I was raised in N. Jersey right on the state line. Towns in that area perrenially ranked in the top ten in the nation. I've been to Naples as well, sorry it's still Italy, its still very beautiful, right next to Mt Vesuvius with volcanic ash beaches. point taken, but just sayin!
How is it ridiculous? Any publicity is good publicity. We as hardcore fans hate the negative attention the New York Jets receive daily but honestly they receive more exposure and basically if and when they become a juggernaut or win the Super Bowl people will jump on this team's bandwagon and it would rival the Steelers. Plus people love things that other people hate. You know how many people will latch on to this team and fanbase just due to the fact that we are absolutely despised. There are teams in smaller markets who would suck another man's uncircumcised penis for the media attention we get. It's not like our players are going out there and killing people or getting in trouble either, people just hate our organization because it's totally unorthodox. Basically the lows will be low with us (buttfumble, medias constant deriding of us) but the highs would be much better.
Before this thread degenerates into a discussion of what city or state is better than another, let's get back to the article and a discussion of why the Jets are broadly hated in 2013. First, the hatred is by no means historical. If you go back to the AFL-NFL days in the late 60s and early 70s, your opinion of the Jets (and the AFL) depended on your politics. The Jets put the AFL on the map and Namath, who was the face of the Jets, was a symbol of the anti-establishment counter-culture generation of those times. If you were young and a democrat and against the Vietnam war and had longer hair and liked the Beatles/Rolling Stones, you loved the Jets. If you had a crew cut and a hard hat and were a Republican and liked Sinatra and hated Rock and Roll, you were an NFL fan and hated the Jets and the AFL. It was kind of like Ali/Frazier I in 71. Ali supporters were Namath/Jets/AFL fans and Frazier supporters were NFL/ Giants fans. The thing is, the split was about 50/50. But as the 70s approached and the Jets went into a decade of losing, they became basically irrelevant in the NFL. The NFL of the 70s was all about the Steelers and the Cowboys and the Raiders and nobody but Jets fans cared about the Jets. They were neither hated nor loved. While the Jets started winning in the 80's, they became a hot ticket and the STH waiting list formed (and eventually the Jets had the second largest waiting list in the NFL by the late 90s behind the Redskins), there was no hatred of the Jets. While there was some tension with the local media (Todd pushing Serby into a locker in 81), the Jets were just another NFL team. In 1986 , the Jets were the talk of the NFL with the 10-1 start (in a positive way) until the team was hit with a rash of injuries and collapsed. The teams that were hated back then were the teams that won and had a personality - Dallas (America's team), Oakland (dirty team with wacko owner). The 49ers began their dynasty in the 80's and you had teams like the 85 Bears grabbing national headlines when it wasn't SF. In the 90s, the Jets became a joke. They were not hated, but became the source of ridicule and Jets fans were pitied. You had the Coslett and Kotite years, which were beyond awful. Teams like Buffalo and Dallas and SF were generating all the noise. The talk was all about changing the playoff structure because the AFC could not win a SB from 1984 until the Broncos beat GB in 97. If anything, the Jets were lovable losers in the 90s. Then came Parcells. In 98, the Jets were an extremely popular team when they made their run - kind of like the Red Sox in the early 2000s. There was no national hatred or disproportionate attention paid the Jets from 2000-2009. This whole Jets hatred thing began in 2006 and ramped up in 2009 and I'll tell you why I think it happened: 1. Mangini blowing the whistle on the Pats with Spygate and the creation of an intense rivalry with the Pats, who were a dynasty at the time. People loved and revered Brady and the Pats and the Jets tarnished their image and many viewed them as snitches. Bringing Favre in as a mercenary in 2008 and kicking Pennington to the curb only to lose the division to the Dolphins didn't help. 2. There was a ton of criticism of the way the Jets made the playoffs in 2009 with the Colts sitting their starters in game 15. Then the media and other fans who felt the Jets did not belong were waiting for the Jets to lose, but they didn't. Until the loss to Indy it was three home teams winning playoff games the "f#&*ing Jets" as Ryan said after each playoff win. 2. The Jets appearance on Hard Knocks before the 2010 season. I think this is the main reason for most fans opinion of the team and was the second worst decision the franchise has made in the past 30 years. Ryan, the CS, the FO and the team came off as over confident and arrogant. Plus it put the Jets under the microscope and they have never been able to escape 3. This is a polarized era in US history. Everything is black and white and there is little gray. The Jets are from a blue state in a city that most of the US hates and that has been termed elite and full of immigrants by the red states. NY is hated. 4. The Tebow signing and then the failure to use him, as justified as that decision was from a football standpoint. Tebow is loved by much of the South and West. The Jets, who were already perceived as being evil as a result of Hard Knocks, became even more demonized by keeping Tebow off the field. 5. We are in the era of 24/7 media with news and sports and that means the national media needs something to talk about every day. The Jets have provided interesting story lines over and over for a 24/7 news cycle that can't just report on the field stories. Add in items 1-4 and the Jets have become a reality TV series. Add in that Woody kept agreeing to put the Jets on national TV as much as possible - two Turkey day games and endless night games from 2010 on and the Jets became a natural subject of conversation for the national football media. He also actively attempted to capture the local media from the Giants, which also shined a spotlight on the Jets adding a local aspect to the "look at us" mentality. Throw in that the Giants went on two miracle runs to SB titles in this time period and that further made the Jets look bad, particularly since the 2011 Christmas Eve game propelled the Giants to the playoffs and the SB and was the beginning of the end of the Jets playoff runs of the Ryan era. Idzik is doing everything he can to end this cycle and to put the Jets back in "like every other team" category. This means being humble, quiet, and concentrating on building a team and not an image. Let's hope it works and the spotlight gets shifted to something more interesting, because it does not look like the 2013 are going to be an interesting team.
