Huffington: Why They Hate the New York Jets

Wahoo · Sep 22, 2013

That article is just more Rex Ryan butt boy masturbation fodder for the current generation of Jet fans. Win championships, or shut up.

Joe Willie White Shoes · Sep 22, 2013

We are turning the corner on this hatred thing. The Jets do not even have a headline on the ESPN NFL page tonight. I take that as a very good sign. Be boring during the week and win on Sunday.

NJBeliever · Sep 22, 2013

Winning makes everything better.

Endlessly Counting · Sep 22, 2013

Joe Willie White Shoes said: ↑

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.
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Good Article, but I think Jet hatred is historical and I don't think you can talk about Jet hatred without including the historical role the Giants and "St Wellington" played in fomenting Jets hatred

The Giants were the original football team in NYC and they beat back all challengers (NY YANKS, Brooklyn Dodgers, Staten Island Stapletons) except for the Jets. And the Jets and Namath significantly bothered the Maras, so much so that in their frantic attempts to chase the late 60s success of the Jets, they made a series of mistakes that sent them into a 15 year tail spin. The 80s brought a turn around of their fortunes, and even though the Jets had a turn around as well, the Giants were not going to make he same mistake twice. I recall a lot of Jet bashing and disrespect coming out of the 80s Giants and their fans. Media as well. The Jets, bless 'em, gave them plenty of fodder ( 5 interceptions, firing Michaels, passing on Marino, Walton's tactics, Gastineau's roughing the passer), and the media ran with it.

Huffington: Why They Hate the New York Jets

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