I think I stopped following the New York Jets about two days after our dad brought home autographs from both Weeb Eubank and Joe 'Willie' Namath (post-Super Bowl III victory). Are you surprised when I confess to having no idea what became of those autographs? Yeah, me neither.
Dad used to take us to see the Jets when they played in Shea Stadium and every time they scored (which back in the day was fairly frequently and regularly) somebody (I'm guessing a hapless intern), raced up and down one sideline in a cart that had been kitted out to look like a jet. Yeah, we were a lot more clever back in the day.
In those days, being a Jets fan meant automatically rooting against the New York Giants who played their home games, I always thought, in Yankee Stadium except when that was being rehabilitated (the old one; the new one was decades away from being built) when they played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.
By the time I joined the Air Force in the spring of 1975, both teams were pretty non-descript and of little interest to me, and by the time I came back from living in Germany in the autumn of 1991, football was something entirely different to me and had little to do with either team or any aspect of the professional league they played in.
The Giants started playing in New Jersey, perhaps on top of Jimmy Hoffa's body for all I know, at some point though I know not when to be joined by the Jets some years later. Considering myself a Jersey Guy, I'll admit it rankled, and still does for that matter, that neither of them incorporates the name of the state in which they play into their official name. Though calling both of them The Incompetents, because that is very much their state of play, would be confusing, admittedly.
Enter Abdiell Suero who in true Shakespearean tradition wants a rose to be called a rose, no matter how it smells (and in the Meadowlands, olfactory concerns are always an issue) and a whole lot of money for the pain and suffering he has gone through for enduring the thorns of an outrageous commute, apparently. You can read about it here.
That both teams have played for decades somewhere in the swamps of Jersey and he's only now upset about it does cause my bullshit detector to start flashing, but I'm thinking, like his outrage, a spot of greenbacks might just cure whatever ails it
-bill kenny
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