NY Jets #45 - Part 1

There both is a Kern River and a Carson Falls, each located in Southern California, which is utterly unrelated, except by name and general location to Kern Carson, graduate of San Diego State University and running back for both the San Diego Chargers in the early 60's and for the New York Jets in 1965. For the Jets, he wore #45.

He also passed away in 2002. The only other bit of information I found about him is that he was born in 1942 in Hope, Arkansas. So, in the moments of his infant life, did he ever once see the passing carriage of a little boy named Billy Blythe, whose momma later married Roger Clinton of Hot Springs? Who knows? I'm certain that I probably walked the same grocery aisles with my own mother that Debbie Gibson did as a child in Merrick, NY. So, there you are. Brushes with greatness.

****

A man named Oliver Celestin must certainly come from New Orleans. The name Oliver has a resonance in the city. His first seasons were as an undrafted free agent at #45 with the Jets, and his best season was with us, with 25 tackles in 2005, which then saw him on his way to Seattle the next year, hot on the heels of the Seahawks' dubious loss to Big Ben in the Super Bowl. Then he played for the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl two years later. Oliver Celestin has been closer to the big game more often than most New York Jets can ever claim, and yet his career was forced to end with the UFL's New York team, the Sentinels.

That's right. Don't act like you didn't know that New York had a UFL team for nine weeks. They played at Shuart Stadium at Hofstra, where I used to go see the Jets play scrimmages during training camp in the 70's while trying to weasel extra autographs from the likes of Wesley Walker.

You didn't you even know the New York Sentinels existed? Well, me neither. Seriously. Here, I'll show you their uniforms:


Except, this doesn't do you much good, does it? Because after winning nary a game in 2009, the New York Sentinels promptly packed their bags and moved to -

wait for it....

That's right! Hartford! Very good. They are now the Colonials of Hartford, as of this year. And their uniforms look like this:

It's hard to get excited about a team that basically looks like the football equivalent of the Milwaukee Brewers. According to Wikipedia: "Colonials was not one of the four names voters could choose from, but was said to become an 'overwhelming favorite' among the fan suggested names," which means that no one in Hartford cared to vote in the first place. And if the UFL weren't a doomed enterprise, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything, imagine for a moment what could have been. Instead of just being a tax write-off, imagine a Lamar Hunt or an Al Davis wiping that corn-fed smile off of Roger Goodell's face, explanding a market that could compete with America's flagship league.

Ah, well. Business as usual. They don't make entrepreneurs like they used to. The Hartford team does not play Oliver Celestin now, but then the Colonials don't play even close to capacity at UConn's Renschler Field, either. The league and its people will be a distant memory in no time, less bloated than the USFL, with uniforms much less cool than than the WFL. So who weeps for Oliver Celestin, with his NFC Championship ring? Not I.

****

Were I to travel the short distance from my home in East Falls to Chester, Pennsylvania, I would be near the haunts of Dick Christy #45, a running back whose time and place in our history is as forgotten as the relative blue collar success of Chester itself, whose Ford auto plant closed in 1961, the same year Dick Christy joined the New York Titans. Today Chester is a little piece of rust belt outside of Philadelphia, a region notorious for crime and poverty since the 60's. They have a racetrack there, which is the usual gesture of a hopeless community, although in an act of unique creativity, the Philadelphia Union MLS club chose to build their soccer-only stadium there. And that's cool.

But Dick Christy himself is gone for good. After playing for both the Titans and the Jets (1961, 63) he was then killed on July 8, 1966 in a single auto accident back home in Philadelphia. There is little to clarify anything more than that. What happened?

But when you were once a star for an unlikely ACC championship team like North Carolina State in 1958, the alumni memorializes you accordingly. Though he may have traveled far from home when he attended NC State, Dick Christy chose the Wolfpack because they were the only school that would allow him to play on the squad and marry his Chester sweetheart.

But Dick's not to be confused with Earl Christy, the man who replaced him in #45. My wife wondered somewhat cynically if they simply replaced one Christy at #45 for another. I imagine that Sonny Werblin's budget was more expansive than that. Earl Christy played defensive back for the Jets from 1966-68, and was also a return man. Dick Christy seemed to have been the rough-hewn, straight-jawed boy from an industrial town. Earl Christy, on the other hand, seems like a visitor from outer space. First, he is not to be mistaken for the prolific magazine illustrator. In fact, Earl Christy the Jet has the distinction of playing the proverbial bookend to the nadir and zenith of the Jets' moments against their most hated 1968 rival, the Oakland Raiders.

