The New York Times had a perfect headline at the top of its sports front this morning: ‘Bluster Busters.’ That’s exactly what the Pittsburgh Steelers were on Sunday.
That said, reading and hearing all the comments about how Rex Ryan needs to shut up, made me laugh. First of all, Rex isn’t shutting up anytime soon. It just isn’t who he is and I’ve never met anyone in any walk of life who is successful trying to be someone who they aren’t. Hell, I’ve tried to do it on a few occasions and failed miserably.
I like Rex and it isn’t because the Jets were my boyhood team. I got to know him well in 2004 when I wrote, ‘Next Man Up,’ and liked him from day one. I still remember sitting in the Ravens war room—much to the horror of GM Ozzie Newsome who to this day shudders when he thinks of my presence in his draft room—when the Ravens turn finally came up on the draft board. (They had traded their No. 1 pick a year earlier to get Kyle Boller, a rare Newsome move that didn’t pan out). As soon as the team ahead of the Ravens made their pick, I heard a loud ‘WHOOEE!’ come from the room across the hall where all the assistant coaches were located.
It was Rex. The Ravens had a list of 150 players ranked from 1-150 and the highest player left on the board at that moment was Dwan Edwards, a defensive lineman. Always ‘true to the board,’ he would be Newsome’s pick. That meant two things to Rex: he had gotten a player he thought could help his line and he had beaten out the other position coaches to get his player chosen first. Yes, coaches on the same staff DO compete with one another at times.
Edwards never turned out to be much of a player—Bob Sanders, who the Ravens would have taken if they’d been able to move up six picks, which they came within seconds of doing, DID turn out to be pretty good—but that was my first exposure to Rex’s genuine enthusiasm. Without doubt he was the best-liked coach on the staff and there was no doubt he would become the defensive coordinator when Mike Nolan left at the end of the season to become the head coach in San Francisco.
So, Rex is going to be Rex. Of course there an old saying in sports, ‘it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.’ The Jets haven’t done it—win the Super Bowl—in Rex’s two years and I have no doubt he’s going to be hammered in some quarters for not delivering on his promise. There’s also no doubt that something went wrong between warmups and kickoff on Sunday because the Steelers kicked the Jets butt in every possible category for the first 29 minutes of the game.
Let me step back for a second though and put on my Jets-fan cap: Does anyone want to bring back Eric Mangini? Even when the team was good during the Mangini –‘era,’ there wasn’t a whole lot of fun going on was there? Mangini makes Bill Belichick look like Rex. Two years; no playoff victories (one appearance) and zero laughs. Rex? Two years; FOUR playoff victories and about a million laughs.
Even if I’d never met him, I’d take Rex in a heartbeat. Herm Edwards was (is) a terrific guy but he got to how many conference championship games? If you want, I can go back through the whole sad history. The only Jets coach you can POSSIBLY make a case for being better than Rex since Weeb Ewbank retired is Bill Parcells and he fled after a couple of years to write the eighth installment of his ongoing series, ‘My Final Season.’ I think the 12th installment comes out in another year or so.
As for the NFC game, was it just me or did it feel a little bit like the JV game? Don’t get me wrong, I think the Packers have a great chance to win The Super Bowl. Any team in any sport that plays lousy and still advances is very dangerous. Aaron Rodgers was awful on Sunday. The only reason the Packers won was because Jay Cutler was worse before he got hurt and the Bears were never all that good to begin with. Lovey Smith did an amazing job to coax 12 wins from that team.
One note on Cutler: I’m not a fan of his. I think he’s arrogant and obnoxious and he’s an interception waiting to happen at any key moment. That said, to question his knee injury is unfair. Unless there’s real evidence that he was faking it, people should shut up. None of us knows how someone ELSE feels when they get hit or are in some kind of pain—especially playing in zero degrees with Clay Matthews bearing down on you. Those who question someone for saying they’re hurt should try doing that one time in their lives.
I do have one question on the Packers: Am I the only one who continues to be amazed at how players risk disaster by show-boating? B.J. Raji made a great play when he intercepted Caleb Hanie and went in for a touchdown but what was he thinking holding the ball out before he got to the goal line? If Hanie had arrived a step earlier he might have knocked the ball loose from him on the one-yard line. Ridiculous? Really? As in it has never happened in the past?
And when will defensive backs learn that when you make an interception with the lead and the other team is out of time outs in the last two minutes you GO DOWN. And yet, there was Sam Shields running around after the last interception with everyone screaming at him to get down—which he finally did. Again, the only way you can lose the game at that point is if you fumble while being tackled. Again, tell me it has never happened in the past and I’ll withdraw the comment.
