(XXL) Shadows on Broadway
It’s not an easy place, being in the shadow of your next-door neighbour. Just ask Ateletico Madrid fans. Or Tyson Gay. Or the guy who replaced Steve Guttenberg/Mahoney in the Police Academy series.
And the New York Jets, despite the odd moment of ultimate glory, are very much the poor relations in the Big Apple to those mean old Giants from up the Jersey turnpike. They even played their homegames in a stadium named after, and used by, their rivals for 25 years. That’s gotta hurt.
It wasn’t always this way though. Broadway Joe Namath – who was doing Beckham or Brady before Beckham or Brady were in their Bonpoint babygrows – brought glory and glamour to the Jets and their only Super Bowl win, in 1969. Namath, who is possibly the only man in history other than P. Diddy to pull off wearing a fur coat – was all bravado and sound bites and famously, and unbelievably cockily guaranteed their victory against the Colts, prior to the game – a statement which sparked a media frenzy and cemented Namath as bona fide icon transcending the sporting arena.
Lean times since Joe though, with the odd spark of dazzle and excitement never amounting to too much, and even a recent cameo from, err….Broadway Brett Favre (shurely Red Dirt Road Favre? – Ed) in between his 19th retirement, promised much but faded fast in the home stretch.
Playing in the hyper competitive AFC East means that the Jets are always facing an uphill battle at the best of times. For “uphill battle” read: they’ll never do anything whilst the New England Patriots exist. The Giants may be their physically superior meathead older brother, but the Patriots are the Jets’ overachieving debonair Ivy League educated, way cool cousin, who turns up at Christmas with a surfer blonde chick on their arm, a signed copy of On The Road in their pocket & stories of how they got s***faced on location in Italy with the cast of Oceans 12.
But this weekend, the 2011 AFC Divisional playoff no less, give the Jets the chance to redress the balance. Now under the reins of Head Coach Rex Ryan – the kind of guy who Cousin Paulie would say has no taste – the Jets are packing more of a punch than usual. And whilst the highly favoured Patriots are expected to steamroll them yet again – think the Ivan Drago/Apollo Creed Exhibition match from Rocky IV minus James Brown – this may be the time that the Jets surprise us in more ways than just the recent Rex Ryan/Foot fetish”scandal”. Yes, really.
Like a $40million action movie that’s aiming to recoup it’s costs by TV sales to Estonia & New Zealand, the 2010/11 New York Jets are a combination of ageing, grizzled vets who’ve been written off (meet the mercurial LT, people of Norfolk) but have one last scrap in them, and young, raw dynamos who are good at the fight scenes – less so the sentimental dialogue. Their appearance on HBO’s seminal Hard Knocks series – which follows an NFL team through its pre-season, warts & all – cemented their position as a team to watch this year. The real soap opera, underpinned by extreme bravado and overbearing confidence from Ryan & co has led to inevitable highs and lows.
And despite more lows than anything else, they’ve scraped into the playoffs on the Patriots coat-tails via the ultimate sporting back door – the Wild Card. But a last second dispatch of Peyton Manning’s Colts in said round has set up what promises to be a gripping encounter between the hustlers from Jersey and the gifted New England golden boys. The Patriots have won 3 Super Bowls in the last 10 years, almost won a 4th, and got done for (illegally) filming their opponents signal calling, thus making them the Lifetime Achievement winners of the most loathsome sporting franchise this side of the 1919 World Series throwing Black Sox, the English bodyline cricketers and any team featuring El Hadj Diouf.
This is the sporting equivalent of John Candy vs. Brad Pitt. Coach Ryan has predictably added to the needle by calling out his counterpart, Bill Belichick – imagine Alec Ferguson mixed with Rainman if Rainman was obsessed with Vince Lombardi – despite not even coming close in the achievement stakes, and the list of similar mismatches are littered across the field. That said, a Jet win wouldn’t be a Buster Douglas/Frances Ouimet upset if it happens. But an underdog coming good, however brash, is always a treat, right?
I could now ask you if you’re going to “get on board this Jet plane” but my blog would probably be removed by Tumblr within minutes.