First, there's the Heidi Game, the extraordinary watershed moment in the history of TV's coverage of professional football. The histrionics of the game itself are well-known: fights, penalties, ejections, then a little girl trapsing through the Alps. We know this already. With the Raiders ahead with 1:05 to go, their kickoff went to Earl Christy (move to 1:25 in the link), who fumbled it at the 10, with the Raiders recovering in the end zone. Raiders 43 Jets 32. This was the nadir.

Then, leap ahead a few weeks later, to Shea Stadium and the AFL Championship against Oakland. After the Raiders scored in the fourth quarter to take the lead at 23-20, Christy takes the kickoff and runs it back 32 yards to set up a Namath pass to Sauer, followed by Namath's wild throw to Don Maynard, which then set up the clinching touchdown. This is what athletes must do. They must shake off the goat. It is what we all must do.

But Earl Christy, Super Bowl champion, is quite an active fellow. He is an apparent spokesman for any and every anti-aging medicinal made from deer antler velvet. Yep. And sure, he gives motivational speeches to Jets fans in Tampa Bay, who appear to be under the big tent for nothing else other than the buffalo wings. But the man is clearly on fire. Are you?

But Earl Christy also promotes Chi Machine International, an apparently international organization geared around, well, the Chi Machine. If it sounds vaguely Scientological, that's because it involves a 110 volt machine, your spinal alignment, and your personal life force energy flow. I will let you, gentle reader, peruse the information and judge for yourself.

But what's most compelling about Earl Christy - the omega of the Heidi Game and the alpha of the drive that put the Jets into the Super Bowl - is what his bio for the Chi Machine International reveals to us. He is apparently an:

"Outstanding athlete, football coach, broadcaster for over 30 years, team member of Harlem Wizards exhibition show basketball team, elementary school teacher of the year, Chief of nine villages in Ghana, motivational speaker and founder of Athletes For Education Association (AFEA)."

Let's see: Harlem Wizards basketball team? Check. A teacher of the year - well, I think that's pretty incredible. And, ah, broadcaster. Sure. Football coach, no surprise there.  And....lessee...he's...

"Chief of nine villages in Ghana."

Really? I mean, wh-...really? How? I mean, I know #54 Wahoo McDaniel was an actual Choctow-Chickasaw Native American, but he isn't even so much as a greeter at the Chocktaw casino in Durant, Oklahoma. Has Earl Christy has been reading too much Heart of Darkness or something? I mean, are the nine villages in Ghana aware that their property taxes go to Earl Christy? I certainly hope so.

Jets at Miami - 1/26 - The Bitching

21 Not-So-Rhetorical Questions masking as complaints (but for the unaccustomed, the answers are listed below):

1) Is a DUI a serious enough offense that a coach with integrity can ban the drunk driver and his passengers for two quarters? Maybe three? Four?

2) Is Rex not quick enough with the red flag? Is it wedged somewhere? What's the problem?

3) How many interference calls that lead to touchdowns will Kyle Wilson be responsible for before someone decides to teach the young man how to cover effectively?

4) Is Darrelle Revis OK with his apparent lack of summer conditioning?

5) Is anyone fooled by the nonsensical Peyton Manning impersonation that Sanchez does at the line that is followed by an ineffective Shonn Greene run up the middle?

6) Does an established NFL team not coached by Any Reid really need to call three timeouts in a minute and a half early in the second quarter?

7) How many yards did Thomas Jones gain for the Chiefs against the Niners this week?

8) Do I need Bob Costas to explain to me why Michael Vick is being given a second chance?

9) Enrique Inglesias is the halftime show choice. This is how we know it's Hispanic Heritage Month (there is no Hispanic History Month, apparently). But I'd rather watch Mad Men, which I'm not watching because of this game. So, my question is, can't I just see that funny chick from the Progressive ads again instead?

10) Aren't the MetroPCS adds vaguely racist?