I have no idea who will win The Super Bowl. But if the Steelers win there had better be a lot more people putting Mike Tomlin in the same sentence with Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells than with Tom Coughlin and Bill Cowher. The guy is really good at what he does and often doesn’t get credit because he’s, well, no Rex Ryan.
You have to be yourself, right?
*****
One note on the book I’m currently working on about my 25 years of writing books. A number of people have asked if who I’m writing about is a secret. Not at all. You can probably guess if you’ve read my work at all in the past. The book begins with Bob Knight because that’s where my book-writing career began. It also ends with Bob Knight. In between I write about some of the famous people I’ve known: Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, Mike Krzyzewski, David Robinson, Steve Kerr, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Martina Navratilova, Tiger Woods (there’s a Tiger story that MAY surprise you) Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and others. There are also lots of stories about not-so-famous people I’ve known but who I’ve liked and found fascinating. Have I spoken to everyone mentioned: almost. Have I spoken to Knight? Yes. As I said, the book ends with him—just don’t read it expecting hugs, kisses or tears when you get to the finish line. They come earlier.
Showing posts with label Rex Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rex Ryan. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2011
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Mixed emotions for Ravens-Jets; Wrap up of the almost ESPN Classic - US Open
I almost never have mixed emotions watching any game or tournament or match on TV. There’s always a reason why I’m pulling for—or in the case of Dan Snyder’s team—against—someone.
Monday night though I was back and forth between two simultaneous events and had mixed emotions about both.
I have warm feelings for both the Ravens and the Jets. I grew up a Jets fan. Their win in Super Bowl III is one of my most vivid early sports memories. I might have told this story before, but, what the heck, I’ll tell it again.
On the afternoon of that game—all those years ago the Super Bowl was still an afternoon game—my parents went to a concert. As had become my custom that season, I paced up and down in front of the TV, coaching the Jets. I did everything but call plays.
My parents arrived home early in the fourth quarter and my dad came in to see how the game was going. The Jets were up 16-0. Even though he wasn’t into sports, he knew this was a huge surprise and how much it meant to me. So, he sat down to watch. I paced.
After a few minutes, the pacing got to him. “Stop pacing,” he said. “Sit down. Your team is going to win.”
“But dad, I always pace.”
“Sit,” he ordered.
If it hadn’t been 16-0, I would have argued. The lead felt safe. I sat. Johnny Unitas came in for Earl Morrall and promptly drove the Colts the length of the field to make it 16-7.
“Pace,” my dad said—which I did until the game was over.
Of course there haven’t been any moments close to that since then. In fact, the Jets haven’t been back to The Super Bowl since then—as all Jets fans know so well. Still, I’ve remained a Jets fan.
Of course the year I did my book on The Ravens (“Next Man Up.”) the Ravens played at the Jets. I’ll be honest, I had no mixed emotions that day: I wanted the Ravens to win. I liked the people I was working with and wanted to see the team do well, in part because of that but also—being honest—because it would make for a better book.
The Ravens won that day. I felt a little guilty for being happy about the Jets loss but that’s the way I felt. Time went on: Brian Billick was fired by the Ravens and replaced by John Harbaugh—who I also like. Then Rex Ryan got the Jets job.
Look, I like Rex Ryan a LOT. He takes his football seriously but doesn’t take himself seriously. He’s funny and he’s honest. He was great to work with during my season with the Ravens and we’ve stayed in touch since then. Now, he’s coaching my boyhood team. So how can I possibly root against him?
I can’t. But I also like to see the Ravens do well. Steve Bisciotti became a friend while I was writing the book and has stayed one and has done wonders to help ‘The Bruce Edwards Foundation,’ the last six years. A lot of the people I knew back in ’04 are gone, but a lot are still there.
So, I felt a little bit like I feel watching an Army-Navy game. I didn’t want either team to lose. I averted my eyes every time Mark Sanchez dropped back to pass, but boy that Ravens pass rush looked good.
While that game was going on, the U.S. Open men’s final was stretching into the night. It had been moved from CBS to ESPN 2 during a rain delay. The fact that it still wasn’t over and was going head-to-head with Monday Night Football is more proof of how incredibly dense the people running tennis are most of the time.
When the Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic final was rained out on Sunday, the USTA should have started it at 1 o’clock on Monday. Look, the TV ratings were going to be lousy no matter what time of day the match began. The tennis geeks would get to Arthur Ashe Stadium and their TV sets. Everyone else would be waiting for the start of Jets-Ravens, regardless of the time the match began.
