Favre 42 Cardinals 28 Mets (Kaibashed)

It's Monday Night, already. In a single day, Brett Favre tied Joe Namath's 36 year-old Jet record for touchdowns in a game, while the Mets showed once again why they are Fate's pet monkey. Favre's heroics against the equivalent of a Junior Varsity NFL defense were admirable (but was it necessary for us to allow the Cardinals to score 28 points?). I'm grateful that the Cards' Anquan Boldin is alive and well. I was glad too that the Jets' Eric Smith was fined for the hit he put on Boldin, even if the hit also rendered Smith unconscious as well. What a thing to wake up to. You're out 50 grand and you may have paralyzed another human being. Frankly I would rather be out the money, even if it's very close to my annual salary.

I myself have never been unconscious from anything other than experiences rendered through sheer exhaustion or extraordinary intoxication. I've blacked out, sure. I remember passing out in the middle of the Our Father in Mass as a boy, but not for any shady reason. My hangovers in Mass didn't begin until I was in college, which might explain why I eventually stopped going to Mass. Ah me.

Mom still goes to Mass. Yesterday, while the Mets were flailing for their lives, she was waiting in the parking lot of her church. She and Dad had just driven eight hours from a strange trip to South Carolina back to Virginia yesterday and hadn't even bothered to go home yet. There was enough time to make the last Mass of the day, so that's where they were. She called from the parking lot on her cell, wanting an update on the Mets last game of the season.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Why aren't you at home?"

She didn't answer. I knew what she meant by this. This is what real loyalty looked like. Going to Mass on a wet, late Sunday when the Church still offers dispensation for missing Mass to its weary travelers was what real faith looked like. She had been traveling north for hours, allowing herself to linger in the dusky haze of not knowing how the Mets were doing, dreading and hoping without any news at all. Mom and Dad do not have call waiting on their home phone, nor do they own anything so contemporary as a cell phone with access to the interweb. These were the last people on their block, God bless them, to own a VCR. Was I watching? Yes. The Mets were losing on TBS, even while the Jets were far ahead of the Cardinals - the most beleaguered of NFL franchises - a team whose owner looks like a dilapidated patrician Philosophy professor. It was 3-2 Marlins in the 8th. She wanted an update before she went into a 5 pm Mass.

"I'm sure it would be OK with God if you just went home, Mom."

"I'm going to call you again when Mass is over," she said, without responding. "Tell me how it ends."

When she came out, I had to break the news that not only did the Mets fail to rally, but the Brewers had also rallied against the Cubs. Yet another Mets season had come to its improbable, excruciating end. Shea was now finished for good, left behind in a fog of terrible voodoo, the structure itself now marked by the nightmares witnessed over its two final Septembers. But there was my Mom, obviously crying on the other end of the phone in a church parking lot in Virginia. I felt awful for her and guilty for abandoning a God that she had gone to that day with an open heart. I half think that she went inside church with the same kind of faith that all true fans have. Maybe this time. I've been so loyal for so long that it's got to work out this time. It's got to. It's just got to. Please.

****

While going to my classroom this morning, a colleague accosted me with the newfound generosity of spirit some Philadelphians are showing Mets fans. It's temporary. "My heart goes out to you," he said. "Thanks," I replied. "But maybe it's just time to destroy Shea." I said this with only a slightly veiled anger, ignoring New York State's prohibitions against demolition by implosion - ignoring too (much to my appalled realization seconds later) that the colleague to whom I was speaking is named "Shay."

****

Perhaps this vision of a victorious Brett seriously intends to stay, even if I'm wary of feeling good about his big day. How great was it to see Brett Favre throwing in the uniform of the failed ur-Jets - the mighty blue and mustard incarnation of New York's Titans? I predicted they would be 2-2 by now. But questions abound. Does Favre need to play only in yellow pants in order to win? Can somebody get this man a pair of canary slacks?

