Thus It Ends,...

And a great wave of relief washes through my system. Mike Nugent's field goal sails through the uprights. The Jets win, 13-10.

"Four and twelve!" I say, my arms raised in what can only be described as a seriously compromised sense of victory. My wife remains unmoved. But wait. Of course. A holding penalty on Wade Smith.

There is no undiluted pleasure. The play goes from being a 33 yard attempt to a 43 yard attempt. The idea of enduring the game much longer seems cruel, but then I've been here before. It's the end of another gruesome season. There have been several shots of a lone fan wearing a D'Brickshaw Ferguson jersey - standing on a seat, mind you - from the concrete peak of the Meadowlands, surveying with a restless sense of undiminished purpose the conclusion of a meaningless game against a Chiefs team that has lost eight straight games. (If only Miami had been in their division, but then Kansas City is coached by Herman Edwards, and my sympathy dies there. Ha.) So few fans actually came to the game that the announcers speculated with uncharacteristic savvy that it was possible that CBS' cameras had panned across the man in the #60 jersey as many as six separate times.

Mike Nugent's field goal sails through the uprights. The Jets win, 13-10. Thus it ends, and a great wave of relief washes through my system.

"Four and twelve!" I say, my arms raised in what can only be described as a seriously compromised sense of victory. My wife remains unmoved.

****

It has been a ponderously dull season. Maybe it's because I went off Paxil four months ago. Maybe it's just that football in general has become less important in light of the existential funk into which I fell when someone in my family died young and unexpectedly in early December. Maybe my job has just been bothering me too much. Maybe that fucking dog that my neighbor leaves alone to bark and whine day in and night out in the apartment next door to mine makes me perpetually insane with anxious rage.

In Philadelphia, an unpleasant pallor has colored the complexions of most Eagles fans. They are angry with Andy Reid for being a bad parent or a bad coach or both. They are angry with Donovan McNabb because he is getting old. Should the Eagles really have kept Jeff Garcia and sent Donovan to the Bucs? Hardly. If they were Jets fans, they would have had plenty of similar disappointments, watching as we have all kinds of former favorites going to the Pro Bowl wearing someone else's helmet.

To be fair, this hasn't been a good year to enjoy athletes in America. Of late, they seem like an unpleasant manifestation of all the things we dislike about a society that we seem unable to change. Perhaps in them we see the bloated sense of entitlement that comes to people who possess power and money in the United States who also want to shirk responsibility for their actions and ideas.

The plain truth is that the glaring disparities between the classes in America leave us loathing and envying those who possess more than they will ever need. Professional athletes only get to the top through hard work and practice. Theirs is hard work. No one would question that. It comes down to money. Glaring up at these high-paid performers makes us wonder if we'll ever get there, especially since many of us - me, actually - work our asses off in work that will always underpay us, not overpay us. Such is the American economic status quo. We grind away, buying on credit, living with minimal health coverage, placing our standard of living at risk. Meanwhile the extravagantly paid gods in American sports play out the contradictory allegories of our age. This is how we roll.

I read somewhere this year (you know you're reading a blog when a sentence begins that way) that contentment runs statistically high among northern European countries because their populations go through the day with low expectations for happiness and success. I'm sure this also means a high rate of suicide attempt, but, well, whatever... My point is that being a Jets fan means having low expectations. I feel bad for Philly fans - their expectation for high performance is labored with a self-involved cynicism that somehow always means that they are right - even when they're unhappy (especially when they're unhappy). That's not living with limited expectations; that's wallowing in misery. I've made that point often on these pages, and I'll keep it mind as the real-life miseries of the winter compound. As my wife pointed out to me, the Jets cannot lose next week. There is that.

Tonight, We Are All Giants Fans

I wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it. We are all united today. Just take a look at the logos in the corners of this snapshot if you don't believe me (as if Giants fans would be comfortable with that!) I trust that if it were the Cowboys who were unbeaten going 15-0 against the Jets, the Giants would feel the same. It was a good game, but going ahead of the Patriots is always a bad idea. Ask Philly. Ask Baltimore. Don't ask the Jets because they have never had that luxury against the Pats this year.