So what did the USTA (and CBS) do? They scheduled the start for 4 o’clock, even though an identical situation a year ago produced the embarrassing moment when Dick Enberg told Juan Martin Del Potro there was no time for him to talk to the crowd in Spanish because he needed to be presented a car—and so CBS could get off the air to its prime time lineup.
To make matters worse, the USTA decided to restart the women’s doubles final at 3 o’clock—meaning it was entirely possible the men wouldn’t start at 4 once the awards ceremony was over and the players got out to warm-up. Sure enough, it was close to 4:30 by the time Nadal-Djokovic, which was going to be a long match since neither player likes to volley on a hard court, finally began.
And then, surprise, at 4-all in the second set, it rained. Wow, I guess they don’t have radar or The Weather Channel at the US National Tennis Center do they? Couldn’t have anticipate that, could you? The thunder and lightning was bad enough that the start of the FOOTBALL game was delayed.
Nadal and Djokovic was a wonderful match and a great story—Nadal trying to finish off a career Grand Slam while Djokovic tried to beat Roger Federer and Nadal back-to-back to win his first Open and second career major. They played some amazing points.
It was on ESPN 2—against Monday Night Football. Are you kidding me? What’s more, if Nadal hadn’t finished the match off 6-2 in the fourth, do you know where it would have been televised as it ended, as Nadal, “made history,” to quote John McEnroe? ESPN Classic. Yup, ESPN Classic, the US Open final. That’s because at 10:15 ESPN 2 had to switch to the Chargers and Chiefs because Jets-Ravens was still going on over on ESPN.
What a joke. Give credit to the fans who stayed although the lower bowl was empty enough that McEnroe was pleading for the USTA to let people upstairs move downstairs to fill in the empty seats. When it was over, both players were gracious and sweet and Bill Macatee, clearly rushing to get the ceremony over before it switched to ESPN Classic, did it smoothly.
Of course there was the ridiculous sight of USTA President Lucy Garvin—I swear I don’t know where they find these people—saying, “you fans are what make this the greatest tennis event in the world.”
Please, I’m begging you, shut up. Have you ever heard of Wimbledon? I mean come on, just say the fans make the Open a great event even if we at the USTA do everything in our power to screw it up every year with matches that go into the middle of the night and a final that almost ends up on ESPN Classic. There’s an old saying that sometimes you should keep your mouth shut because if you do that people can only THINK you’re dumb. Lucy Garvin qualifies.
Anyway, to quote my old friend Hoops Weiss, “I felt vurry, vurry good for the Ravens and Rafa and vurry, vurry sad for the Jets and Novak.” (Hoops would then add, “they’re all vurry, vurry good friends of mine”).
****
One thank-you this morning to the poster who noted that Brad Nessler and Trent Dilfer, not the morning pitchmen were going to do Chargers-Chiefs. I guess there weren’t enough commercial reads in the broadcast to make it worthwhile for the pitchmen to make the trip to Kansas City.
Monday night though I was back and forth between two simultaneous events and had mixed emotions about both.
I have warm feelings for both the Ravens and the Jets. I grew up a Jets fan. Their win in Super Bowl III is one of my most vivid early sports memories. I might have told this story before, but, what the heck, I’ll tell it again.
On the afternoon of that game—all those years ago the Super Bowl was still an afternoon game—my parents went to a concert. As had become my custom that season, I paced up and down in front of the TV, coaching the Jets. I did everything but call plays.
My parents arrived home early in the fourth quarter and my dad came in to see how the game was going. The Jets were up 16-0. Even though he wasn’t into sports, he knew this was a huge surprise and how much it meant to me. So, he sat down to watch. I paced.
After a few minutes, the pacing got to him. “Stop pacing,” he said. “Sit down. Your team is going to win.”
“But dad, I always pace.”
“Sit,” he ordered.
If it hadn’t been 16-0, I would have argued. The lead felt safe. I sat. Johnny Unitas came in for Earl Morrall and promptly drove the Colts the length of the field to make it 16-7.
“Pace,” my dad said—which I did until the game was over.
Of course there haven’t been any moments close to that since then. In fact, the Jets haven’t been back to The Super Bowl since then—as all Jets fans know so well. Still, I’ve remained a Jets fan.
Of course the year I did my book on The Ravens (“Next Man Up.”) the Ravens played at the Jets. I’ll be honest, I had no mixed emotions that day: I wanted the Ravens to win. I liked the people I was working with and wanted to see the team do well, in part because of that but also—being honest—because it would make for a better book.
