at 270 plus pounds. A three-time AFL All-Star. Three-time Pro Bowler in the rotten 70's. Winston Hill deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Here's the thing though. Historically, the Hall has given preference to players at the scoring or stopping points of the ball, not at the offensive line. The HOF has done its share to try and amend this, but offensive linemen learn as early as high school that they will not get the cheerleader (not that I knew anything about that personally, either; I ran cross country and did theater; these had their own emasculations). This prejudice against tackles and guards was especially true when Winston Hill first became eligible for induction, and, to be honest, his name wasn't even brought up at the time that I can tell. The other indignity about the voting is that once your name has come and gone for a few years, you become forgotten in favor of the newly eligible. People are already talking about the class of 2012 - Favre, Strahan, Sapp, et al. Jonathan Ogden will richly deserve the honor at that time, but it won't be like any of us will expect another offensive lineman to be inducted along with him. Usually one a year is seen as enough. Gary Zimmerman is this year's. By then, Winston will still be waiting in his own late 70's, the 1970's themselves dwindling receding further and further from his memory.

By then he'll share this trait of short-term memory loss with the NFL itself, who treat their elder players - even those like Mike Webster, who made it to the Hall - like discarded family in the old country, left behind for the land where the streets are paved with gold.

How about some more sentimental long shots? The Conigliaro AFL site leaves Winston Hill out of its AFL All-Time First Team but does put Gerry Philbin on its First Team's defensive line. I would vote for Gerry Philbin because he's a Jet. Whether he deserves it or not is like asking me who deserved to win the 1999 AFC Championship. Philbin had a strong ten year career in the NFL and endured playing one year (or half of one) in Downing Stadium for the WFL New York Stars. Must have made him sentimental for the more innocent days of training along the Hudson River with the fledgling Jets.

I'm happy to see online discussion point out Marvin Powell as an even more likely long shot to go to Canton. Powell was probably the best offensive lineman on the team in those unsteady years of the 70's and early 80's. As a kid, all I remember hearing about him was that he was going to be a lawyer someday. He studied law at USC. There were always pictures in the yearbook of him fitted into badly tailored suits - Marvin Powell, future attorney at law. I have no idea how that turned out. My own law career did not pan out. However, I also did not go to the Pro Bowl fives times - Marvin Powell did. But if Winston Hill has little chance at Canton, does Marvin Powell?

* * *

I find that most online discussions regarding any Hall selection are characterized by two things: 1) needless acrimony 2) that someone hauls out that old bitch of an argument that Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame when "he clearly doesn't deserve it." I see the point, though I cannot agree. Namath changed the game and the course of American sports, and for that he is entitled. Then couldn't the same argument be made for the short, checkered career of...

...Mark Gastineau?

Ha. I know what you're thinking, right? Just put away your extraordinarily large and rotting grapefruit. I'm just arguing that Gastineau's extraordinary athleticism and, oh I don't know, joie de vivre, changed the way the game was played. Lawrence Taylor was infinitely more important, I grant you, yes, but...

Oh, enough. Who am I kidding? Although the Sack Dance is slightly more offensive than the histrionics of Terrell Owens and Ocho Cinco, today Gastineau's nonsense would probably be deemed as punishable Taunting, that cardinal sin of the No Fun League. Actually, that's a bit like the chicken and the egg since it could be said that the Sack Dance was the ur Taunt and that his excess made them take all the the fun out of the game. Mark Gastineau was the class clown/village idiot who ruined it for everybody. "Oh yeah? You kids don't like it? Don't blame me for canceling recess. Blame it on your little smart ass friend Gastineau over there. Now how funny is he?" Great. Nice going, Mark.

But these are the least of all his sins. I still haven't forgiven Mark Gastineau his late hit on Bernie Kosar in the Nightmare of January 1987. I should, God knows, but I've never been a very strong man. I'm not about to start now.

Two Teams, Both Alike in Quality...Kind of...

Two teams will occupy one space at the Meadowlands in the future, just as they do now. Jets fans feel mixed about this, but just imagine how great it is imagining the area's supposedly elite team having to come back home to move back in with their metaphorically wayward, mulleted blue collar cousin in green? "Hey. Welcome back, Blue. Mr. Hot Shot. I saved ya a Schlitz. Oh, wait. No I didn't." And, the deed isn't in Blue's name alone because it isn't his neighborhood anymore.