11) Is my dog going to starting freaking out and barking at nothing in particular at a critical moment that I will miss?

12) Is it hot enough for you?

13) Did Rex Ryan take lessons from my pee wee coach in how to fake injuries to slow the game down?

14) Does "Tony Sporano" sound like "Tony Soprano?"

15) I'm starting to think Revis Island doesn't exist. I know Riker's Island exists. Plaxico Burress lives there.

16) How excited am I to see Danny Woodhead break one out for the Jets in this game?

17) How many expensive, drive-killing penalties has Braylon Edwards acquired in this game?

18) Is Brad Smith a star?

19) If the Jets score, will Matt Slossen be responsible for a holding call?

20) Kendall Lankford = AJ Duhe?

21) Am I happy that Braylon Edwards is playing in this game?



1) Yes, yes, and more yes. Unless it's not important to the league. 2) WTF. Found it in the second half, thank you. 3) Keep counting. It's a long season. 4) One would hope not. 5) I would think not. It's pathetic and embarrassing. 6) HOLY GOD, no!!! OH GOD!! 7) 95 yards. 8) No. 9) She briefly appeared on Mad Men, actually. 10) You be the judge. 11) Yes! The Jets' touchdown to Braylon Edwards. Arf. 12) 83 degrees in Miami during the middle of the second half. 13) No. Coach Sutherland is, I believe, in prison. 14) Yes, and apparently many, many jocular references have been made to this over the past two seasons, almost to the point where you would think it wouldn't be worth mentioning anymore, Al Michaels. 15) That's not a rhetorical question. 16) As excited as you want to be, you schmuck. He scored a monster touchdown for the New England Patriots against the Bills this past week. Just like that. Gone for good. I've been pulling for him to be a star on the Jets for years. Now he works for the unspeakables. 17) Again, not rhetorical. But one so far. Inside the red zone after the blocked punt. Tripping. I wish we had gotten Anquan Boldin. Honestly. 18) Well, in this game, sort of. 19) Apparently. Twenty nine penalties in two and three-quarter games. 20) Unbelievably, very freaking nearly. 21) What am I, a hypocritical idiot? Yes.

And Here I Re-Publish the NY Times: "Jets In Certain Loss Until the Second Half"

by Vince Graylady, Sports Columnist for the New York Times

The unkempt hordes were treated to something akin to a complete victory when the Jets beat the New England Patriots Sunday 28-14. There were smiles of relief on the faces on fans departing the stadium Jets fans are compelled to share with New York's older, more storied franchise. But Serious Questions regarding the injuries to Darrelle Revis, Nick Mangold, Jason Taylor remain, as do concerns over the very existence of a team that a better class of New Yorkers regard as one would the development of a neck goiter.

The New York Jets were very nearly the same team that lost to the Baltimore Ravens last week - unimaginative, incoherent, bloated, loutish, confused, disoriented, and profane - yet somehow, through the mystical works of a universe guided by what appeared to be chance, the defense continued its relentless pressure against Tom Brady in almost the same way that the better-known New York franchise did two Super Bowls ago. Whether or not the Jets' defense would have been distracted by the presence of either of the women with whom Brady has produced children is uncertain. The verdict still remains on the attention span of such a Jets team, and thankfully Bill Belichick presented his detested rival with merely the Patriots' expected lineup. In this sense, one cannot entirely see the Jets' two-touchdown win as a complete victory over a vastly superior Patriots club.

Randy Moss scored his 150th touchdown, a stellar catch made with one hand - gesture that seemed destined to rank among the best of his Hall of Fame career. Meanwhile, the Jets did some things right. They completed passes, their offseason acquisition gained 76 yards on the ground, and the secondary appeared to be in the right places at the right times. That the Patriots did not score the entire second half signified that either the Patriots were doing poorly or that the Jets did well. Jets fans - corpulent, uneducated and rough - may have regarded it as a victory. Less partisan onlookers were prone to scratch it up to an unfortunate stroke of good fortune.

"When Moss got behind Revis to make a one-handed catch for a 34-yard touchdown," wrote George Vescey of this same publication, "the Jets had seemed to be in big trouble in their new home, with their own glib words coming back to haunt them." But even Vescey was forced to agree that the Jets had the game in hand by the fourth quarter. And to do it, "they didn’t need the reality-show language and bluster they exhibited on the television show Hard Knocks....The Jets did not need to make a spectacle of themselves, either on television or in their own locker room," he added, shaking his head in disappointment at the Jets' apparent victory.