Brett Favre's Learning Curve

There are several issues to discuss with respect to the upcoming game against the Cardinals, but really the one issue that most Jet fans are wondering about is Brett Favre's acclimation with the playbook, or the complete absence of it. As I've said before, whereas great baseball teams have won the whole shebang with either mediocre pitching or mediocre hitting, it's absurd to think of a winning football team without a superlative signal caller. Even the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, at the very least, had Trent Dilfer. Then they immediately ditched him, attempting to prove ever since that they don't need any more than a cardboard cutout or an wounded man at the position. They have been wrong.

If you listened to the prognosticators all summer, the Jets were right. They picked a known commodity at quarterback whose only known wound was to his ego. All the experienced Jets fans out there felt wary, but we were told that such wariness is just typical of our pessimistic nature. More of us reacted with the temporarily restorative adrenaline that a terminally ill patient feels when a big name star visits him in the hospital. Regardless of our first response, we all figured that something had to come of a player as great as Brett Favre. As far as I recall, a person was an expert in his field after years of experience similar to Favre's in duration. If I got a job at a different high school teaching English, I know I would be able to bring my experience to bear upon the new task. I've been teaching mostly blue collar to barely middle class kids for nine years, but if someday I started teaching upper middle class, entirely college bound adolescents, I know I would have to make some serious adjustments to the new environment. I'd have to learn to cope with intrusive parents, constant online classrooms and students who believe that I am their butler. Still, kids are kids. Theoretically, though, a classroom is a classroom, and a kid with an iPhone is still a kid. I guess I would know what to do.

One wonders, though. How long does it take to make adjustments to a new assignment? In America, what you do is who you are. So how long does it take to be at home in a new home? Some people said that Brett Favre was temporarily flummoxed by the playbook, some suggest that the problem runs deeper than that. What I could not believe was that Ron Jaworski suggested during the Jets' loss on MNF that any quarterback needs at least six to seven years to adjust to a new system, regardless of experience. Six to seven years. Six. To. Seven. Years.

Which is absurd. Not even in the hottest pitch of my most horrid nightmare fever dreams would I believe that a quarterback would need six to seven years of experience in one system before being thought of as competent. I mean, I know that Matt Ryan is an anomaly. Vince Young has learned the pain of inconsistent success at the position. Maybe Jay Cutler is the next great quarterback ever, but most likely he will go the way of Jake Plummer. I certainly hope not. Such things were once said of John Elway: "He'll go the way of Art Schlichter, even without all the gambling problems."

Face it, though - we're not training any of these people to become Jesuits or bone surgeons. It took my wife a total of eight years to get both her Master's and PhD in English. Though discerning among five or six audibles is more challenging than the mind work Johnny Unitas did on the field after flinging his sideline parka at Don McCafferty, no one expects any these folks to be able to know how to manage a complicated border dispute in the Middle East. Without any deep threats, though, Brett Favre will be able to do just so much, even when he gets his honorary doctorate for mastering Brian Schottenheimer's overly complex, underachieving offense. Via cum dois, Brett. Better yet, et in arcadia ego.

Feel My Pain

I've written before about the peculiar position of being a Mets fan in Philadelphia. Obviously I keep a lot of it to myself, and I also find myself caring a great deal for the Phillies, a team that even a Latin American junta leader could learn to love ere long. That being said, I want both the Mets and Phillies to make the post-season, and, in keeping with their traditional character traits, each is being coy about whether or not they actually want to be there.

But it's the Mets who are the most enraging, the most imponderable, the most astoundingly self-destructive of the two. Last night's incredible loss to the Cubs was a work of fiction. How could anyone's bullpen be as bad as theirs? Do the Royals have a bullpen that bad? And if I'm not mistaken, the cumulative number of men the Mets left on base may very well have outnumbered the number of hits they got. Aside from a testimony to the Cubs' poor pitching, it's also obviously a sign of a home team that has PTSD. I think we know where the rest of this story is going.