However, both Big Blue and Gang Green are doing something that generations of intermingling New York-based teams have done in the past - fight, hate, play on the same fields as each other and co-exist. Here we go:

Originally, the New York Giants used to originally play in the Polo Grounds, just as the baseball Giants used to. But then the football Giants moved to Yankee Stadium in the late 50's, just about the time that the baseball Giants moved to San Francisco; there are, in fact, two Yankee Stadiums today - one in use, one being built next door. Professional football is not played at Yankee Stadium any more because in 1976 the Giants moved to Giants Stadium, which is right next door to the newly carved foundation of the New Meadowlands Stadium. However, a year before they moved to the Meadowlands, the Giants played at Shea Stadium (image taken from www.stadiumsofnfl.com) for one season in 1975 while Yankee Stadium was going through refurbishment (the Yankees played at Shea during 1975, too). A few years after the Giants moved from the Polo Grounds, the New York Titans began playing there; they then became the New York Jets, who moved in 1964 to Shea Stadium, along with the New York Mets, who still play at Shea, unlike the Jets, who moved from Shea in 1985 to Giants Stadium, which they currently share - just as they will with the New Meadowlands - with the current Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. Although Giants Stadium is busy throughout all sixteen plus weeks of the football season with both teams alternating home games, the Stadium remains the titular property of the Giants. Coincidentally, the New Meadowlands Stadium is being built at the same time the New York Mets are also building a new stadium, a quarter of a century after they forced the Jets out of Shea. This will be called called Citi Field (the final "i" in the field's name indicating its corporate name), a park that is designed to look like Ebbets Field, the park where the Brooklyn Dodgers played until they moved to Los Angeles in 1957, the same year the Giants (baseball) moved to San Francisco. By the way, competing with the football Giants back in the 1930's and 40's were an NFL Brooklyn Dodgers football team who also played at Ebbets Field. So did Biff Loman.

As for the Jets, well, they nearly abandoned the dubious distinction of being a part-Empire State, part-Garden State club but were unable to get approval from Manhattan's politicos for a West Side Stadium of their own. This was a blow to the Jets organization, our fans, our team, and we can't help but wonder if the Giants would have gotten it had they asked for it.

So there we are. A regular Wagnerian Ring Cycle, huh?

January 12, 1969

Why is today different from all other days?

Today is the 39th anniversary of one of the most important games in NFL history - and the most important game in Jets history. The New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, a game played under overcast conditions in Miami's Orange Bowl. It remains a moment of pure lore in the sense of its central motif, of David defeating Goliath. The game, coming ten years after the famed NFL Championship between the Giants and the Colts, set in the stone the role of football as America's game. This, my son, is why this day is most important.

Two months from being born, I was there, wondering what all the fuss was about. Mom and Dad went to Brooklyn to watch the game with my grandparents. The Yankees had dominated in baseball, the Celtics in basketball, the Canadiens in hockey. The NFL was a part of the old way, the standard in selfsame consistent fashion. Representing the NFL that year, the 1968 Baltimore Colts are still today considered, statistically speaking, one of the greatest teams to ever play football. Yet the Colts made too many mistakes that day, while the Jets played surprisingly safe, conservative football. When you watch the game from end to end (as I do; I own it, you know) you appreciate just how business-like the Jets are throughout the game. Joe Namath did not throw a single pass throughout the fourth quarter. In interviews in the early 90's about the game, this comes as a surprise to him.

In six months after Super Bowl III, American men would look out onto the Sea of Tranquility and see the vast emptiness of space, the cold colorless terrain of the Moon. They would gape at the seeming eternity of the Void which, in truth, was merely an infinitesimal section of the universe in the sky above them, contemplating the meaningless of human endeavors. Yet if a fictional creature had bounced out of the strangely sticky gray silt and asked Buzz Aldrin the name of the current champion of American football, he would - even after his stunned amazement - have been able to answer easily: "The New York Jets."

For one year, the New York Jets were the outright defending champions of the game. Then, on the other side of 1/12/69, America changed vastly, its dynamics shifting Right in politics, yet toward personal freedom both in popular culture and in sports. Super Bowl III was a portion of that transition. The Jets won the game themselves, but the event became something greater than themselves. It was all happening with and without them.

