Some of us in New York have the unfortunate burden of being
Jets fans. The New York Jets were a great team sometime more than 40 years ago.
Like the Knicks and Mets, they have made it their modus operandi to find new
ways to break their fans’ hearts. They have been described as more of a media
circus than a football team. It is often remarked that J.E.T.S. means “Just End
The Season.”
The news this past weekend that the New York Jets have given
up quarterback Mark Sanchez for Michael Vick will be sure to continue
the Jets’ reputation for making foolish moves. This is the same team and
coaching staff that paid handsomely for Tim Tebow, who became the NFL’s most
expensive bench warmer.
The Vick hire has already brought shrieks of horror from
animal rights activists, moralistic sports haters and even decent human beings.
The Jets made the announcement on a Friday night, when news is likely
to get the least amount of attention. Since returning to football, Vick has
been the subject of the most invective aimed at a sports figure since O.J. Simpson got away with murder. And Vick didn’t get away
with his crimes.
That’s not to say that the continued campaign against Vick
is without merit. Michael Vick is every bit as bad as his harshest
detractors say. He heartlessly tortured and murdered defenseless animals and
his dumbly parroted apologies in the intervening years convince me that he’s
only sorry he got caught. If there’s an afterlife, Vick will spend eternity
being torturously gnawed at by Rottweilers with AIDS.
But there are a few things that stand out in the endless
Vick hatred that the Jets have stirred up again. One is that there are much
worse people still playing professional sports today that do not create half
the controversy that rightfully follows Vick. The NFL employs rapists and
murderers and thugs of every stripe.
One of the rapists that had a home in the NFL until just now
was Mark Sanchez, the Jets quarterback that Michael Vick is replacing. It
escaped the ire of football moralists that Sanchez was arrested for raping a woman at
the University of Southern California while he was a student there, though
charges were never brought. There has been no exodus of people from Pittsburgh
Steelers fandom on account of their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, being a
serial rapist. Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens is a murderer of people and
went on to become a Super Bowl MVP.
The second thing to take note is that the era of the
celebrity hero is over. It is hard to face the reality that people we admire
for their skills or accomplishments can be bad people. The sports world brings
this into focus for us many times over, but the same is true for any celebrated
line of work. It’s unfortunate that Lord Byron likely knocked up his own sister and that William S.
Burroughs shot his wife to death, but that doesn’t make their writing any less
influential.
So I won’t stop being a Jets fan. When you’re a Jet, you’re
a Jet all the way, from your first scoreless half to your last fumbled play. I’m used to rooting
for a losing NFL team and over needing to like professional athletes. Being a
New York Yankees fan, I have read some of the horror stories of how Joe
DiMaggio would treat fans. Was Billy Martin a homophobe or a
racist? Who cares? No one hired him to sing “Kumbaya” to crack babies; they
hired him to play and coach baseball. Baseball’s current home run record
holder, Barry Bonds, is such a despised human being that his own teammates
could barely bring themselves to congratulate the slugger on his
accomplishments.
We can rightfully revile sports figures all we want, but
ultimately they will be judged by what they do on the field of play. The New
York Jets long ago gave up trying to recreate the magic of being heroes to
anyone. Now they just need to win football games.
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