The Ravens won that day. I felt a little guilty for being happy about the Jets loss but that’s the way I felt. Time went on: Brian Billick was fired by the Ravens and replaced by John Harbaugh—who I also like. Then Rex Ryan got the Jets job.
Look, I like Rex Ryan a LOT. He takes his football seriously but doesn’t take himself seriously. He’s funny and he’s honest. He was great to work with during my season with the Ravens and we’ve stayed in touch since then. Now, he’s coaching my boyhood team. So how can I possibly root against him?
I can’t. But I also like to see the Ravens do well. Steve Bisciotti became a friend while I was writing the book and has stayed one and has done wonders to help ‘The Bruce Edwards Foundation,’ the last six years. A lot of the people I knew back in ’04 are gone, but a lot are still there.
So, I felt a little bit like I feel watching an Army-Navy game. I didn’t want either team to lose. I averted my eyes every time Mark Sanchez dropped back to pass, but boy that Ravens pass rush looked good.
While that game was going on, the U.S. Open men’s final was stretching into the night. It had been moved from CBS to ESPN 2 during a rain delay. The fact that it still wasn’t over and was going head-to-head with Monday Night Football is more proof of how incredibly dense the people running tennis are most of the time.
When the Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic final was rained out on Sunday, the USTA should have started it at 1 o’clock on Monday. Look, the TV ratings were going to be lousy no matter what time of day the match began. The tennis geeks would get to Arthur Ashe Stadium and their TV sets. Everyone else would be waiting for the start of Jets-Ravens, regardless of the time the match began.
So what did the USTA (and CBS) do? They scheduled the start for 4 o’clock, even though an identical situation a year ago produced the embarrassing moment when Dick Enberg told Juan Martin Del Potro there was no time for him to talk to the crowd in Spanish because he needed to be presented a car—and so CBS could get off the air to its prime time lineup.
To make matters worse, the USTA decided to restart the women’s doubles final at 3 o’clock—meaning it was entirely possible the men wouldn’t start at 4 once the awards ceremony was over and the players got out to warm-up. Sure enough, it was close to 4:30 by the time Nadal-Djokovic, which was going to be a long match since neither player likes to volley on a hard court, finally began.
And then, surprise, at 4-all in the second set, it rained. Wow, I guess they don’t have radar or The Weather Channel at the US National Tennis Center do they? Couldn’t have anticipate that, could you? The thunder and lightning was bad enough that the start of the FOOTBALL game was delayed.
Nadal and Djokovic was a wonderful match and a great story—Nadal trying to finish off a career Grand Slam while Djokovic tried to beat Roger Federer and Nadal back-to-back to win his first Open and second career major. They played some amazing points.
It was on ESPN 2—against Monday Night Football. Are you kidding me? What’s more, if Nadal hadn’t finished the match off 6-2 in the fourth, do you know where it would have been televised as it ended, as Nadal, “made history,” to quote John McEnroe? ESPN Classic. Yup, ESPN Classic, the US Open final. That’s because at 10:15 ESPN 2 had to switch to the Chargers and Chiefs because Jets-Ravens was still going on over on ESPN.
What a joke. Give credit to the fans who stayed although the lower bowl was empty enough that McEnroe was pleading for the USTA to let people upstairs move downstairs to fill in the empty seats. When it was over, both players were gracious and sweet and Bill Macatee, clearly rushing to get the ceremony over before it switched to ESPN Classic, did it smoothly.
Of course there was the ridiculous sight of USTA President Lucy Garvin—I swear I don’t know where they find these people—saying, “you fans are what make this the greatest tennis event in the world.”
Please, I’m begging you, shut up. Have you ever heard of Wimbledon? I mean come on, just say the fans make the Open a great event even if we at the USTA do everything in our power to screw it up every year with matches that go into the middle of the night and a final that almost ends up on ESPN Classic. There’s an old saying that sometimes you should keep your mouth shut because if you do that people can only THINK you’re dumb. Lucy Garvin qualifies.
Anyway, to quote my old friend Hoops Weiss, “I felt vurry, vurry good for the Ravens and Rafa and vurry, vurry sad for the Jets and Novak.” (Hoops would then add, “they’re all vurry, vurry good friends of mine”).
****
One thank-you this morning to the poster who noted that Brad Nessler and Trent Dilfer, not the morning pitchmen were going to do Chargers-Chiefs. I guess there weren’t enough commercial reads in the broadcast to make it worthwhile for the pitchmen to make the trip to Kansas City.