A year after Super Bowl III, the Jets would lose in the playoffs to the Chiefs, 13-6. It would be the franchise's final postseason game for another 12 years - by which time, America was barely recognizable from what it had been before Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the Hostages in Tehran, and Super Bowl III. By the time the Jets lost on a last minute interception to the Bills in the 1982 AFC Wild Card game, Joe Namath's revolution in athletic personality had become de rigeur, while the Jets were considered a consistently losing team.

Yet there is something for Jets fans to keep hold of, even now. We will always be a part of a franchise that beat the ultimate Goliath. We will always be fans of the team that to which no one ever gave a chance. We will always be fans of the team that defied the odds, and in this way, we will always carry the mantle of the underdog, as we have in nearly every playoff game in which we have ever played.

...except for the one we played on January 12, 1999, thirty years to the date of Super Bowl III. The Jets owned home field possession of a divisional playoff game, this time winning as the favored team against against Jacksonville, 34-24. I will not lie. I remember that game, and I remember how good it felt for a few moments, knowing that my team was better than most in the NFL. It would not last for long. I kind of knew it at the time. I'm a Jets fan.

Disappointment, So Warmly Familiar

In the dark, final week of the 1981 season, while the Jets were playing themselves (and the Giants) into the playoffs, the Colts and the Patriots played what we called (h-huh) the Toilet Bowl. The Patriots were 2-13 going into the game, the Colts were 1-14 and were from Baltimore.

Payback is a bitch. Only in this case it's worse when the original bitch in question doesn't even remember that Toilet Bowl. Maybe the Jets are the bitch, and now our Jets are getting the bitch slapped out of them. As for the Colts and the Patriots, next week's game is a Toilet Bowl - if, by "toilet" you mean Belinda's extraordinary vanity set surrounded by sylphs and angels in "Rape of the Lock." Each team is undefeated. This is actually the Super Bowl.

The Jets lost to the Bills 13-3 in a game that ranks among the most boring games I have ever seen. I saw two unimaginative offenses unable or unwilling to throw THE !@#$%*& BALL DOWNFIELD. Chad Pennington looked incapable of throwing for more than 12 yards, and I like the guy. Add to that the Jets' strange inability to give the ball to Thomas Jones when everybody knows that this is what teams have to do when the passing game is gone... Well, I could just go on and on. I'm so sad.

The final touch was yet another late game interception, this time thrown by Kellen Clemens. Unlike in previous weeks, the game was hopeless by then. The Jets would have still been down by 3 even if they had miraculously discovered the end zone, and lately everything has come hard. In light of the Jets' remarkable run last year, even the doubtful Sports Illustrated had predicted they would come close for the Wild Card this season. Now this season's distinction is that it ranks among their most disappointing. In the shadows of the Gang Green's checkered past, that's saying something.

How far back does our disappointment go? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? It takes some archival work to itemize it. I'm definitely your guy. To fit the definition of a disappointing year, you must first experience the rush of expectation at the start of a season that makes you say, "This is the year," which for Jets fans mostly means you say, "Maybe we'll make the playoffs this year." There are plenty of years past where such thoughts never entered my mind - the two years of Ritchie Kotite are good examples. Although even I was surprised that the Jets won only one game in 1996. I mean, who expects that without forgoing the team altogether?

To be fair, begin with 1970. To happy fans of our brief championship years, the post-merger turned out to be an enormous letdown. If you exempt the Baltimore Colts as division rivals, the Jets actually went 4-25 against pre-merger NFL teams in the first eight seasons of the 1970's. Now that was disappointing, especially since it was the Jets who vanquished the NFL dragon in Super Bowl III. It's pathetic, actually. But welcome to the Gang Green. It set a marvelous precedent for expectation:

1970: Baltimore's revenge for SB III. Namath injured for the season against the Colts at home. 4-10

1971: Paul Naumoff smacks into Namath in preaseason, rendering Joe lame for most of the season. 6-8

1972: Familiar strains for our year. Then as now, we coexist in our division with an unbeatable team. 7-7

1973: Another revenge for SB III. Namath injured for the season in an away game against the Colts. 4-10

1974: First, the Jets play themselves out of the playoffs, losing to losing teams, but then they win the last six games of the season and raise hopes for 1975. 7-7

1975: And that was a mistake. First, Jets win all their preseason games. And preseason ain't worth a warm bucket of athletic tape. 3-11


Ah, yes - the 1980's. This is the decade where I learned what it would take to be real New York Jets fan. And yet I'm still here. So what does that say?