Gets

What did I get for Christmas? Thanks for asking! Yes, I did get the vintage Joe Namath jersey. I am very happy about that. There are so many things for which I might have asked on the festive holiday. And a good thing, too. Every year's end - often to settle my mind over a particularly sad, dull season - I find myself shopping for some kind of Holy Grail on Ebay that will make me feel better. Often these things are vintage NFL or New York Jets items whose value could only be real to the real fan - and even then, there is nothing about being a real fan that can justify purchasing any of this stuff.

Here's a sample, not in any order:

Someday, someday, baby, I'll buy the NFL Thermos circa 1976 with the newly enfranchised Seattle and Tampa Bay teams in the wrong conferences. I saw this thing at a church sale in the middle of Lancaster, Pennsylvania about ten years ago, and I've never forgiven myself since for not picking it up. I was too afraid of what the people traveling with me would think. Can you imagine? How stupid.


First of all, it needs to be said that when Shell Oil did their NFL smoked drinking glass giveaways between 1971 and '73, they did it just before OPEC starting biting America in the ass. It seems that when every red meat-eating American filled up at the pump, he got a drinking glass with his favorite team (or whichever team was playing locally) printed on the side in white. This is not to be mistaken with Sunoco's 1972 NFL sticker book giveaway, which was cooler. The smoked drinking glasses were given away when people promiscuously drank hard alcohol (which was advertised promiscuously, too). Out of rounded smoked drinking glasses, apparently. It was an era I just missed by a generation when drinking and driving could still be associated. Americans have been trying to sell these at garage sales ever since. Go on Ebay right now and you'll see people practically giving them away. As for me, no thank you. I could find some at a flea market.

Then there's gems. These were also gas station giveaways. I drank milk - whole milk, of course - out of these suckers. In the 80's, my brother had a Giants one and I had the Jets. They're actually quite brittle. Too many washings and it's back to the Mobil station for another pair.

I had this baby in the 70's - a Welch's Jelly glass with the 1976 AFC Central Division logos on them. I think we owned the AFC East as well. That would make sense. But we didn't eat that much jelly, and frankly the Welch's people sold us short on these given the year's previous ones, with all of the conference helmets on them. Now those I unashamedly bought off Ebay eight years ago. I offer no excuses or explanations.

Do I need a used 1970's rubber plastic rain parka? I cannot imagine that it would stand up to another lousy, rain-drenched game. Which one did this last endure? The 43-0 home drubbing to the Dolphins in 1975? Hmmm.

Tempting, but no. What are they? These are early 70's commemorative lids to bottles of Gatorade. "Ah, I remember that particular bottle of Gatorade. I drank it while waxing my Torino." Indeed, sir. That's why the smell of Turtle Wax always makes you think of the St. Louis Cardinals football team. And cars that get 12 miles to the gallon. Interesting item, but what would you do with these, except keep them in drawer where they will clang together with that jar lid sound. Do you put them on display?

I owned a hat like this one. But don't be fooled. This is a new wool hat fused with an old logo taken off an old hat. However, I recognize the sewed-on circular "Jets" emblem. It's not even accompanied by the actual Jets logo. Can you imagine such a time when such little care was given to NFL merchandising? Ah, innocence.

Who buys the pre-season prospectus for the 1975 season? What's the point? I can tell you how the '75 season went without consulting the prospectus. 3-1l. They went 5-0 in the '75 preseason, and everybody thought they'd compete for the division title. Then they tanked, like so many seasons before and after. Is this supposed to be some veiled joke at the crushed expectation of the Jets fan? We cannot give that much credit to the seller. That would be too inside a joke. It's just something an old season tickets holder had lying around in his basement. How sad.


Look, there are just some things I'm never going to experience. Buying the prospectus is not going to create a different outcome for the 1975 season. Nor am I going to be able to recapture the pure, childlike wonder that I felt upon entering into the world of being a Jets being a fan in the mid-1970's - as terrible a time to enter into Gangreendom as any. I will also never persuade the New York City Parks Commission to reinstall the hard plastic colored ceiling to the Tent of Tomorrow at the old Fairgrounds at Flushing Meadow Corona Park. The Jets are not moving back to to Queens, either. These things are gone forever, over a long time ago.