Monday, January 18, 2010
This week's Washington Post column (and bonus piece from the weekend)
The following is this week's column from The Washington Post on the Jets saving the playoff weekend followed by an article on UVA basketball and its coach, Tony Bennett ---------------
If these past two weekends were the best the NFL has to offer, maybe there's a chance for the USFL to make a comeback.
Six of the eight games were enough to make one think about switching to Dick Vitale calling a women's basketball game. Or Dick Vitale talking about calling a women's basketball game.
Wild-card weekend gave us Packers-Cardinals and three games that even fans of the winners would be hard-pressed to watch to the end. The Ravens-Patriots game was over before Bill Belichick had a chance to get his hoodie into position.
Surely the divisional playoff weekend would be better. Except it wasn't: It was worse. The winning teams were ahead by a combined 35 points at halftime Saturday and never looked back, and the only real suspense in the over-hyped Cowboys-Vikings matchup was when the "Can Wade Phillips survive?" talk would begin.
Click here for the rest of the column: Rex Ryan's Jets save NFL playoffs from tedium
--------------------------------
This really wasn't the way Tony Bennett had it planned. It isn't that he didn't love basketball. The game has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, which tends to happen when you're a coach's son. The gym is as much a part of your boyhood as your mom's kitchen table. Growing up while his dad, Dick, was coaching high school ball, then National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ball and then Division I ball, he was the classic gym rat, the kid who makes himself a great shooter by spending hours and hours alone with a ball and a backboard.
Bennett would have been something straight out of "Hoosiers," if he had been in Indiana instead of Wisconsin. But coaching wasn't in his blood. Playing was what he was about.
"When I was a kid, the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever do was coach," he said, relaxing in the Virginia coaches' lounge at John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday after the Cavaliers had upset 20th-ranked Georgia Tech. "I loved being a player. I guess in my mind I was going to play forever -- go from college to the NBA and just stay. I saw close-up what a roller-coaster ride coaching was for my dad and for my sister Kathi [who won a Division III national title at Wisconsin-Oshkosh and later coached at Indiana] and I said, 'That's not for me.' Then I got hurt and things changed."
Click here for the rest of the column: Finding direction on an unexpected path
If these past two weekends were the best the NFL has to offer, maybe there's a chance for the USFL to make a comeback.
Six of the eight games were enough to make one think about switching to Dick Vitale calling a women's basketball game. Or Dick Vitale talking about calling a women's basketball game.
Wild-card weekend gave us Packers-Cardinals and three games that even fans of the winners would be hard-pressed to watch to the end. The Ravens-Patriots game was over before Bill Belichick had a chance to get his hoodie into position.
Surely the divisional playoff weekend would be better. Except it wasn't: It was worse. The winning teams were ahead by a combined 35 points at halftime Saturday and never looked back, and the only real suspense in the over-hyped Cowboys-Vikings matchup was when the "Can Wade Phillips survive?" talk would begin.
Click here for the rest of the column: Rex Ryan's Jets save NFL playoffs from tedium
--------------------------------
This really wasn't the way Tony Bennett had it planned. It isn't that he didn't love basketball. The game has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, which tends to happen when you're a coach's son. The gym is as much a part of your boyhood as your mom's kitchen table. Growing up while his dad, Dick, was coaching high school ball, then National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ball and then Division I ball, he was the classic gym rat, the kid who makes himself a great shooter by spending hours and hours alone with a ball and a backboard.
Bennett would have been something straight out of "Hoosiers," if he had been in Indiana instead of Wisconsin. But coaching wasn't in his blood. Playing was what he was about.
"When I was a kid, the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever do was coach," he said, relaxing in the Virginia coaches' lounge at John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday after the Cavaliers had upset 20th-ranked Georgia Tech. "I loved being a player. I guess in my mind I was going to play forever -- go from college to the NBA and just stay. I saw close-up what a roller-coaster ride coaching was for my dad and for my sister Kathi [who won a Division III national title at Wisconsin-Oshkosh and later coached at Indiana] and I said, 'That's not for me.' Then I got hurt and things changed."
Click here for the rest of the column: Finding direction on an unexpected path
The Jets move on, stories of this fan as a kid
As luck would have it, the first year my parents let me ride The New York subways on my own (I sneaked onto them to go to games on occasion before that) was 1968. I knew the system cold—at least the part of it that mattered to me. To get to Yankee Stadium I took the IRT number 1 train downtown from 79th street to 59th street and then went downstairs (free transfer) and took the IND D train to 161st and The Grand Concourse. The D was an express so it didn’t take very long.