The behavior of their coach, their assistants, and players in the presence of Ines Sainz continues to haunt the team. Even avid fans like Martin Roche, whose Jets blog has changed names too many times for the Times to count, has spoken out against the organized harassment of Sainz: "This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder why football itself is of more importance to me than issues of sanitation in the Third World."

The Times spends a great deal on its football coverage itself when its award-winning columnist Nicholas Kristoff is practically earning a Nobel Prize for Peace, and it makes the men who cover the Jets feel a crisp sense of shame that a good showing over the Patriots cannot help quell. In fact, Jets victories only seem to make it worse. The question is not so much whether or not the Jets can sustain their success without Darrelle Revis (a question they were wondering during training camp anyway) but whether or not the success the Jets have will force to compel a reader of the Times to imagine the distinctly unpleasant possibility witnessing a victory parade down Broadway filled with heavy men in Broadway Joe shirts.

Fortunately history tells us that the Jets won't get that far. Nevertheless, Times sources inside the Bloomberg government indicate that the current state of the city's economy would prohibit such a celebration.

Unless, of course, the Yankees repeat.

It's hard to write about a football team you love and care about in a blog without sounding pathetic and redundant. I'm going to be perfectly honest about that. I'm tired of writing about my feelings regarding this team when, well, to tell the truth, I'm too screwed up about how I feel during the season to really express any coherent thoughts. I'm a mess every weekend worrying about them, and the better they have to potential to be, the lousier I feel. I get this blank expression on my face most of the time, hanging around in my 12 or 28 jersey staring at the TV set, hoping for something that won't make me wince rather than hoping for a big play that will make me happy.

Which was appropriate for Monday night's game to be sure. It was painful, gut-wrenching. Not fun stuff. I figured out my next door neighbor was a Ravens fan. He has been kind enough not to gloat. But then this wasn't a blowout. The Ravens just strangle their opponents like a boa constrictor, watching the light in its prey's eyes slowly die out before ingesting it whole. He was worried that he was being too loud. He wasn't. When Kyle Wilson committed the pass interference that help set up the Ravens' lone touchdown, I took the Lord's name in vain so loudly that my wife told me that I sounded like the kind of man whom neighbors think beats his wife.

The Jets committed 14 horrible fouls throughout, the kind that reminded me of the heavily penalized teams of the early 80's that had all the potential to win the division but none of the luck or the discipline. The did talk big, they did swagger, and eventually all they did was make other teams shake their heads in bemusement. Nineteen eighty, Walton's first season, Parcells' last and Mangini's second - they all had the kind of promise that went into this new year, and they all leave my personal history with this team feeling empty and meaningless.

And then there's Inez Sainz. Of course my first reaction to all of this was to recall those whorish-looking babettes jiggling in front of the cameras during World Cup coverage on Univision and Telemundo. Still, wrong is wrong. In one week, the Jets coaches and players behaved in a way that has been rightly deemed inappropriate. (deep breath here) Even Rush Limbaugh said it was wrong to catcall Inez Sainz, although the next day he did say that the Jets were "celebrating her body." I mean, Rush is scumbag, after all. Still, when he's right, he's....well, never mind. The problem isn't really that a team of inhumanly sized men made animal farm noises at Mexico's idea of female sideline journalist, which includes a booty about which men with gold teeth often wax poetic. The real problem is that these two phenomena are made for each other in a sport mostly celebrated by lumpy and fat men like me. It's all wrong. Just all wrong.

I got sick watching the Ravens game, so I don't even know what I'll be like for New England on Sunday. I can't really write about it anymore. I've just got to go back to numbers, sweet numbers, because the past is filled with a disappointment that is comprehensible because it already happened, while the nature of the future's disappointment is unpredictable, leaving me with feelings of unspeakable dread. I believe what I'm actually describing is what my mental health care specialist would refer to as trauma. Ah well. Now let's go eat a god@#$ed snack.