Still, in those dark moments at night when I cannot sleep, maybe - just maybe - having the 1977 New York Jets Media Guide will be like having a security blanket nearby. Don't you agree?

Go Jints

Every time I have written in support of whichever team is playing the New England Patriots, the outcome has been a New England win. That must be why the Patriots are undefeated.

How about the NFL's decision to broadcast the final game of the Giants' season. When I was a kid, one of the treats of the end of the football season was Saturday games. No college football, only pro games on Saturday. Much ill has been made of the NFL Network, and knowing the NFL, the network's decision to keep competitive games toward the end of the season within their clutches will stay in place next year. But apparently John Kerry threatened to have Senate hearings to discuss the matter of the network's existence, so now the game will be seen by all this Saturday. Kerry's constituents will have a chance to see the game after all. Hearings called off. False alarm. Who better to extort the billion dollar league than the Federal Government?

Man, I hope the Giants win.

Head Games

This morning, George Vescey - a writer predisposed to speak poorly of football, I think - made reference to a report in yesterday's paper about the Jets and head injuries. His usual blarney about "Why are we trying to make athletes into role models" interested me less than the fact that he seemed to suggest that the Jets were hiding something.

Which is a little bit of a surprise. We know they're not hiding a secret for sustained winning. It's about injuries, and while the normally suspicious New York media already has had a special ax to grind with the almost morbidly silent Eric Mangini, apparently the matter is more serious than any of that. We know that the Jets organization does not allow players to talk about their own injuries to the media. Specifically, however, there are serious concerns about the way that the Jets handle matters of concussive injury.

Certainly in the NFL the problem is not the Jets' alone, yet the Jets' insistence on silence is complicated by the presence of their own physician. New York Times writer Alan Schwarz said that Elliot Pellman, who oversees much of the team's health, has been a supportive of a less careful approach to concussion injuries within the team and around the NFL. Schwarz writes that "Dr. Pellman, until recently, led the National Football League’s commission on concussions, and he has been criticized by many medical experts for playing down the effects of concussions and for clearing players to return to the field too soon." The fact that Pellman is the primary consultant to a team with a history of losing receivers with Hall of Fame caliber, such as Al Toon and Wayne Chrebet, should give any Jets fan a lot of concern. Each of them retired because of compounded concussion injuries.

The article mentions the extraordinary losses Wayne Chrebet has felt to his ability to remember things. His permanent losses to his long-term and short-term memory since he left the Jets in 2005 have had a tremendous effect on his overall sense of well-being. Presently, Laveranues Coles has been affected by concussive injury, and while he has been sitting out the rest of this season for such injury, Schwarz reminds us that this was not the case late last year when, even after Coles suffered a serious concussion, the Jets still used him as a decoy against the Raiders as they tried to acquire a playoff spot. Crippling injuries are as common to football as they are in Rollerball, but the loss of one's mind in football is slightly different. As Schwarz points out, Pellman's lax attitude toward concussions - and Mangini's imposition of player silence on injuries - are characteristic of the entire NFL's (and the Players' Association's) attitude toward this same issue, even when generations of retired players are experiencing the same kind of long-term effects as those felt by Wayne Chrebet.


The whole matter makes me ill when I consider that the New York Jets were once always at the forefront of treating football injury. James Nicholas, the longtime Jets physician, was a revolutionary in the field of sports medicine. For better and for worse, he prolonged Joe Namath's career and was a highly responsive medical person on the sidelines. It was also the Jets' treatment of Dennis Byrd immediately after his injury against the Chiefs in 1992 that enabled Byrd to eventually walk on his own power. This kind of successful intervention also engendered advanced developments in treating on-field paralysis such that Kevin Everett is able to walk today to the Bills' game against the Giants.

A Farewell to Arms

We know Chad Pennington became a backup quarterback and remained thus (despite having a better QB rating than his younger colleague) until Kellen Clemens became injured in last week's game. We know that one way or the other, it makes no real difference. I want a new set of options for arms.

Tis the season for giving. I give you the best reassurances I can offer:

- The New York Jets lost 20-10, not by an atrocious total, and it would have been 13-10 had Kellen Clemens not thrown an injury-rendering pass to the Patriots for an easy touchdown. Again - none of these are in any order.