Getting to Shea Stadium took a little longer. I still started on the number 1 out of 79th street and then made the transfer at Times Square to the number 7, which was a brand new route that had come on line when Shea’s opening in 1964 coincided with The World’s Fair. I knew every stop by heart and loved riding in the front car and watching the train wind its way from stop-to-stop especially after it became elevated in Queens.
You could always get a ticket to the Mets and Yankees—it cost $1.30 to sit upstairs in general admission for a Mets game and $1.50 for a Yankees game—a much better seat since Shea Stadium had an extra deck. You couldn’t buy Giants tickets. Every once in a while a friend of my dad’s who had season tickets would take me but most of my early pro football experiences were at Shea, watching the Jets and Joe Namath,
The Jets should have made the playoffs in 1967 but choked down the stretch and lost the AFL East to the Houston Oilers. I was furious. A year later, even though Namath threw five interceptions in two losses early in the season (I remember smashing a radio when he did it against the Bills) they finally made the playoffs. I saw six of the seven home games (it was a 14 game schedule then) buying $3 standing room tickets and then sneaking into a good seat downstairs. There were always some empty seats, especially once the weather turned cold.
The $3 ticket became a $6 ticket for the AFL Championship game against the Oakland Raiders. In those days the Jets offices were at 57th street and Madison Avenue and two of my buddies and I were there on Monday at lunchtime (we ducked out of school) to get our tickets. Then we watched Namath outduel Daryl Lamonica to get the Jets to the Super Bowl.
I had watched the first two Super Bowls and, being an AFL fan, winced when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Raiders. I still remember the scores: 35-10 and 33-14. Most people expected a similar result with the Jets taking on the Baltimore Colts, who were anywhere from 17 to 19 points favorites, depending on who you listened to that week.
Here’s what I remember about that Sunday afternoon (in those days The Super Bowl was an afternoon game believe it or not). Earl Morrall threw an interception (on a deflection) on the goal line early in the game to stop a Colts drive. Then the Jets quietly dominated for most of three quarters. Namath was superb, the offensive line kept opening holes for Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer and the defense completely clamped down on Morrall and the Baltimore offense.
The entire time I paced up and down in front of the TV. It had become my habit. Pacing was good for the Jets, sitting was bad. Often I would stop and talk to the TV as if I was Weeb Ewbank coaching the team.
Snell scored on a sweep. Jim Turner kicked three field goals. It was 16-0 in the fourth quarter when two things happened: my dad came back from a concert and Johnny Unitas, who had been hurt most of the season, came into the game for Morrall.
“What’s the score?” said my dad, whose interest in sports never really went past asking for an occasional score.
“We’re up 16-0 I answered.”
“That’s a surprise isn’t it?”
“Um yeah dad, you could say that.”
Curious, he sat down to watch. I paced.
“John will you sit down, you’re making me dizzy with the pacing.”
“Need to pace dad, it’s good luck.”
“They’re winning 16-0, you can sit.”
I sat. About five plays later, Unitas had the Colts in the end zone. It was 16-7.
My dad and I looked at each other. “Go ahead and pace,” he said.
I did. The Jets finished off their historic victory which started a euphoric 16 months for all New York sports fans: The Jets over the Colts; the Miracle Mets over the Orioles and the Knicks over the Lakers in the ‘Willis Reed game,’ in which Walt Frazier had 36 points and a triple-double.
Of course the Jets deal with the devil has been paid off in spades the last 40 years. They lost to the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs a year later and Namath was never the same again. They have been in a couple of AFC Championship games but never another Super Bowl. They have been through coaches and quarterbacks and owners and have played in a stadium with another team’s name on it in New Jersey. Shea Stadium is gone. Namath failed miserably as a TV announcer after he retired.
But now, here they are again, as unlikely a team to reach a conference championship game as anyone has seen in a long, long time. And there I was on Sunday night pacing again, nervous as a cat after Shonn Greene’s touchdown run made it 17-7. (Actually my cat sat on a chair watching calmly while I paced). You see when you’re a Jets fan a 10 point fourth quarter lead doesn’t mean you have a good chance to win it means you have a good chance of finding a truly miserable way to lose.
But Rex Ryan isn’t a find-a-way-to-lose coach. There was no doubt in mind he’d go for the 4th and 1 on the last series and I was pretty convinced the Jets would pick it up.
