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February 12, 2012

Blogs / State of Play / Annual 2010 / The Jets haven't earned the right to be cocky yet

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The Jets haven't earned the right to be cocky yet

You've probably heard that Tom Brady isn't a big fan of HBO's Hard Knocks program, which follows the New York Jets through their summer training session.

I'm with Brady on this one. Until they actually make it back to the Super Bowl for the first time since Lyndon Johnson occupied the Oval Office and Woodstock was still in the planning stages,the Jets and their fans should shut it for a change.

It makes perfect sense, though. Here's a team with all the attributes of a reality show star: American society celebrates and rewards stupidity, hubris, and obnoxiousness. The Jets have their own HBO feature for the same reason The Situation stars in Jersey Shore. All that's missing is one of the Kardashian sisters (isn't Mark Sanchez single?) and the spinoff For the Love of Revis.

And let me be the first to pitch Ryan Family Values, featuring Rex, Rob, and the grand patriarch of classless punks, Buddy. The cameras can follow them as they wolf down corndogs and cheesesteaks, get into fistfights and curse out the neighbors as Mrs. Ryan frowns in disapproval. They'd make the Hulk Hogan clan look dignified in comparison.

Given their trash-talking nature, cockiness, and uber-developed sense of their abilities, at least Bills fans now have all the more reason to further despise the Jets, who are a perfect pit for the town they play in: loud, obnoxious, and overhyped.

Of course, we hate Brady and his Patriots, too. But our tormentors in New England, in stark contrast to Ryan and his merry band of boneheads, deserve their stardom. They've actually won something in this league and, with the exception of Bill Belichick, have done so with class and respect for the game.

We hate the Pats for the same reason we despised the musclebound jocks back in junior high: they got all the girls and only acknowledged us other kids for the occaisional ass-whoopin' in the hallway before lunch recess. I'll concede that the Pats have been stealing our lunch money for far too long, and that must change.

But the Jets are in a different stratosphere of disdain altogether—they're the motorheads who used the bathroom as a smoking lounge, called the elderly librarian a $#&%, listened to Iron Maiden and hoped desperately you'd be intimidated by their pentagram-adorned, Pabst Blue Ribbon-reeking T-shirt. Those shaggy, black-clad clowns sure talked big, but turned out to be harmless, didn't they?

No one who firmly grips reality expects much from the 2010–11 Bills. I'm not asking for much this season, but if Buffalo wins only a handful of games this season, here's hoping they're both against the Jets, October 3 and January 2. That'd be a much sweeter 2–14 than the campaigns we endured in '84 or '85.

And even if losses to Buffalo ruin their delusional playoff aspirations, it probably won't force their meatheaded fans to shut their trash-talking yaps for too long.

But at least it might keep them off HBO next summer.