While you've been flamed already, I nominate you for the idiotic post of the year. I guess you must be one of Junc's many "followers", whatever that means. Earl Morrall was the Colts QB in 68 and was the NFL MVP. The Jets were 18-21 point underdogs going into that game. To put that in perspective, the Jaguars are similar underdogs (19 points) against the Seahawks tomorrow. Are you picking the Jaguars to win? Is Chad Henne guaranteeing a win? Now consider that this game was for the World Championship and was not just some oddball regular season game. The Packers had destroyed the AFL champs in SB I and II. Nobody - and I mean nobody - thought the Jets had a chance. You also have to consider that athletes in those days just did not do something like Namath's guarantee. It happens all the time nowadays, but then, it was not done. This was a very very bold statement by Namath, predicting a win against a team that was considered better than the Packers. The only other athlete who did anything like this was Clay/Ali, who predicted he would beat Liston for the heavyweight title in 64 as a huge underdog and then began predicting the round he would knock out opponents when he was the champ from 64-67 before they stripped him of his title. I'm not going to repeat the whole Namath argument again because I am tired of defending him to people who did not see him play. I have yet to see a single poster on this board who saw Namath play say he was overrated. That, to me, says it all. Next time, do your research before making a post referencing a historical event.
I don't know how true this is. It certainly doesn't represent my family, whom are all Jets fans. Except my sister, whose a Fins fan because they wore "pretty uniforms", but hey, she was 12 at the time. The rest of your post I generally agree with.
So making a bold prediction and following through on it (Which is clearly impressive as the Colts were clearly the best team that year by far) somehow makes Namath the God of the QB position? The same guy who had more seasons throwing for under 50% completions than he did over? The same guy who had a higher rate of interceptions than Sanchez? The thing that pisses me off the most about Namath is every season, he'll go and trash talk the Jets somehow, trying to say hat's wrong with the team. Yet his stats were pretty awful. If we had a QB who put up his average numbers, we'd go 0-16. It's like because he won the Jets only Super Bowl, it gives him a free pass to do or say whatever he wants and people are ready to get on their knees for him no matter how messed up the stuff he says or does is.
It may not be true of every family, and some families root for teams because of geography, but in NY you had two teams and I found the old guard rooted for the Giants and hated Namath and the Jets attracted a younger crowd that typified the era. Check out these links http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/namath_joe.html http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ball-from-itself-and-changed-a-nation-forever http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...E7UsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GRMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1357,187372
Please read the part of my post you quoted. I'm not getting into another argument about Namath. As far as what he says about today's Jets, he has a right to his opinion, he's been mostly correct, he is speaking as a fan of the team, and his criticisms are mild compared to what is coming from members of the current media. If you don't like what Namath says about the Jets, how do you ever listen to sports talk on the radio or watch ESPN or NFL Network where the statements and criticisms are inane? Look - you got the whole SB III wrong in your first post. Deal with it and move on. I'm not defending Namath in a thread about why the Jets are hated. If you want to have that debate, let's pick another thread on another day.
I don't watch the NFL Network, ESPN doesn't really seem to talk about the Jets these days as much as they did previous years, and I don't listen to the radio for Jets news. The NFL Network and ESPN have their clear biases and are told how to view different teams. It's fixed how the media will look at teams. If it gets ratings, they'll do it. If ESPN was going to do a segment on how great the Jets are, no one but Jets fans would watch it. If they were going to do a segment on how much of a joke the Jets are, ratings would be a lot higher. When I want specific news, I'll look for it myself. I'm not going to the major sports networks who have the agenda of shaping the public's opinion on NFL teams.
Take JWWS's advice and put a sock in it already! You don't even realize how clueless you're coming off as, and on several levels. ....and Joe Namath expressing an opinion pisses you off? Aw, you poor thing.....
Excellent post. One thing you left out that I think needs to be mentioned is the intense pressure that the Giants SB win in 2007 put on the Jets. With the new stadium opening in 2009 I think the Jets felt an extreme need to raise the profile of the team and used some avenues better left alone in the process.
corn silo... yeh i get it, new york is great, and i think its way better than any other city ive been to, including chicago, but you sound like tommy from the block thats never left the city saying shit like that... ever been to chicago? its pretty nice, with a ton of museums and art and culture, and the fucking BLUES....
Chicago is a great town to visit. Used to go there on business once every other year and I'd enjoy a great steak and wander downtown in the only other city in the US where skyscrapers go farther than the eye can see. Boston is the third city in my opinion and it's much smaller than NY or Chicago. Great Italian seafood there.
I made the point briefly in point 5, but I think are right. Although the Giants wins in 86 and 91 did not put the same pressure on the Jets.