What’s really fun about this is I LIKE this team, not just the uniforms. I got to know Rex when I did my book on the Ravens five years ago. Truly a good man with a terrific sense of humor. I still remember sitting in the Ravens draft room on draft day. The assistant coaches were across the hall. When the Ravens turn to draft came up I heard a loud “whooeee,” come from the room where the coaches were.
“Rex,” Brian Billick said. “He’s getting his man.”
Rex knew, looking at the 150 players the Ravens had ranked based on their scouting reports, that the next player on the list when the Ravens turn came up was defensive lineman Dwan Edwards and that Ozzie Newsome never veered away from the list.
When Rex took the Jets job he took Mike Pettine with him as defensive coordinator. Pettine was sort of a coach-in-training, an assistant to all the defensive assistants when I was in Baltimore. He’s certainly come a long way even if he took it kind of hard last year when I asked him how in the world Virginia (his alma mater) could lose to Duke.
“Embarrassing,” he admitted.
“Humiliating is more like it,” I said.
And then there’s Bob Sutton, who was the coach at Army when I wrote, “A Civil War.” There are few better men in sports than Sutton, whose firing by the worst athletic director in history (Rick Greenspan) was the start of Army’s 11 year tailspin, lowlighted by an 0-13 record a few years ago.
My favorite player during my Ravens year? Bart Scott. Back then he was mostly a special teams player, a kid who had come out of nowhere to become an NFL player. I still remember him arguing vehemently with virtually the entire offensive line in the days leading up to the 2004 election about why George W. Bush should NOT be re-elected. At one point he looked at Jonathan Ogden who kept saying, ‘the man (John Kerry) is going to raise my taxes,’ and said, “JO, can you for once stop thinking about your damn money!”
That cracked the room up. Ogden was famously cheap.
Now Bart’s a star. Now Rex is a media rock star in New York. I DID feel bad for Norv Turner because his team making The Super Bowl would have really been a nice payback for him to Danny Snyder, who still hasn’t found the right coach (unless Mike Shanahan is it) to deal with his Napoleonic personality since he fired Norv when he was 7-6 and in playoff contention nine years ago.
But seeing the Jets in the conference championship game with a lot of people I truly like involved is great. I know the Colts will be heavy favorites on Sunday and they should be. But I’ve got a warning for Peyton Manning: I’ll be pacing. That should make him a little bit nervous shouldn’t it?
Getting to Shea Stadium took a little longer. I still started on the number 1 out of 79th street and then made the transfer at Times Square to the number 7, which was a brand new route that had come on line when Shea’s opening in 1964 coincided with The World’s Fair. I knew every stop by heart and loved riding in the front car and watching the train wind its way from stop-to-stop especially after it became elevated in Queens.
You could always get a ticket to the Mets and Yankees—it cost $1.30 to sit upstairs in general admission for a Mets game and $1.50 for a Yankees game—a much better seat since Shea Stadium had an extra deck. You couldn’t buy Giants tickets. Every once in a while a friend of my dad’s who had season tickets would take me but most of my early pro football experiences were at Shea, watching the Jets and Joe Namath,
The Jets should have made the playoffs in 1967 but choked down the stretch and lost the AFL East to the Houston Oilers. I was furious. A year later, even though Namath threw five interceptions in two losses early in the season (I remember smashing a radio when he did it against the Bills) they finally made the playoffs. I saw six of the seven home games (it was a 14 game schedule then) buying $3 standing room tickets and then sneaking into a good seat downstairs. There were always some empty seats, especially once the weather turned cold.
The $3 ticket became a $6 ticket for the AFL Championship game against the Oakland Raiders. In those days the Jets offices were at 57th street and Madison Avenue and two of my buddies and I were there on Monday at lunchtime (we ducked out of school) to get our tickets. Then we watched Namath outduel Daryl Lamonica to get the Jets to the Super Bowl.
I had watched the first two Super Bowls and, being an AFL fan, winced when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Raiders. I still remember the scores: 35-10 and 33-14. Most people expected a similar result with the Jets taking on the Baltimore Colts, who were anywhere from 17 to 19 points favorites, depending on who you listened to that week.
Here’s what I remember about that Sunday afternoon (in those days The Super Bowl was an afternoon game believe it or not). Earl Morrall threw an interception (on a deflection) on the goal line early in the game to stop a Colts drive. Then the Jets quietly dominated for most of three quarters. Namath was superb, the offensive line kept opening holes for Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer and the defense completely clamped down on Morrall and the Baltimore offense.