1980: Everyone everywhere puts the Jets in the conference championship, if not in the Super Bowl. They win four games but grant the Saints their only win, at Shea no less. 4-12

1983: The record shows that there were several close games throughout the year, but the final record was 7-9, nonetheless. Before the opener against San Diego, Richard Todd appeared on the front cover on SI. Need we say more?

1986: The Jets levitate, then look down. By definition this is a disappointing year because they won 10 of 11, then lost five in a row. Commence the nightmares. From here, recovery is very long.


Of course, in order to experience disappointment, you must have had high hopes to begin with. Through most of the 90's, that was never a problem:

1992: It's ridiculous to consider it now, isn't it? But...Browning Nagle: the Man. I mean, he played well in the Hall of Fame Game. Ah well. 4-12

1999: After Carroll, the Faked Spike, Kotite the Savior, and a couple of flirtations with greatness, Vinny Testaverde snaps his Achilles on the newly replaced turf at Giants Stadium at the start of their Super Bowl year. So, no Super Bowl. The Jets recover from a mostly losing first half of the season, then win 6 of 8. Parcells calls the second half of the year his greatest acheivement as a coach, but then quits, arrogantly assuming that Belichick will be there to take his place. The joke has been on us ever since. 8-8


And in this decade? Ebb, flow, flow, ebb, flow, ebb, flow, ebb. All kinds of fertile ground for crushed hope:

2000: Maybe when all the stars aligned against us (Parcells and Belichick gone, Keyshawn gone, Al Groh there) we thought that it meant somehow that we would win regularly. Why would we think this? Even after winning the Monday Night Miracle, we still lost the last three games of the season. 9-7

2003: Familiar injuries to Chad, free agent departures to the Redskins, inconsistency, unhappiness. 6-10

2005: A year most familiar to our own. A kick away from the AFC Championship the year before, and then....familiar injuries to Chad. Brooks Bollinger to the rescue! Herm gave up, and good riddance. 4-12

So prepare for the rebuilding years to come, my friends. The silver linings are of the domestic kind. My wife has just reminded me that as unhappy as I am now when the Jets display a TOTAL INCAPACITY TO THROW THE !@#$%*& BALL DOWNFIELD, I'm still a bigger bastard when I worry about the Jets in the playoffs.

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.

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.

Titan Up

As many of us know, during week 6 against Philadelphia, our New York Jets will be sporting the New York Titans throwbacks. For a logo and jersey geek like me, this is going to be more enjoyable than I care to admit. When I told him about it, my father asked me how anyone really knows what Titan uniforms look like. "Did they consult the 500 people who went to their games at the Polo Grounds?" he asked. Until recently, I didn't even know what they looked like, and I'm the kind of guy who can discern the differences among the lettering of names on the back of the Jets' uniforms between 1970 and 1975.

According to lore, Sonny Werblin chose the Jets' green in 1963 when he bought the club because he himself was born on St. Patrick's Day. This was an improvement over the Titans organization and their aesthetic choices. Their owner Harry Wismer must have thought that if he cheaply packaged the Giants, then he'd cash in the way the Giants had. The Titans had chosen the Giants blue, Big Blue. To distinguish them from the primary football team of New York City, they added the flourish of...well, mustard yellow. Certainly an intimidating color. Ask the New Orleans Saints. This might explain why the recent revision of the Titans uniforms are the Giants' blue with Steelers' yellow, a harsher "tougher" yellow.

The current Titans of Tennessee are lead in the field by Vince Young. The mythological Titans were a race of figures who were precursors to the Greek Olympians. Eventually, they were replaced and imprisoned by the mighty gods themselves. Let's not remind Giants fans the fact that in many traditions, the original Titans were, of course, giants - especially since the Jets as Titans will be playing the Eagles in Giants Stadium.