- Yes, the New England Patriots have San Francisco's draft pick next year, but the Jets have never done anything so worthwhile with the draft such that we need to bemoan this cosmic injustice. The Jets may yet finish with the same record as the Niners, and maybe they will steal the Patriots' pick, and not the other way round.

- The Jets did not lose to Miami, nor did they give up the Buccaneers' first kickoff return for a touchdown. They were also not victims of the New York Mets' first no-hitter. Thank goodness.

- Thomas Jones will gain 1,000 yards before the end of this season. Jerricho Cotchery will as well. You will find their names on lists.

- Joe Namath finally received his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Alabama this past week.

- David Harris deserves consideration for Rookie of the Year. Stop laughing.

- The New York (football) Titans' uniforms are spectacular reminders that the New York Jets' green and white remains one of the classiest in the game. I can't believe I just said that, but I did. I mean, can you possibly take the Vikings' monochrome home uniforms seriously? Holy God. They look like something Mummenshauntz would wear (below).

- Kerry Rhodes remains tied with six other players for seventh place in the NFL with five interceptions. Number one draft choice Revis has four. Who says the draft doesn't (kind of) work?

- We are not in last place, nor will we by the end of the season.

- In a year when Devin Hester is described as a human miracle, Leon Washington - who did not get into the Pro Bowl (no Jet did) - may tie a record for kickoff returns in one season. He is the Jets MVP, justifiably. As you can see, he thanks the Man Upstairs. It will suffice for me to thank you, Leon.

That's ten. So even in the season of tremendous disappointment, there is reason to be thankful. If I tried hard enough, I could think of one more, but to be honest, it would be too much of a stretch. There are other struggles with which I must contend before the holiday comes. I'm hoping that someday I'll find the Joe Namath sideline parka with the #12 on the front that I should have bought on sale years ago. No luck on Ebay. I might blow $125 on a NFL Throwbacks Namath jersey, which isn't so bad when I consider that the new couch we tried to have delivered to our apartment just barely did not fit into out unit, and we were forced to give it away, in this case to a local women's shelter. It's a tax write-off. It's been just exactly that kind of football season.

Let It Snow

The hopes of geriatric Dolphins and anyone else who loves the game of football rest on the Jets' ground game (smile quietly to yourself) and a wealth of snow to prevent Randy Moss from catching ridiculously open touchdown passes. That being said, is there really any reason why I should invest actual hope? No.

My sense of outrage over being hoodwinked and bamboozled by the cheating Patriots has long since passed. This entire football season has been a remarkable contrast to our last, with few surprises, few sublime moments. The Patriots are also 9-0 with heavy snowfall on the ground. My experience as a high school teacher leads me to believe that when you hope a lot for snow, you rarely get enough to close school.

The alternative to these basic realities are too awesome to contemplate, a little to much for a week of hell for my heart to entertain. No thank you. Just Endeavor To Score.

Of Prospects Drear

So, we are very nearly there. When I envisioned the season at the start, I thought that this week's game against Cleveland would be a win. That's what this season has been all about. Now with prospects drear, one cannot help but want them to be the team to beat New England, to show that they still have life in them. But in the meantime, the only real business is that of rue, of feeling cheated and bleak.

Ah, what to do, what to do. The quandary of a nearly competent team at 3-9. One could spend some time on the bright spots - David Harris, Darrelle Revis (a draft pick, no less!) and Kerry Rhodes. The latter two have made some significant mistakes, but they have done enough to make a bad team look a little better - and on defense, no less. Our time spent with Kellen Clemens has been middling. We all know it. We can't expect too much from him, not just because he's new, but because he's probably not capable of living up to the awesome potential set aside for NFL quarterbacks. Sort of like Chad Pennington.

And Thomas Jones. Remember how upset we all were that received the "lower leg injury?" "There goes the season?" Now, just end the season. I appreciated that Jones said the score one way or another didn't matter and that he was and is a team player, but I suppose he has to say that. The bright spots continue, though, and on offense no less: Leon Washington, Brad Smith. There have been too many injuries. And there are the usual excuses found among teams that are fair to middling to poor. Middling: Kansas City. Poor: Atlanta, St. Louis, Oakland. Other: Miami. The cameo appearance of Ricky Williams against Pittsburgh two Monday Nights ago reminds me that however epic seems the scope of the Jets' failure this year, it cannot compete with the broad misfortunes of other fans.