The entire time I paced up and down in front of the TV. It had become my habit. Pacing was good for the Jets, sitting was bad. Often I would stop and talk to the TV as if I was Weeb Ewbank coaching the team.
Snell scored on a sweep. Jim Turner kicked three field goals. It was 16-0 in the fourth quarter when two things happened: my dad came back from a concert and Johnny Unitas, who had been hurt most of the season, came into the game for Morrall.
“What’s the score?” said my dad, whose interest in sports never really went past asking for an occasional score.
“We’re up 16-0 I answered.”
“That’s a surprise isn’t it?”
“Um yeah dad, you could say that.”
Curious, he sat down to watch. I paced.
“John will you sit down, you’re making me dizzy with the pacing.”
“Need to pace dad, it’s good luck.”
“They’re winning 16-0, you can sit.”
I sat. About five plays later, Unitas had the Colts in the end zone. It was 16-7.
My dad and I looked at each other. “Go ahead and pace,” he said.
I did. The Jets finished off their historic victory which started a euphoric 16 months for all New York sports fans: The Jets over the Colts; the Miracle Mets over the Orioles and the Knicks over the Lakers in the ‘Willis Reed game,’ in which Walt Frazier had 36 points and a triple-double.
Of course the Jets deal with the devil has been paid off in spades the last 40 years. They lost to the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs a year later and Namath was never the same again. They have been in a couple of AFC Championship games but never another Super Bowl. They have been through coaches and quarterbacks and owners and have played in a stadium with another team’s name on it in New Jersey. Shea Stadium is gone. Namath failed miserably as a TV announcer after he retired.
But now, here they are again, as unlikely a team to reach a conference championship game as anyone has seen in a long, long time. And there I was on Sunday night pacing again, nervous as a cat after Shonn Greene’s touchdown run made it 17-7. (Actually my cat sat on a chair watching calmly while I paced). You see when you’re a Jets fan a 10 point fourth quarter lead doesn’t mean you have a good chance to win it means you have a good chance of finding a truly miserable way to lose.
But Rex Ryan isn’t a find-a-way-to-lose coach. There was no doubt in mind he’d go for the 4th and 1 on the last series and I was pretty convinced the Jets would pick it up.
What’s really fun about this is I LIKE this team, not just the uniforms. I got to know Rex when I did my book on the Ravens five years ago. Truly a good man with a terrific sense of humor. I still remember sitting in the Ravens draft room on draft day. The assistant coaches were across the hall. When the Ravens turn to draft came up I heard a loud “whooeee,” come from the room where the coaches were.
“Rex,” Brian Billick said. “He’s getting his man.”
Rex knew, looking at the 150 players the Ravens had ranked based on their scouting reports, that the next player on the list when the Ravens turn came up was defensive lineman Dwan Edwards and that Ozzie Newsome never veered away from the list.
When Rex took the Jets job he took Mike Pettine with him as defensive coordinator. Pettine was sort of a coach-in-training, an assistant to all the defensive assistants when I was in Baltimore. He’s certainly come a long way even if he took it kind of hard last year when I asked him how in the world Virginia (his alma mater) could lose to Duke.
“Embarrassing,” he admitted.
“Humiliating is more like it,” I said.
And then there’s Bob Sutton, who was the coach at Army when I wrote, “A Civil War.” There are few better men in sports than Sutton, whose firing by the worst athletic director in history (Rick Greenspan) was the start of Army’s 11 year tailspin, lowlighted by an 0-13 record a few years ago.
My favorite player during my Ravens year? Bart Scott. Back then he was mostly a special teams player, a kid who had come out of nowhere to become an NFL player. I still remember him arguing vehemently with virtually the entire offensive line in the days leading up to the 2004 election about why George W. Bush should NOT be re-elected. At one point he looked at Jonathan Ogden who kept saying, ‘the man (John Kerry) is going to raise my taxes,’ and said, “JO, can you for once stop thinking about your damn money!”
That cracked the room up. Ogden was famously cheap.
Now Bart’s a star. Now Rex is a media rock star in New York. I DID feel bad for Norv Turner because his team making The Super Bowl would have really been a nice payback for him to Danny Snyder, who still hasn’t found the right coach (unless Mike Shanahan is it) to deal with his Napoleonic personality since he fired Norv when he was 7-6 and in playoff contention nine years ago.
But seeing the Jets in the conference championship game with a lot of people I truly like involved is great. I know the Colts will be heavy favorites on Sunday and they should be. But I’ve got a warning for Peyton Manning: I’ll be pacing. That should make him a little bit nervous shouldn’t it?
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