NY Jets #24 - Part 2

"Who? I don't know who that it is. Once I step on the field it doesn't matter who's out there. I don't pay attention to numbers or names. I go out there and I focus on what I'm supposed to do. That's not a slight on him, or whoever he is. I just go out there and play football."

- Terrell Owens, quoted in Newsday, November 21, 2007

"Who?"

I'll tell you who. Contrary to the above sentiments of everybody's favorite sufferer of undiagnosed bipolar depression, our work is very much dedicated to to paying attention to numbers and names. And the man about whom Terrell Owens was speaking that day was Darrelle Revis, our current #24. The Cowboys made mincemeat of the Jets on Thanksgiving Day 2007. Owens scored one touchdown, and Revis had five tackles, but now, after three seasons we know exactly who that is.

One of the first things Rex Ryan said when he was first hired was that Darrelle Revis was the best cornerback in the game. I thought, well, maybe someday. And someday was last year, at which point he made himself the central point of one of the year's best defenses. Behold. His remarkable domination of Ochocinco in the season's last game and against the Chargers in the playoffs were things to which Jets fans are unaccustomed. We are accustomed to Bill Romanowski speaking ill of us and then pounding us in the divisional round. Revis' interceptions are like works of leaping, pirouetting choreography. He is a star. We have so few in the history of these numbers and names. This is what one looks like. This is no Albert Haynesworth. This is Darrelle Revis. That's who, Terrell. That's who.

Until the summer, and apparently now this season of 2010, rumors swirled that this was the week when Revis would sign for the team, but as Jets fans know, if an essential piece of a championship is missing, it will stay missing. I'm terrified now that it's all too late; that Revis has missed too much and won't be as effective as he would ordinarily have been. I know Rex Ryan has done much to bluster away the long, stale fog of bad fortune in our franchise's narrative, and he was right to insist in episode 1 of Hard Knocks that one man does not a team make. But he was also right in saying that Darrelle Revis is the best cornerback in the NFL, and among Jets fans, such a one is so unique that we cannot help but believe that one man will make all the difference. For so long, on any given Sunday, 11 men seemed to make absolutely no difference whatsoever. So why not one? This isn't a logical thing.

Darrelle Revis, contractually satisfied (a dramatization).

I wish they had signed him back sooner than Labor Day 2010. The club that keeps track of its conscession (sic) stats even in preseason should have been able to dig very, very deep much earlier and given one of its best investments exactly what he richly deserves. Yes, a contract is a contract, but as the white collar parasite CEO's of America will tell you (between taking sips of infant blood in diamond-studded carafes) there are always exceptions for people who are deemed indispensable. The Don Drapers of the world. I believe Darrelle Revis will be the last #24 in New York Jets history. That's what's important here. I don't want to have to write about another one. Call it greed or call it righteous indignation on his part. I believe Darrelle Revis is entitled to whatever he wants. If his contract made a specific demand that my Toyota Corolla to be handed over to him just so that he could bring it to his estate and light it on fire in front of his mighty entourage as a sacrificial sign of his power and glory, then that's fine. He can have it. (A talented colleague of mine has enabled you to see this conjured image for yourself). I can get up an hour early each day and take two trains to work. I just need the Jets to have a shot at the division before the 2011 lockout. As I would watch each station pass on the sunrise elevated blue line and stare out of its yellow windows, I would think to myself, "No, no. This is right. This is as it should be. This is good."

Ty Law

****

And now another modern football tale of, well, what else? - money. Salaries, the cap to supposedly contain them, the question of honor - all of these things are relative in the the angst-ridden world of pro football management. Number 24 Ty Law was a victim of franchise anxieties about the cap in New England and with the Jets. His one season with us was 2005, arguably his best as a pro. He had 10 interceptions, one of which was a stellar touchdown return against the Patriots the day after Christmas - a gift of sorts for Mr. Law because a year before, the Patriots had wanted to renegotiate with him to put themselves back under the cap. Bruised, he said that a "bridge was burned" with the Pats. Anybody who says this is fine by me. And what better way to celebrate this fissure with the Devil than with this belated Christmas gift of a touchdown pick?

But then of course the Jets made him a victim of the cap's anxieties a year later, and so Law went to play for another Jets-rejecting coach at Kansas City, Herman Edwards. Then in 2008 Law wanted back in New England. Bridge burned, bridge rebuilt.