And I'm having deja vu all over again, too. (That phrase, you know, is so hackneyed that it has entered the mainstream, left it, stuck around like an elderly loner with to do nothing such that nobody remembers where or when it came into being; someone corrected me the other day, saying, "You know, people say that all the time, but they often overlook that it's a redundancy..." Alas, poor Yogi.) Wasn't it last year that I was going through a personal reckoning as to "how long a season it is going to be" for the Jets, even as I watched the Mets implode? Is this where I came in? I have argued for the spiritually purifying fire of watching your favorite team lose, but this, I believe, may be ridiculous. Contemplate the perceived depth the Jets have at the quarterback position, and yet know that Favre doesn't know the playbook at all. Feel the frustration of watching Carlos Delgado's grand slam came to naught. Listen to the fans who haven't left in extra innings boo the Mets lustily at Shea (what a fitting closure to my favorite stadium). Come November, when Obama loses the national election to a geriatric has-been and his Fundamentalist Christian running mate, the sense of watching my teams lose will finally be complete. Then I can watch somebody else in the Super Bowl. If Fate still has a sense of humor, it will be the Giants again.

Even my most vituperatively anti-New York colleague at work stopped me and admitted that maybe, just maybe, he could feel my pain. If you know anything about Philadelphians and their almost Balkan sense of loyalty, you have to be overwhelmed by a gesture like that.

Jets vs. Chargers - First Half

9:35 pm EST

I'm exhausted. My wife's away in Portugal on business this week, and, at the risk of sounding like I'm asking for people to make the appreciative sound of awwwwwwwww, I'm having difficulty sleeping at night without her. Yeah, yeah. Is it possible that this game will keep me from my appointed ride down the dark and narrow tunnel of sleep? We'll see. Right now, it's 24-14 Chargers. The way the Bolts move the ball, it'll probably be more before the end of the half. Favre has now thrown two interceptions.

I am planning on adding an addendum to the "Epic Ode to Chad Pennington" with a congratulatory note to the man in question, even though Ronnie Brown practically beat the New England Patriots single-handedly. But it's the thought that counts, and it's a bittersweet thought at that (for the Jets fan these are the most redolent). I cannot blink from the contrast between these two circumstances - Chad's and Brett's. But tonight it's not just Favre. Look at what's happened already tonight. Do you use the onsides kick against an offense that runs the table? I guess. It's a gutsy risk that rarely works. I see plenty of missed tackles, missed coverages. The Jets defensive line are holding on for dear life, like Gene Hackman's obnoxious character in The Poseidon Adventure (was that not the clumsiest cinematic analogy I could draw? I am tired). Despite a delightful return by Leon Washington, during which he may have actually split in half not once but twice, I still have a familiar sinking feeling.

The Chargers are threatening again. Each time San Diego puts LT to the line, the Jets move further and further back.

Ah, voila. San Diego up, 31-14.

Right now I'm teaching the kids Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard's play about two characters whose secondary importance in Hamlet merits them a fate that is paradoxically certain and yet unknown to them. No matter how they try to approach their situation, no matter how they try to ascertain their own significance in the universe, no matter how they try to make sense of it all, it always ends the same way. Hamlet's pals always end up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

But recall that like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we all come into a world with a certain end, yet we remain uncertain of how the end will come. And how many of us are willing to grasp this concept without diving into numbing intoxication or falling to our knees in half-considered prayers of mercy to a higher power? Ah, but the fan of a chronically losing team has had plenty of experience envisioning a bad end before the end of a game, even without knowing the final score. Such are a Jets fans thoughts at the end of the the first half on the first night of autumn. The Jets fan cannot help but feeling like he is watching a play he has seen before. It's all good preparation for seeing one's life come to an end, if you ask me. The Jets fan can see it; he's learned to brace himself for the worst all these years, knowing that the end will come in a loss. I guess we are more prepared for the plummet into mortality than any damned fan of the Cowboys, or the AFC East Division Rival Of Whom We Do Not Speak. How surprised by the Final Act can we possibly be?