Tom Rock made a good point a few weeks ago when he said that Giants fans are suffering more now, and I agree wholeheartedly, even if there is less evidence to show for that than before. Even the way the Giants win, as they did against the Bears last week, only serves to show how hard they have to work to get there. The Giants will not go far in the playoffs. What possible chance against New England or the Colts? This is Tom Coughlin's last year. Like other New York teams, they look like a team that's still hoping that no one notices how scared they are to win outright. Like the Knicks, the Jets find losing just part of ordinary life.

There is dignity in that - at least right now, at 3-9. At 4-9 there will be some pressure to make something of the season. At 3-10 we will be able to pack it all away for good, holding out faint hope that the Patriots will finally get an unlucky call against an inordinately lucky Jets team. Unlikely, more like, just as it is unlikely that our permanence at third place out of four will yield something in the draft, especially since the draft yields nothing for no one anymore anyway. Bring on the playoffs. Someone, for the love of God, beat New England. Get well, Brett Favre. Do I sound like a Jets fan? Just end the season.

...or Not

The other alternative is to enjoy the pictures of the Titans of New York, hoopling up the largest margin of victory over the Dolphins this year. Ah well. I hope that it is at least understood that my primary concern is with the Patriots, whom I loathe beyond all human understanding. So, Monday Night...(sigh)...go, Baltimore Col- uh, Ravens. I mean Ravens. Go Ravens.


The funny part is that now everybody says Miami deserves to go winless. Word is that if you give up 40 points to the Jets, you deserve to go 0-16. Well, maybe so.

Of Flesh and Fish

I'm not alone in thinking this one of the less gratifying football seasons in years. It began with Michael Vick, I think; it continued with the bleakly efficient but shady Patriots living well beyond even the best expectations for their season; it has gruesomely continued with Sean Taylor's untimely death at his Miami home. Even if you're not a Jets fan, it seems like professional football only heightens America's compulsion to cannibalize itself.

One of the other disarming oddities of the year has been the failure of the Miami Dolphins. I'm aware of how many games they've lost only by a mere three points (including a loss to the Jets), but the point is that of all the seasons to lose every game, regardless of how many points decide it, they have managed it in a season when the Patriots might break the 1972 Dolphins' unbeaten record. The Jets might seem lackluster bystanders in all of this, except for the fact that they are playing the Fish this week.

It feels wrong to feel any real compassion for the Dolphins. They made a mockery of the Jets in the 1970's. They left the tarp off the field before the Mud Bowl in January 1983. They jump-started the Jets' famous collapse in 1994 with Dan Marino's Fake Spike. This is a franchise that has a richer playoff and championship experience than the Jets have had (that could describe a lot of teams) but Miami has also found the Jets to be an enormous challenge year by year, and it's always been fun to watch them struggle against us. And when things go wrong for the Jets, as they have this season, beating Miami has always been an oddly satisfying consolation.

So two cheers for the Dolphins. I feel confident that the Jets will stumble, and if they do, it will be an oddly satisfying moment. The Jets have also taken their pound of flesh of Fish. They registered a winning streak against them from 1978-81 even when the Dolphins did better overall. Indeed the Dolphins have often been nettled by the Jets the way that Tom was by Jerry. Throughout, beating them has always made me feel better about being a Jets fan. No matter what, our friends in the Sunshine State have always had to take their friends in the north seriously - especially when too many of those Floridians were transplanted New Yorkers who became Dolphin fans. At least a win against them could make you feel better about the lost season.

When Jerry noticed that the local neighborhood dog had gotten the best of Tom, he went out of his way to thwart the bully canine so that Tom could go back to tormenting him. Why not allow them to avoid the shame of being winless during the Patriots' perfect season by playing Jerry to their Tom? After all, we aren't going anywhere this year. Dolphins fans will always be grateful to us for that.

(Thanks)

I have a student who is that unique Philadelphia phenomena - a Dallas Cowboys fan. Philadelphians who are Cowboy fans are often born in adolescence, at a time when they wanted to tell someone important in their lives - a father, an uncle, a friend - or a teacher - to fuck off. What better way than to give the bird to the Birds, their fans, everybody around you.