Without an actual logo on their helmet, the Titans always looked like the team that the hero's team plays during a regular season showdown. Sort of like the Washington Generals or New Jersey Reds, whichever team was forced to play the Harlem Globetrotters. "I'm still unclear about this," Dad continued. "Are you telling me that the Jets are going to celebrate a legacy of mediocrity?"

Where to begin? First of all, I just saw the Complete History DVD of the Jets, and one could answer that question with a direct reference to the Jets' history itself. Yes, everyone deserves an historical appraisal on DVD, but in order to do so, Jets fans must admit that a celebration of that history must include a considerable examination of mediocrity, not to mention 1995 and 1996. In the first two years of their existence, the Titans were 7-7, only then to drop to 5-9 in 1962. They managed mediocrity. The Jets squads of the 70's could hardly claim the same.

Sure, there's plenty of humor in the Titans' history surrounding how Harry Wismer bounced his players' paychecks. As Larry Grantham once said, "We played like guys that would have played for nothing because we were guys who played for nothing." However, what interests me is the Jets' motivation for doing this throwback thing for the benefit of fans who know the history of their football team better than they know their own country's history. Who was the United States Supreme Court Chief Justice in 1963? "Whizzer" White? No. Who was the New York Titans coach in their final season of existence? "Bulldog" Turner? Correct. (Earl Warren was the Chief Justice)

This was somebody's idea in a marketing meeting. It's better than the idea the franchise had a couple of years ago of exploring as many of the diverse aspects of the color green as possible, an idea that did not hold together as anything other than a fancy proposal to Woody Johnson. New York Jets fans are not the kind of people for whom a dissertation on hues will be of any value. FIT spectrum analysis is best suited to erudite Giants fans. By the way, if you're wondering why the Titans logo on the Jets' website features the name "Titans of New York," it's probably because the actual, present-day "New York Titans" are the National Lacrosse League's representatives from New York. You can see them at Madison Square Garden, wearing blue and orange. They are not to be confused with the previous NLL team New York Saints, whom you could think of as the Titans' Titans in the same way that the Titans are the Jets' Saints. Got it? Great.

Since I live in Philadelphia, I will certainly enjoy how strange the response will be to the blue and yellow powerhouse that will play the Eagles in week six - that is, unless the Eagles choose to wear their beautiful 1940's baby blue and yellow throwbacks, in which case, the Titans may play in someone else's shadow again.

The Nightmare

A moment of silence, if you please. This is difficult.

Fine. I'm ready.

Looking back on it now, it’s clear that the Jets' fate was sealed even before the game got started, when Pat Ryan pulled a groin muscle in warm-ups. He would re-injure it during the first half and would be replaced by Ken O'Brien, whose career had already begun its decline midseason after the fabled 10-1 start. Pat Ryan was forced to leave the game after throwing a thrilling 57-yard flea flicker to Wesley Walker that he threaded beautifully between Cleveland defenders. Jets 7 Browns 0.

Then O'Brien went a respectable 11 for 19 in relief of Ryan, but he couldn't quite convert on an absolutely critical third down quarterback sneak (a Pat Ryan specialty, I might add) on the Jets' very last drive of regulation time. Both teams played poorly throughout the game. Cleveland coach Marty Shottenheimer referred to it as "one of the finest games in the history of the sport," but we Jets fans knew better afterwards. The honest loser always sees the reality of the opportunities missed, and in truth the Browns played like shit most of the day as well, and it was simply we who made the most crucial mistakes at the most inopportune moments.

For example, the following can be recited from memory by many Jet fans: Jets 20 Browns 10. 4:14 remaining. Second and 24. Browns on their own 18. Late hit by Gastineau. Fifteen yard penalty. First down Cleveland.

Can you pin a collapse to a single instant? History provides so few moments, even if we study its snapshots. You can say World War I started because the Archduke Ferdinand was gunned down, but its causes are in its near and distant past as well. You can't just say that the Vietnam War would have been prevented if Kennedy had not been killed in Dallas. Would Dr. King have made people more aware of poverty in rural and urban America had he lived? How about an America without Nixon and Watergate because Robert Kennedy was elected President? What large, unwieldy conclusions have we developed to try and understand September 11? Historians know that our past is much more complex than we'd like it to be and that a single moment cannot provide anything more than a comforting, rationalizing antidote to history’s insanity.