NY Jets Pregame - Week 3

It's hard for me to believe it, but there was once a time when I had abandoned the idea of teaching. After working at several adjunct teaching gigs in colleges around Philly, I took up work as a glorified assistant in medical editing. I had an office job. I had a cubicle. I worked nine to five and took the bus everyday like thousands upon thousands of other city workers. I edited documents having to do with treatment protocols for gynecologic disorders. I processed drug toxicity reports on chemotherapies being performed on patients throughout the country. It was depressing work that became surprisingly dull, as even the most existentially taxing work can. And, too the degree that one could be, I was truly lousy at it.

In keeping with the general malaise of this particular stretch in my professional life, what business trips there were took us to metropolises like Buffalo, Detroit, Des Moines, and Atlanta. There are thousands of worse places in America to travel (well, actually, maybe not in Detroit's case, God bless its dead heart) but even around the time of the Olympics, Atlanta was remarkably frustrating. After we landed anywhere, my job was to find a restaurant that everybody in the office would enjoy for dinner. Not too expensive, not too spicy, not too quaint, not too vulgar, not too mainstream, not too exotic, not too loud, not too quiet. For some reason, the only place anybody could agree on was Benihana, which I could never find. I don't think I was looking very hard. It wouldn't have made that much difference, anyway. You can't make miserable people happy.

But then one miraculous year, we went to San Diego for a conference. Now I had never been to California, the nearest faraway place. I had spent an entire life in the shadow of California's extraordinary hold on the pop imagination. Everything cool was out there. Carson had moved out there. It's where Jim Rockford's brown Firebird and personal trailer were parked. And it was where the power had shifted. I lived in the suburban east, with detours in Memphis and St. Louis. In the American course of things, the west was where everything was going; consider Nixon and Reagan from sunny California, Cheney from Idaho, the Bushes of Texas, McCain of Arizona and Palin of Alaska. Ferraro of New York and Kerry and Dukakis from Massachusetts weren't the big winners. The east was no longer the arrogant seat of landed wealth about which Fitzgerald wrote; even he had died in the service of his new master in Hollywood. If I taught myself as a fan to love something as distant to my imagination as a Jets championship, then California represented everything I both scorned and coveted. The @#$%ing Raiders of Los Angeles, the 49ers of San Francisco. The West Coast Offense. This was how I thought of California when I arrived.

And after seven days in San Diego, I didn't want to go home. I found myself getting up with the morning fog that burned off before midday and going happily to my stupid work meetings, feeling great. I rented a bike and traveled downtown, then into the hills surrounding the city, just on the boundaries of the endless desert to the city's east. Everywhere I went I saw cars parked in the driveways of modern homes that had survived the years without any of the rain, slush and schmutz that turned cars back home into rustbuckets. There were Delorean-age Pontiacs, vintage Iaccoca Ford Mustangs in perfect condition, and Family Squires with faux paneling looking brand new. It was as if I were suddenly transported to my sun-addled memories of traveling on my bike in the summers of the 70's as a boy with nothing to do, only add the palm trees and an almost synthetically blue sky. For the first time in about eight years, I didn't smoke a single cigarette for week. I did go and buy an expensive cigar after a pleasant night of gorging and smoked it along the lapping waters of the Marina. And it was January. My co-workers were their usual bullying, drunken, petty, selfish, gruesome selves, but it just didn't bother me as much. Look at that sky. How could I go home?

****

We all have to go home, though. And to the team we love.

