When you're a Jet

I used to approach each upcoming New York Giants football season with boundless naivete, overlooking their legion of slow running backs (“they run hard”), undersized offensive linemen (“scrappy”) and the overall defense, a who’s who of mediocre NFL journeymen (“experienced veterans”) and deciding that with the right breaks, the team could be a contender.

When it was announced that the Giants and Jets would meet for the first time in an August 1969 preseason game, there was the same silly optimism. Who cares that the Jets won the Super Bowl eight months earlier? It was a fluke, and Spider Lockhart will get a couple of interceptions off overrated Namath, and Homer Jones can beat any of their defensive backs, and on and on.

At the very least, a win over the Jets would be some response to the long winter and spring following their Super Bowl victory, when you couldn’t escape Namath or his teammates. They showed up on Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, The Kraft Music Hall. Namath got his own Saturday night talk show on Channel 5 (co-hosted by Dick Schaap, there to ask Namath’s guests all the serious questions).

Joe Namath and Dick Schaap

But as August drew closer, It was obvious that the Jets weren’t treating this like another preseason game.

The Jets, at least the guys who’d been with the team the longest, truly resented the Giants’ haughtiness and sense of entitlement over which team owned New York City. How the Mara family was looked upon like royalty. How the Giants cut Don Maynard, the Jets star receiver, years earlier for refusing to get rid of his long sideburns and cowboy boots. Maybe even how Frank Gifford got all those Jantzen swimwear ads and that the Giants players got better service at P.J Clarke's

Each year I sent away for the Giants yearbook, with its inevitable staged shot of a player, dressed in a suit and with an attaché case, waving goodbye to his wife (always holding a baby) as he leaves for his off-season job as a stockbroker. It was a team image the Giants eagerly promoted and protected.

At the same time, it was obvious that many of the Jets seemed to have a different attitude. Some dared to wear their hair on the longish side. Namath had his Fu Manchu mustache. Don Maynard’s sideburns were still intact. In the summer of 1969, these things mattered to kids questioning how society worked. I had a vague idea of what I wanted in life, but it sure wasn’t being a stockbroker. Two uncles owned Giants season tickets. One was an insurance agent, the other an office manager. Was that my future too?

It was hard to face the notion that the Giants were “The Establishment,” while the Jets were crossing the moat and kicking down the doors to the castle.

One week after Jimi Hendrix closed Woodstock and four days before my 15^th birthday, I spent a long afternoon listening to the game on the radio, 17-0 Jets before the Giants even got a first down. Final score: 37-14. This from the Daily News: “In his best Super Bowl form, Namath hit on 14 of 16 passes for 188 yards and three touchdowns before trotting off the field with hands raised joyously in triumph after his third scoring toss with 7:10 left in the game.”

Wellington Mara could accept his team’s overall lack of talent, but not a loss to the Jets. Two weeks later, he fired head coach Allie Sherman. The Giants went 6-8 that season, including a disastrous seven-game losing streak. Over the following ten years, the entire decade of the 70s, they won just one-third of all their games.

Today I seem to be a card-carrying member of The Establishment if defined by age, skin color and lofty position in corporate America.  Honestly though, I keep the card hidden away. The Giants’ fortunes, however, I still wear on my sleeve.