Ray Mickens

The story becomes all the more poignant, or more likely cruel, when we consider the case of #24 Ray Mickens. As we mentioned, to cover themselves with the salary cap, the Patriots let Ty Law go in 2005, and the Jets picked him up. This made Ray Mickens, one of my personal favorite secondary players, very happy for the help he'd get in the secondary. "Unselfish one day," Karen Crouse wrote in the Times, "unemployed the next." With Law on the team just before the 2005 season, the Jets needed to fix their cap problems, and so they released Mickens and gave Law his number. After a year in Cleveland with no interceptions, the Jets resigned Mickens in 2006, ten years after Ritchie Kotite first drafted him. Then they immediately released Ray Mickens again. He was then picked up by New England to play four final games of his career with them in 2006. If these fellows did not make at least a million a year, I would almost bemoan the quandaries that the cap creates, but these guys know that it's not personal. Bridges never actually burn in the first place. That's the reality, and while the cap may theoretically encourage some parity among teams, most teams like the Jets achieve and lose that parity within a year or two partly because of these very issues.

BUT WAIT!! The rebuilt bridge got burned again!! Ty Law came back once more. He got signed by the Jets to play against the Pats the week of 11/10/08. "I know they're going to throw at me," he said to ESPN, "but I welcome the challenge -- bring it. I got the tricks for you." Ty Law seems to have retired after a year with Denver. He wore #22 while with the Jets again, and #26 with Denver.

Did you know that Darrelle Revis grew up in the same small hometown of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania as Ty Law? And that Revis also chose #24 as a tribute to the elder Law? "That's my little boy," Law said of the younger Revis. Even Darrelle Revis was somebody's little boy once. But wherever Ty Law is, wherever he goes, one thing's for sure. As soon as he's back working in anyone's lineup, for anyone, the laws of the universe will require that Ray Mickens will have to be released from something somewhere. A marriage. A prison. A demon. A job. A cobra's grip.

NY Jets #24 - Part 1

Leon Burton

He was a 1990 inductee into the Greater Flint Afro-American Hall of Fame. However, we're here tonight to honor Leon Burton as the first #24 in the history of the franchise. A standout back at Arizona State, Burton didn't play in the AFL very long. The Edsel of 1960's football clubs, the Titans were a bad place to start, and not a fair way to end your professional football career. I'm glad the folks at Flint had the decency to remember their native son, anyway.

Freeman McNeil

Freeman McNeil #24 was one of my favorite players from the 1980's. Smarting after years of watching the Jets play poorly, and knowing that our best player, no matter how good he was, was half-blind, it was exhilarating for me to watch McNeil as a second-year runner tear up defenses in 1982 and finish as the league's leading rusher - a distinction almost no Jets have had. (Have any? I should know that!) I resent the fact that he is included in ESPN's evaluation of historic Jets draft blunders. He might have played better, surely, through his career, and his promise dropped off as the Jets' underwhelmed us through most of the 80's, but he is no Lam Jones or Blair Thomas. I beg to differ. His breakaway touchdown (begin the link at the 1:46 mark) against the Browns in the 1987 Divisional Playoffs - stumbling, regaining himself and sprinting his way to the Dog Pound - is a still visceral memory of joy. We were going to the AFC Championship Game at Denver. Such brief joy. Then watch the rest of the Greatest Games segment, parts 6, 7, and 8 of 8, and you will understand how my adolescent sense of a benevolent universe gave way to a nihilism painted as black as night.

In 1992, Freeman McNeil was also the named person representing the players' interests in the McNeil vs. NFL case that helped rule against the NFL's efforts to sustain parity among teams by protecting up to 37 players from free agency, aka Plan B. The court ruled in favor of the players headed by McNeil, the man with the historically appropriate name of Freeman. As with Curt Flood, the ruling in McNeil's favor came too late, for that same year McNeil retired.