Philadelphians are dedicated with sincerely formed ambivalence toward the Phillies, the Flyers, the Sixers. Each demographic tends to align itself to one of the teams. When they are playing well, the Sixers attract the majority African-American population, though there are plenty of Cavalier and Laker fans around; the Flyers command the attention of the white Northeastern and South parts of the city. But the Eagles get everyone, and with everyone, the Eagles get all the angst and complicated, layered rage that accompanies all the city's disparate parts. They are the city's common obsession, and like many obsessions, its object never benefits from the attention in the long run.

So when a Philadelphian turns Cowboy, it's a decided reaction against the prevailing wind. It is a desire to draw attention to oneself by loving the hated. This student of mine is an annoying, self-centered, creepy little man who tries to sleep in class all the time; he is the very definition of a Philadelphia Cowboy fan. And on Monday, he is going to love himself all the more. "His boy," as he refers to Terrell Owens, will probably have a lot to celebrate. In their best seasons (like this one), the Dallas Cowboys have always had a cosmic self-assertion on Thanksgiving that seems almost to imply that they invented the holiday for themselves. America's Team. God's team. The mascots of the Southern Baptist Convention. Blech.

The 2-8 New York Jets come to Texas Stadium tomorrow on Thanksgiving. Through history, Dallas has pulverized the Jets - 52-10 in Irvine in 1971; 30-7 in 1978 at Shea; 28-7 in 1993 at the Meadowlands. To my memory, there are two close losses - 31-21 at Shea in 1975 and 38-24 in 1987. And that last one was the strike year. Replacement Cowboys versus Replacement Jets. Even then.

Prepare yourself for the Divine Wind. It is God's team, as assured of salvation as a newly saved parochial Texan who wants to make his momma proud again. My student doesn't know what he's representing in being a Cowboys fan, but if he knew how repugnant I really found it, I suppose he would love it all the more.

1-8

I must be a patient man. My student asked me how I liked what his Redskins did to my Jets. Can he possibly understand - mere wisp of a youth that he is - what another stupid, avoidable loss like yesterday's does to me? Can he have any concept? He is 17, after all. He's old enough to go to an R-rated film alone. When he is a pathetic, paunchy 38 year-old man, will he still be heartbroken when "his" Redskins drop another game because of dropped passes, or when they accept a penalty and make the opposition retake a punt that gives over even worse field position? I certainly hope not, for his sake. I wouldn't wish this on even the most obnoxious of young bandwagon jumpers. He'll be a lot happier at that point if he jumps on someone else's wagon by then. I would advise him to do just that.

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.

Thrown Away

If I don't add an entry, then the swarm of information from the intraweb overwhelms what there is of A Fan's Life. Seventy-nine entries, but "what have you done for us lately?" The same could be asked of the Jets, who labor at 1-6.

I have never known a Jets season to be so perfectly consistent in one weird statistic: game-closing interceptions. In weeks 2, 4, 6, and 7, Pennington (and Clemens week 2) has thrown the game away. He gets honorary mention for week 5 when the game against the Giants still seemed within reach late in the fourth quarter, though the Giants eventually won with more than just an interception of his pass for a touchdown. The Bengals just about finished us off with one late in the game last week. It adds a new stress to the question of whether Pennington should be benched, although one cannot ignore that his numbers are largely good throughout each game. But hey - who's really paying attention, anyway? The Giants are playing well, albeit against poor teams like the Jets, but even a Giants head cold gets more attention than a Jets clean bill of health, so why should anyone care about the Jets' woes?

I do, still. Of course. How is that ever going to change? I'm going over stats of the games and wondering the way a good Jets fan does; he considers what might have been. We've been lucky to walk away from games in the past, shaking our heads mostly with contentment and wonder. Now, not so much. All we can do is reflect on how close we've been. Great teams find a way to win, and though the Jets might not even be a good team this year, you'd hardly be a good Jets fan if you didn't consider what might have been if Pennington had made it on those final drives. Seriously, look at the game breakdowns. They might right now be 4-3, still wondering what kind of season they were having.