I watched the end of that absurd Chargers-Broncos game last week, thinking that the only thing that could possibly have disoriented the muscular Ed Hochuli's mind was the breathless speed at which both offenses moved the ball around. If the Jets have any hope against San Diego tomorrow night, it is because the Bolts' defense is apparently not what it could be. But my stars. It was like an old AFL game (and yes, I know Dick Enberg said during the broadcast, but I thought it before he said it) with teams throwing the ball with gusto. It's like Sid Gillman rose up from the grave, lit his empty pipe, straightened his still undecayed bow tie, and shot his zombie eyes at Philip Rivers, insisting to the volatile quarterback that "Lance" was somewhere in the corner to be found. "Throw it there, John. Like we saw in the films." Rather than correct his new, undead coach (Gillman had already eaten the brains of Norv Turner) and tell him he was not in fact John Hadl, Rivers just did as he was told. He even thought about talking the injured Tomlinson into loaning him his jersey just to make the zombie man happy. Frightened by the notion of being mistaken for Frank Tripucka or Marlin Briscoe, Jay Cutler did the same on the other side of the ball. Free form football. Just go out. That's the original west coast offense.

I'm still filled with an old jealousy of the west. It's sunnier and happier there. God, what I wouldn't give to see the Jets do that. Throw the ball. Use the space. Open it up. When the Jets come home after Monday night's game, I'm afraid of what they'll have to report. Unlike most people I talk to (here I claim the right to speak thus) I'm not encouraged by anything the Jets are doing, especially after last week's unimaginative loss. I feel like Brian Shottenheimer's promises to spread the offense out more are like my similar pledges to use laptop computers in my English class more often. I want to modernize and challenge the game plan, just not right now. Not yet. Can it wait a week? The answer is no. The modern world can't wait. Listen to the zombie.

Jets on the Cover of Sports Illustrated (Part 2)

Joe Namath enjoyed his share of SI covers - eight in all, including one a couple of years ago in advance of Mark Kriegel's biography. We see in these the gradual evolution of the person of Namath, from charming youth, to phenomenon, to counter-cultural dreamer, to Gatorade-sucking champion, to teetering legend, to weeping outcast, to Hollywood hack, to a permanently jittery Joe. We also see the transition of an era from Brillcreme to hairspray, each on either side of things like assassinations and Stonewall. Namath was present at the evolution of a more frank and contemporary New York, acting as its slouching and limping pied piper.

Here is Joe Namath, December 1968, on the brink of the greatest moment a football player of his era will have. As the cover suggests he "eyes the Super Bowl," but apparently he does so with eyes colored a suspiciously garish azure blue. He looks like an Atreides who's ingested a little too much spice before riding the sandworm of Dune, or maybe just a barbarian gazing hungrily the spoils of civilization at its gates. The article doesn't bother with a serious evaluation of the Jets near the end of their best season to date, nor with anything about Namath's extraordinary turnaround that year from promiscuous passer to disciplined captain. No. Instead Edwin Shrake writes a satirical piece entitled "Champagne Party for Joe and Weeb," which imagines, even before the playoffs start, the ludicrous idea of the Jets beating the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, 27-21. So improbable and lampoonish does such a notion seem that the Jets are reduced to charming cartoons of their selves; the only illustration for the piece is a drawing of Namath in Visigoth furs and a Fu Manchu mustache suspiciously reminiscent of Genghis Khan, smashing a bottle of champagne over Weeb Ewbank's head. The world wasn't ready.

I was always befuddled by this one. This is Joe in victory. But am I missing something? Is this really the culminating portrait of a man who guaranteed and then executed his greatest victory? Why is this the image we're supposed to conjure? I remember playing Pee Wee football with those bottles. You'd squeeze it and like a nested bird, you'd open your mouth nice and wide and be sated by the watery lemonade-feel of Gatorade entering your system. I have just consumed something that will make me a champion today. What makes him a Super Hero, a Super Joe here? Is it his unquenchable thirst for the drink that restores the minerals lost to the human body in sweat? Super Hero, Super Joe, Super Thirsty.