However, let's be less globally significant. I would add that with its short seasons, football provides many such single instances, and that a single moment on January 3, 1987 changed everything for Jets fans. Freeman McNeil had run 25 yards for a seemingly consensus-rendering touchdown, making it 20-10 Jets over the Browns with 4:14 to go in the game. We were now so close. It had been a war between two vacillating forces until McNeil manfully took the reigns. We could breathe a sigh of relief for that single instant, yes indeed.

Encouraged by this, the Jets defense then held the Browns back on their next drive. With time ticking away, the Browns approached a crucial second down with 24 yards to go for a first down.

Concentrate. Concentrate. Don’t blow the lead. Please. Not again. I stretched my whole body out prostrate before the television. I had already chewed off the vestiges of my nails and now began at the cuticles and the raw skin. My mother came into the den and caught notice of this. I had been biting my nails for years, and of all of my many tics and my compulsive behaviors, it was my chronic, feverish nail biting that seemed to enrage Mom most. She told me that I wouldn’t be hired for a job someday because no one hires nail biters, but her claim backfired on me because my growing sense of justice told me that people who were obsessive-compulsive should not have been discriminated against any more than minorities, women and homosexuals.

Nail biters were treated unjustly, I concluded. She pointed out my hands to me in front of the game and reminded me of a bargain we had made when I was 12 that she would buy me a copy of Pink Floyd's The Final Cut if I swore off nail biting for a month. I went back to biting my nails after I got the album. It was clearly inferior to The Wall. I ignored her. It was Browns' ball, second and 24.

Quarterback Bernie Kosar threw an incomplete pass from his own 18. Yet, even before the camera zoomed to the endpoint of the play, I knew that something was terribly wrong. As they fell out of the frame, I saw Mark Gastineau apply a late hit on Kosar. I didn't see the penalty flag fall, and I made myself somehow believe that it was all going to be okay and that the hit was clean. It clearly was not. Gastineau pleaded his case to the officials as they awarded a first down at their own 33 to Cleveland.

From there, Kosar never looked back. The drive then continued until Cleveland's Kevin Mack made it 20-17 Jets. When O'Brien fouled up that crucial quarterback sneak on the Jets' next drive, the demoralized Jets defense then gave up the tying field goal to the Browns. 20-20.

Beyond that, I can offer no recollection, and perhaps it’s just as well. I literally cannot – or will not. Upon a visit to the 2001 preseason camp at Hofstra, I found a number of Jet fans that couldn’t talk about the 1986 AFC Divisional Playoff against Cleveland and would wave a hand as if to say, Please. I remember. I've never recovered. Simply put, the Jets fan marks history before and after that match up as two entirely different epochs.

At the expiration of the regular time, the two teams went into one overtime, and then another. More than two minutes into the sixth period, Mark Moseley won the game 23-20 for Cleveland with a 27-yard field goal. Apparently, Moseley had missed an earlier attempt in the first overtime, yet I remember nothing of the post-regulation time. It is repressed trauma. I suppose we all knew - from Flushing to Bayside, from Islip to Matawan - that it was inevitable that the Browns would win. We knew what we were looking at now that it threw off its disguise. Jets fans had come to know the teasing work of Fate so plainly now that the overtimes were merely perfunctory. Nothing could have saved us.

The collapse was so complete, so total that when it ended, Doug did not call (just as he had promised) but instead came to my house to offer solace. The absurdity of the Jets' losing on Gastineau's penalty made him want to reach beyond the barriers that separated us to touch an Untouchable with compassion. His eyes welled with tears.

“I don't know what to say,” he said. “I don't know what to say.”

In the present day, when I catch a student in my classroom or in the hall ways doing something so obviously wrong that he cannot explain it away, he nevertheless tries making several divergent, contradictory excuses at once in the hope that I will believe one of them. I didn’t do it. I didn’t mean to do it. Teenagers are generally used to being interrogated and yet are not equipped with the skills of escaping interrogation without being accused. Those conflicting explanations are usually the tip-off that he is guilty.

Quote Gastineau at game's end, trying to claim his penalty was not a late hit: “I couldn't stop," implying that he could not stop the momentum of his hit on Kosar. Then: “I’ve done that lots of times without being called."

Bingo.

It would be another five seasons before the Jets would be in the playoffs again.