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.