1. Born in NY. 2. Namath fan growing up. 3. Many family member were Dolphin fans (Yes in NY.) and I wanted to be the black sheep.
Because of the Patriots and the Giants. First game I ever watched was the '85 Super Bowl because it was the first game shown live on British TV. For the next decade and a half I followed football as it became more mainstream in the UK and tried to find reasons to pick a team. Spent several years attempting to convince myself that I was a Raiders fan because a friend at school was a Raiders fan, and because Raiders gear was pretty much ubiquitous back then thanks to the music influences, but it never really stuck. Then in 2003 a friend of mine moved to NYC for work, and shortly after I flew out for a long weekend to visit him and see New York for the first time. We met up with a couple of other British guys he knew out there with a plan to spend the weekend drinking, which included Sunday afternoon in a bar watching fat men run into each other. Turns out one of these guys was a Patriots fan, the other a Giants fan, and when they discovered that I was a football fan without a team affiliation they each hopped on a shoulder and started their sales pitch as to why I should pick their team. On and on and on this went all weekend, until Sunday lunchtime arrives and they're still going. I made my excuses for a few minutes, went down to the nearest Modells, bought the first Jets shirt I saw, walked back into the bar wearing it and said "fuck you both, this is my team". In the almost two decades that have followed since that weekend the Patriots fan has seen his team win 5 Super Bowls while the Giants fan has had to make do with just 2. Still think I made the right decision though, because sporting allegiances born out of and supported by spite are the best kind. Even when the Jets are shit and there's nothing to like about watching them, I can still take pleasure from hating the teams that are the reason I'm a Jets fan in the first place.
My little story, and its not overly complicated. My very first team of my youth was the Mets and my uncle who took me to my very first game at Shea Stadium was an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan who hooked up with the Mets 5 years after the Dodgers split to the west coast. My uncle had a great deal with serving up the gospel of Mets baseball to an impressionable 5-6 year old at that time. However, as much as I loved my uncle and all of the things he ingrained in me about the Mets, it had no effect when it came to football. My uncle was a long time NY Giants fan, but for some reason, in perhaps one of the more independent decisions I made at such an early age, for me it was always the Jets. It had nothing to do with the "ETS" thing, instead, I don't know, the New York Jets just hit the right chords with me, and I also believe the color combination of the green and white lured me in too, as green has always been probably my favorite color over the course of my life. My mother would let me and my brother order Jets uniforms and helmets out of the old Sears Catalog just about every Christmas. I had NY Jets bedsheets and pillow cases, I'd aimlessly drift off in school and draw the most precise Jets logo I could on the back of a test paper. The first games I can remember were on both radio & TV. The Namath years, of course, I saw the shootout game with him and Johnny U down in Baltimore a few seasons after SB3. My early Jets players were guys like George Nock, Phil Wise, RIchard Caster, G-Barkum, Bobby Howfield, Duane Carroll the punter. I saw Namath wreck his knee in a pre season game against the Lions. I saw QB's one after another over the years, Woodall, Bob Davis, Marty Domres, JJ Jones, Richard Tood, Matt Robinson, and all those who came after. Other names I'll never get out of my head, the one year of Lou Holtz, the building block years of Walt Michaels, Burgess Owens, Carl Barzalaskis, Lou Piccone, Jazz Jackson, the one year ride with Ed Marinaro, Clark Gaines, Emerson Boozer, Wes Walker, Derrick Gaffney, the great Al Toon..I could go on and on. But now lets hear your story of how you became a Jets fan, on your own, because growing up in your family were you a Jets fan because it was mandatory in your household? Maybe someone seceded from the other team in town and for some reason you though that Jets green was better than Giants blue? Just some last second stuff before training camp really gets going. As a community of people who do other things and vote for this politician or another and run in circles we all have no idea about...the one thing we do know is that have a family of individuals here who despite potential differences in other areas of life, as it pertains to this, we're an extended family of Jets fans, a brotherhood, a Jets family so to speak,,,so how exactly have you found your way into the Green & White family? Hopefully this can be a fun if not a truly eye-opening thread. Whose next?
I noticed from your profile that you are new to this forum. I extend my welcome and most of us are sincerely interested in how you became a Jets fan. Nevertheless, there have been a number of these "how I became a Jets fan" threads over the years. I suggest you do a search and pull them up. If you're sincerely interested, you'll be sufficiently entertained by them but many of us are tired of rewriting our autobiographies. Have a nice day!
Joe Namath and the Jets were long haired, cool, rebels in the AFL fighting the establishment of the NFL. The Giants were boring with crew cuts and completely uncool. The Jets were the space program and landing a man on the moon while the Giants were Nixon and the Vietnam war. As kids we did not understand the politics but we gravitated towards rebels that were fighting the establishment and societal norms. The Jets were the only choice.
Met fan also and Jets played in Shea also. The crazy thing is that I grew up a fifteen minute walk from Yankee Stadium. Everybody in my neighborhood was a miserable Giants/Yanks fan by 1971. My grandfather and father had been baseball Giants fans in the 50’s and when we moved back into the neighborhood in ‘64 they stayed NL fans. I remember my dad pointing out the building that Willie Mays lived in as we walked down to a restaurant at the north tip of Harlem along about 1972.
Back in the 80’s. My dad was a die hard Giants fan, raising me on his own as a very young man (he turned 21 a month before I was born). He took me to the NFC championship game when I was 10 in 1986, which was the only Giants game he ever took me to. He couldn’t really afford to. All his friends were Jets fans, and given the Jets sucked so bad the tickets were cheap or even free all the time so we actually went to lots of Jets games. I was also in general a fan of underdogs, so I always naturally rooted for crappy teams to win. Ironically it’s also how I became a Yankees fan, also much to my dad’s dismay. That NFC championship game is still the greatest football game I ever attended, and unfortunately it probably always will be.
I was just a little further away, 2385 Grand Concourse, about 45 minute walk. My cousins lived in the same building as us and when the Jets drafted Namath my dad and uncle bought season tickets. So I was born into it.
I'll bet they were Jets/Titans fans who walked down to the Polo grounds for games. Giants tickets were harder to get and more expensive in the early 60's because the Giants had their good run from '56-'63. Then the Jets moved to Flushing, which wouldn't have been all that bad a move for fans on the Grand Concourse.
I'm not certain what year exactly, but sometime in the seventies, my Dad was browsing in a clothing store on Broadway. My Dad was not a fan of any sport; but he recognized Joe Namath when he came into the store and asked him for an autograph. Joe was nice enough to comply, my Dad kept it and a few years later he gave me the autograph. I found out all I could about Namath and the Jets, and a life-long fan was born.
(1) I grew up in Queens, so they were the hometown team. (2) My father was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and my mother was a New York Giants fan, and the only baseball thing they agreed on was that they hated the Yankees (my beloved grandfather, too, one of the few Giants fans in Brooklyn). Thus, it was all Mets all the time starting in 1962, and when they moved to Shea it was that much more natural to go with the football team that moved there too. (3) AFL football was way more exciting than NFL football. (4) Joe Willie, of course.
The neighbor that lived behind me (also my biology teacher in high school) took me to a Jets game. Fuck you very much for that. Thankfully im not also a Mets fan like many Jets fans because I dont know how I could take this X2. Then add in the Knicks and how the hell do you triple threat member like sports at all? I feel for you. The Jets alone are enough misery for anyone.
The Mets are fine. I lived through the really bad days when Dick Young refused to accept that free agency was real and got the team torn down. Since then it has been a walk in the park.