He came, he bought a bar, he wept, he left, he returned. I've written before about Bachelor's III and its impact on the imagination of a man like myself who travels in the distant wake of his own sauced ravages. As this piece from Modern Drunkard attests, the sentimental attraction to such a person is endless, even after silly old Joe tried kissing Suzy Kolbert. Plainly put, the simple pleasures of having one's cake and eating it too were first honed to perfection by the co-owner of Bachelor's III. Bo Belinsky and Mickey McDermott were mere Robert Burnses to Namath's William Blake. Namath was a professional drunk and star in the one, half Sinatra, half Graceland-era Elvis. In light of Pacman Jones, Rozelle's grievances against Namath seem ridiculous. Namath appeared to enjoy himself in his cups and never needed anyone more than Ray Abruzzese and other such Crimson Tide cronies to help him find the door. When Rozelle told him to cut out the bar business because a bunch of shiny suits were Bachelor III customers, Namath wept. Any man who loved pleasure would have. Love me or leave me, world. I yams what I yams.

When he "returned" that same preseason for a meaningless encounter with the College All-Stars - a promotional show previously enjoyed by the Packers - it appears that Joe and the team were thwarted by the likes of Bill Bergey and Greg Cook, both of whom would go on to play for the fledgling Bengals. The Jets were looking at the future, the one with winning NFL teams staffed by many of the college players on the other side of the ball. This was the future that would crush the Jets in the 70's. In my early childhood reading, I ran across a profile of Greg Cook which relayed the story that the young quarterback went to the preseason matchup looking forward, above all, to meeting his idol on the other team, another #12, the most famous in sport. But Namath blew him off, much to Cook's eternal scorn. To quote Updike on Ted Williams, "Gods don't answer letters."

By the time the Jets were well into the 1972 season, a different AFC Eastern Division team was worth more of the print. Nevertheless, the 1972 Jets - a team a little better than their 7-7 record, made it to the cover for what would the last time for 11 years. And for what? For being quixotic. For being beguiling. For being "jittery." Recall that the Jets nearly beat the Dolphins in the Orange Bowl, falling by a score of 28-24. Jitters, I guess - that and a Cliff McClain fumble in the fourth quarter.

My brother Charlie (a Giants fan) reminded me that in the early part of 1986, the city's two favorite narcissistic head cases on defense appeared on a cover of SI that suggested that one New York team more than the other always got the mother load of Mackintosh apples. At the time of this cover, each team was actually setting the NFL aflame. I remember now that when I first saw this cover at the ripe old fan's age of 17, it never occurred to me that New York was a Giants town more than Jets town. Seriously. I mean, I had heard Dad's stories about being heckled by Giants fans at his office when he told them about his latest Sunday outing at Shea. Dad had also told me he had been the original kind of Jets fan, one who couldn't get Giants tickets at Yankee Stadium. In high school, my Giants fan friend Doug treated me like I was a leper with running sores when we talked about football. But still, I had always assumed that Namath's victory in Super Bowl III and the subsequent 1969 preseason trouncing of the Giants at the Yale Bowl had made us equals in the eyes of the city, if not in God's. This despite the fact that even during the miserable 70's for both teams, the Giants sold out every Sunday while the Jets couldn't show games on local TV. But then what did I know? As a little boy on Long Island, I had also assumed that the Earth was populated with nothing but Catholics and Jews. It stood to reason.

The 1986 SI article attests to the Jets' promise, particularly after an enormous 51-45 win over Miami, but the cover is more prophetic. As so many of our years in the playoff rounds, it all ended gruesomely. By the end of the 1986 season, I understood my place in the universe well enough.

Patriots 19 Jets 10 - Week 2

Aaron Rodgers' offense scored 42 points in Green Bay, while the Jets scored 10 against Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak. It was a bad day for Brett, a bad day to be a Jets fan. Granted, Brett has to learn more of the playbook, but when he lead the team to a quick snap inside the five in the fourth quarter for which his colleagues were not prepared, he looked genuinely disappointed. "It's like we invited Brett Favre to our house," my wife said as we watched the Jets lose 19-10, "but there were no beverages to offer." Everywhere Jets fans seemed to wait for their team's timid offense to wake up and play. It did not. After a while, it was difficult to watch, a strangulation, a long march toward solemn defeat.