Freeman McNeil
(at his most calm)

I would add one more thing about McNeil, one of my all-time favorite Jets. I recent search on him produced this startling image of a man who looks as though he is hosting an episode of Masterpiece Theatre from the 10 yard-line of the Meadowlands, or better yet a main character for a summer network show about a football player who fights crime in his spare time. It's Freeman McNeil, chatting in the December 1997 issue of Pipe Smoke. This was the time before the Internet was destroying print matter, and there was a magazine for everything - taxidermists, tree doctors, dry cleaning, and pipe smokers. He speaks very well of Jets fans; he goes so far as to say that he felt the 1982 Strike Year team "was one of the best teams assembled in the history of the game," which I love, even if I'm inclined to disbelieve it. Freeman McNeil loves his pipe:

"My wife has a rule," says Freeman, 38. "No smoking in the house, or around the children. So I go outside with my Peterson and a cup of Earl Grey tea with sweet milk. It's very soothing. I'm at my most calm when I'm relaxing with my pipe and my tea."

When are you at your most calm? Are you ever at that point? I don't think I really have an answer to that. There's jogging, yoga, reading, biking, writing, meditation, but I haven't the discipline for any of these as consistently as I'd like. One presumes Freeman McNeil does some of those things in retirement even still. But would you begrudge this man his pipe? Not if you're a fair person. Not by a long shot. He looks too pleased with retirement for you to step in and be just another person to talk to him about the distant possibility of mouth cancer. Hell, no. He can keep smoking. He's Freeman McNeil.

****

Artimus Parker
(not deceased)

Behold #24 Artimus Parker. He was probably drafted high by the Eagles in 1974 after belonging to one of the greatest squads USC ever produced. He did snag four interceptions for the Eagles in 1975. Yet he would have to wait until 1977, his lone season with the Jets, and his last in the NFL, for another interception. I would love to know in which game that INT came, especially since it was good for a total of 45 yards. Somehow I had come under the impression that he had died in 2004, which he had not. Neither did I. We're both lucky men.

(deceased)

****

Was the late Johnny Sample really a dirty ball player? Number 24 was certainly confrontational, but in light of the more egregiously gruesome displays put on by Jack Tatum and the like, Sample was more of a trash talker than a "dirty" player, whatever that means. He relentlessly pushes and needles Fred Bilentnikoff after the play is done throughout the 1968 AFL Title Game, but it was Randy Beverly who tried to trip Fred's legs after he caught a Raiders touchdown in the first half. Sample was clearly a character absolutely indispensable to the Jets' morale in Super Bowl III, hectoring his former teammates on the Colts. After intercepting the ball near the Colts' goal line, Sample decorously places the ball on Willie Richardson's head.

Sample passed away last year. In an interview during NFL's Greatest Games discussion of Super Bowl III, done while Sample was still alive, Tom Matte insists that he would never speak to Johnny Sample if he saw him. His reasoning derives, we presume, in no small way from the event that transpired between the two during the game. In pursuing Matte during a 58 yard run, Sample failed to stop himself and apparently stepped on Matte's groin when Matte went down, compelling the offended party to get quickly to his feet and, accidentally, knock a few of an official's teeth out in the ensuing but brief donnybrook.

Johnny Sample did not step
on Tom Matte's groin

But let the truth now be told. Whatever frustration Matte felt was directed at the wrong man. He may not have liked Sample, but Johnny Sample did not step on Tom Matte's groin. I can't believe I know this, but from frequent viewing of the matter at hand (don't ask and stop laughing) I have seen the truth with my own eyes. The guilty party (and even here, it was probably an accident) is Jets lineman, #80 John Elliot. If anything, Sample might have been guilty of a late hit. After the play, Willie Richardson points at Sample as if to say that he's done something wrong. Watch it for yourself, beginning at the 7:22 mark. You be the judge. Is Tom Matte still right to hold a grudge against the late Johnny Sample? To my mind, Sample never denied doing it, so perhaps not. This may have been to serve his reputation as a dirty player. It's a strange game sometimes, and the men who play insist on behaving strangely.

It was strange for Jim Tiller, too, the second #24 in franchise history - a man with 11 games with the New York Titans to his NFL record, 43 yards rushing, no touchdowns. According to Titans' press material on Tiller, he "worked as a social worker during the offseason." It's not exactly the field of work I see football's toughest players going into, which might explain the terrible Titans that much more. But if Harry Wismer was in charge of dispensing information on his players to the press, can we ever really know the veracity of this information? Henry Ford was right. History is bunk.