But here, in the reality-based fandom, we recognize what kind of season this is. We've had experience with disappointing performances for decades now. We know how the Jets are doing. The offense is cumbersome, uninspired, and apparently easy to read late in the game. Jonathan Vilma is out. This all sounds familiar. We like it better in the fantasy. Just end the season.

The Lame Game

All this week I have been forced to endure a barrage of insults from the young Philadelphians with whom I work. The truth is we are, all of us, fans of a team with one win under their belt. The Eagles are playing in the shadow of three other superior teams in their Eastern Division. I had thought that the Jets were better team than the Bills, but I was wrong; they are just barely better than a pushover Dolphins club. If you want to see why both the Jets and the Eagles will be staying home in January, you need only watch the Patriots-Cowboys game at 4:15 pm this afternoon.

The Eagles fans with whom I work in Delaware County know how much I love the Jets, but that doesn't matter when it comes to heckling. But then their heckling doesn't really matter either. They do it with a kind of an overly self-conscious skepticism about their own team that undermines the effect of their pepper:

"Jets suck worse than the Eagles, man."

"Yo. Jets are going down, asshole."

"God, I hate this hoagie. Sort of like the way I hate the Jets."

"Jets won't fly like the Eagles will. Asshole."

And so on. Always with a sound to their voice that conveys a feeling of unease, sort of the kind that says, "But, you know, if the Eagles don't win, I won't be surprised." I've never been good at heckling, myself. Philadelphia fans are famous for booing Santa Claus, but they are the really best known for being able to tell you after-the-fact why they were sure their team was going to lose all along. And frankly, writing this as I am near halftime of the game, I can imagine how my pals at work were chattering to one another in front of their TV's about Brian Westbrook's dominance (especially after his called-back touchdown run) but are probably also now saying that they've always known all along how overrated a kicker David Akers is, particularly after he's badly shanked a second kick in the first half.

As for the Yets, I've seen some terrible missed tackles and the usual unimaginative offense that's fooling no one. The entire season is going to be like this. Ben Graham's decent punt late in the second half produced nothing more than opportunity for Graham to show off some of his Australian Rules tackling abilities when none of his colleagues on the down field coverage could get to little Reno Mahe. No harm done. Akers missed his kick. Ugh. And this is pro football?

It will be nice to hear what the geniuses at work have to say about the Jets' Titans uniforms. Unless the Eagles really do open up against us, my colleagues are not going to have anything to grind into me other than a Jets loss - unless they want to make noise about the mighty blue and mustard that Titans of New York are wearing today. They look like the Chuck Knox Los Angeles Rams of the 1970's. The New York Titans became extinct for a reason; they were mediocre. Their legacy lives on, though. The Jets' 2007 season certainly pays tribute to that so far.

Recurrent Ads: Berserk-Making

During the NFL season, a football fan is subject to one of the great tests to his loyalty - the numbingly recurrent advertisement for either automobiles and beer during breaks from the game. These drive me berserk.

First, the jingle. Well, actually there is no such thing as a jingle any longer - just a signature song that is pulled from the catalog of an artist whose best work is way behind him. Back in the 80's, Chevrolet took whatever tolerance listeners had for Bob Seger and reduced it down to a few bars of his song "Like a Rock" - a mullet-wearing yabo's fantasy anthem if ever I heard one. It remained in place for a good ten years. John Mellencamp traded in his credibility by offering up his song "Our Country" to the gods at General Motors. The advertisements commemorate a past where Chevrolet trucks were always there at the important moments in American history - the end of World War II, the moon landing, the election of Ronald Reagan. Good times. I like the way car companies always portray the past as if all races of people in America celebrated these things together all along, and they all bought Chevy trucks. How many times do I have to hear it? It is maddening.

Honda, on the other hand, is suggesting that you "Hold on Tight to Your Dreams" by way of ELO. Volkswagen used ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" to good effect. MasterCard uses three schoolboys dancing like neurological patients to Funkadelic's "We Want the Funk." But auto ads are the last bastion of the non-ironic advertisement, and I suspect it is no small measure related to how ad people see football fans as the only remaining people who actually buy any kind of schlock, especially the feel-good nonsense kind about dreams coming true through purchasing an expensive car whose fuel consumption keeps us nicely imprisoned by the insane politics of the Middle East. Football fans just ain't that interested in what all that shit means, man. So, you know...fuck that.