But watch it I did. I saw a limited running attack; a few good runs from Leon Washington and Thomas Jones, both of whom constitute the Jets' ground game. Many of our receivers were inactive for the game. There was a lot up the middle. My wife has been watching football with me for a while now, and I have patronizingly endured her complaints about how useless it is to run up the middle. Sometimes I feel the same way, but I always think there's a good explanation for it. But I felt the same way as she all game Sunday. All game. I didn't see Jay Feely's missed field goal in the first quarter because I was in the restroom. My trip was a result of a mistaken impression that his was a veritable chip shot through the posts. J-E-T-S.

Three runs up the middle in the first quarter went for naught. It's the mantra swarming the bare coverage the Jets will get this week in the New York media. We have the most explosive elderly quarterback in the game, and we keep going up the middle. Meanwhile New England ran screen passes to Wes Welker that the Jets appeared entirely unprepared to handle, which is ridiculous because we've all seen the Patriots run them before. These are the kind of plays that wear down a team down, but even more, they wear down the fan. This was the home opener, and by the midway point of the mildly distracting fourth quarter, the Jet faithful were already gathering as traffic on the Turnpike.

Kerry Rhodes had a great game, calling a sensible timeout that snuffed out a potential New England touchdown. Darrelle Revis played well, and the pass rush looked good. Our defense in the red zone looked good. Imagine if the defense had not been able to stop the Patriot touchdowns that were held to field goals: 35-10.

Listening to CBS didn't help. Jim Nance's recent memoir features pictures of the two George Bushes in the background, which makes sense. He sings with the winners. Shall I take the bitter pill? Hell, why not. His co-celebrant at the altar of Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak, Phil Simms, mispronounced Dustin Keller's last name as "Kellner." Ah well. Dustin's only a Jet.

"Well," I said, consoling myself, as Thomas Jones started picking up the running game a little too late, "the Jets are still kind of making a game of it."

"That's the spirit," said my wife.

I still don't know why she endures watching Jets games with me. She can obviously see that I don't actually enjoy it. I can't wait for it to start, but I can barely watch without sounding like a lost dog. Often I watch the game with a slackjacked expression. Even as I saw Laverneus Coles make that impressive gain in the first half to set up three successively unsuccessful runs up the middle, she must have seen me wordlessly moving myself to the edge of my chair and opening my mouth with a silent offering of devotion and hope - a "please" or maybe "don't drop the ball." These phrases really do crystallize the parallel emotions of a Jets fan as his team is driving. The closer they get to the goal line, the more that one feels that a turnover is imminent. The Jets' success is the bell; my anticipatory fear is dread's salivation.

Speaking of silence, how about the cavernous quiet of the Meadowlands in the fourth quarter? How quiet? The stadium was so silent that as the Patriots drove into the red zone for what would eventually be their last field goal, one could hear a lone manic whistler somewhere in the crowd. Like a shouting child in a parking garage who tries out his echo, the whistler seemed amazed at how his noise bounced around the vast space. It was mad in its endurance. At first it stood out in the same way that certain crowd noises do, and maybe the frustration I felt with the game forced it to the foreground of my brain. But how could anyone near the whistler have endured it for the five real minutes it went on and on? So sharp and piercing was the sound that one could not do anything but conclude that its owner had lost his mind. The agonizing game left the whistler with nothing to do but make a sound normally used by desperately stranded hikers in the mountains who are trying to attract the attention of search parties. It was intermittent only so that whistler could come up for air, and once he did, the piercing sound renewed again. It was a maddening cry for help. It went on and on and on.