Let's not forget Budweiser's ever-present ads for "Budweiser Select," which is as likely undrinkable as Budwesier itself. Using The Chemical Brothers' song "Galvanize," I suppose the advertiser is trying to nab the clubber who goes out after the game to galvanize the action. Blech. Enough. It's torture. I hear those reconfigured strings, and I want to take my own life.

Add to all of this the fact that the Jets lost to the Jints, giving away the early lead and turning he ball over on a potential game-winning drive, and I may never watch football ever again.

Curses

Here in Philadelphia, there is joy. Baseball is about the third-favorite sport in this town, but most people are just happy that the Phillies' NL East crown means that the Mets' self-destruction is complete. I, for one, ache.

I've lived in Philly for 15 years, and the Phils are the only local team I've adopted, and they have not been in the playoffs since 1993. Yet my stomach knots for my real baseball team. I am a Mets fan by birth and right. If you love sports, you know what moments like their season's end mean in both the cosmic and statistical senses of the word. My mother won't even take my calls because I live in Philadelphia. This isn't just the end of their season. Their nightmarish late September surpasses the Phillies' own famed self-destruction of 1964. Their epic collapse is piece of history.

I was planning on having the Mets keep me comfortably distracted in October while the Jets were doing their usual thing. There is no special magic to the Jets this year. The silver lining to the Kellen Clemens and Chad Pennington storyline is that each is playing the best football he can. For Clemens, this means putting in a reasonably good performance in Baltimore three weeks ago. But for the dumb and pouty Jets fans who think that this means he should be the starter - well, I urge you to remember Richard Todd, Matt Robinson, Browning Nagle, and Glenn Foley. There is always a greener pasture in the form of a drafted quarterback for Jets fans, and that's because we still believe a bonus baby Joe Namath will lead us in an upset over Goliath again. This is absurd. Clemens will be ready someday to take the job, but not today.

Yet I know that even though Pennington went 32 for 39 this week against Buffalo and threw for 290 yards, this will not be enough to satisfy the yahoos who want to give Clemens the captain's chair. Welcome to the universe of the New York Jets fan. As good as Pennington was today, he threw two crucial interceptions in the fourth quarter at points where the game was about to shift the Jets' way. Never mind the fact that he orchestrated a perfect faked spike with seconds to go in the first half and connected on a great catch by Laverneus Coles to set up a kick by Mike Nugent. How many Jets fans saw that and thought about undoing the Curse of Marino's Fake Spike, 1994? The Jets would lose all four games of 1994 after that loss to Miami, and would then drop 28 games in two more seasons. Well, rest ye easy. Nugent's attempt against Buffalo today hit the crossbar. Another three points might have saved the game. The curse endures.

Or does it? When you're a fan of a franchise that has problems with getting and keeping good breaks, it's hard to know what exactly is going to curse you. Curses are real, even as psychological scars or as vivid reminders of already deep-seated fears. But certain acts on and off the field have a special mojo that unleash fresh hell. The Jets are cursed by many things. First, they won an impossible upset in the Super Bowl. Then they left New York City to play in Giants Stadium. There were also the the Faked Spike, the predicted greatness of the 1999 season, the Parcells departure marred by a shady attempt to keep Belichick from New England. Let's not forget how Mo Lewis' hit on Drew Bledsoe opened the door to the Brady era in Foxboro. Curses. Foiled again.

As an English teacher, I feel validation in the recent news that while students with autism and Asperger's Syndrome are likely to study math and science, manic depressives are more likely to study English in college. Obviously I studied the right thing in undergraduate life. I don't need statistics to tell me how and why I should be a Jets fan. If I enjoy the works of ancient Greece and of Shakespeare, then surely there really is only one football team to root for. Accept no substitutes.

I know that I will be an even bigger Mets fan next year. To this point, Mets' history was never filled with consistent brilliance, but this late September was a curse of the highest order. Curses inflict a cosmic damage on franchises. It took the Phillies 12 years to return to the postseason after 1964. After their collapse in 1978, the Red Sox were forced to endure Bill Buckner's error. There is mojo in the air in Queens. As a Jets fan, I can only attest to its power. I do not know the cure.