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Two quick trivia questions: Which was the first American Football League (AFL) franchise to win a Super Bowl? What is the only team since the 1970 NFL and AFL merger never to win a divisional crown? If you answered the New York Jets to both, you've suffered enough. You're probably too deep into therapy to appreciate how deep into futility veteran New York Times writer and longtime Jets chronicler Eskenazi can descend in this irreverent history.
The Jets saga is certainly a surreal one. "The Jets I came to write about," Eskenazi observes, "were like life as Kafka or George Carlin might have pictured it--only more so. They led an existence based in the everyday reality so many of us faced, one of small victories offset by large losses." Dubbing them the most famous bad franchise in sports, he makes a fumblerooski of a case. Other than the 1969 Super Bowl miracle engineered by Joe Namath, the Jets have been constantly sacked for losses. They are the only professional sports team without a single coach who can boast a career-winning record as a Jet. They played in the first game ever suspended due to lightening. The longest play in their history--a 90-yard run from scrimmage--failed to produce a touchdown. Their starting quarterback broke his toe--watching TV. Their star linebacker fell for Sly Stallone's wife. And they're the only pro football team to play its home games in a stadium bearing the name of the other team in town.
Of course, the Jets' losing ways could end with the hand-off of the helm to Bill Parcells, a coach Eskenazi intriguingly characterizes as more obsessed with not failing than just winning. Then again, management--just in time for the 1998 season--did decide to bring the old uniforms back. Yes, the Jets won Super Bowl III in them. But they found ways to lose big in them, too. --Jeff Silverman
From Publishers Weekly
Sometime on or about Super Bowl Sunday, January 12, 1969, someone connected with the New York Jets must have made a pact with the devil, for in exchange for the historic 16-7 upset win over the Baltimore Colts, the team (and their loyal fans) has suffered as few franchises have suffered in the history of professional sports. And Eskenazi, the Jets beat writer for the New York Times for three decades, has captured all the humiliation and the lone supreme triumph in a book that will leave the reader either shaking their heads in defeat or laughing out loud at the ineptitude. Part of the expansionist American Football League, the New York Titans got off to a shaky start under the ownership of broadcaster and "bullshitter" Harry Wismer. But in 1963, it passed into the capable hands of Sonny Werblin, who renamed them Jets and gave them uniforms in his lucky green. Werblin soon signed Joe Namath to the famous $400,000 contract and the war between AFL and NFL took off. The AFL was 0-for-2 going into Super Bowl III and the Jets were an 18-point underdog. But with Namath's passing, Matt Snell's running and an unyielding defense, they staged the biggest single upset ever in professional sports. And although the Jets always had a core of all-star players such as Joe Klecko, Wesley Walker and Freeman McNeil, it was all downhill after that. Their futility was epitomized by such hapless coaches as Lou Holtz, Walt Michaels and Rich Kotite; though hope returned with the hiring of Bill Parcells in 1997 and, for once, the future seems bright. This is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes team biography that Jet fans will cherish?though Red Sox and Cub fans should empathize. Editor, Jeff Neuman; agent, Rick Diamond, The Marquee Group. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ever since the New York Jets gave legitimacy to the old American Football League by upsetting the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, the team has developed a reputation as one of the most famous bad franchises in professional sports. Why do bad things always happen to the Jets? Eskenazi, a New York Times sportswriter and author of The Lip (LJ 3/1/93), attempts to answer the question by reflecting on the team's string of futile efforts to match its original success under the great Joe Namath. His behind-the-scenes looks at some of the more renowned episodes (e.g., Mark Gastineau's celebrity adventures, Lou Holtz's wacky tenure) serves only to burnish the inglorious image. Jet fans, in particular, should enjoy the memories. For popular collections.?William H. Hoffman, Ft. Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., FLCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Sports fans are constantly told how crucial experience is in athletics. So perhaps it's not surprising that, in the trash-talking, ghost-written world of sports books, it's left to veteran New York Times scribe Eskenazi to deliver much-needed sustenance. Even those familiar with the New York Jets' bizarre history will be gripped by Eskenazi's lively account of the franchise's tormenting ineptitude and unique brand of paranoid joy. On a larger scale, this account shows how the '60s Jets became a cultural icon of progressive sensibilities, symbolized by the 1969 Super Bowl confrontation between the irreverent, charismatic Joe Namath and the heavily favored, establishment-representing Baltimore Colts. This is the rare sports book whose seemingly narrow topic elucidates bigger issues: the bitterness of those who devoted themselves to improving a cursed franchise; the world-infiltrating American sports industry; the Jets as a symbol of a society in transition. An obvious must-read for pro football fans, Gang Green just might engage a surprising number of readers outside the athletic fray. Dane Carr
From Kirkus Reviews
An incisive, rollicking, and surprisingly sympathetic look back at one of the National Football League's most woebegone outfits. Born in 1960 as the Titans in the upstart, made-for-television American Football League (AFL), the New York Jets have, but for a few moments in the sun, been perennial losers - both in the standings and, more important, in their own city, where the New York Giants owned the fans' hearts and newspaper headlines. As a New York Times writer on the Jets beat, Eskenazi saw up close the Titans/Jets in all their incarnations: during the early hardscrabble days; in their mid- to late-'60s heyday, when owner Sonny Werblin brilliantly touted the team and the game as an entertainment spectacle and engineered the acquisition of players who would bring the team and the league respectability; during the aimless mediocrity of the '70s and '80s; and in the utter futility of the '90s. It's not for lack of trying that the Jets have failed, argues Eskenazi, but fail they certainly have - dismally, consistently, almost operatically. After winning Super Bowl III with the personable and talented Joe Namath as quarterback in 1969, the team appeared to have been at the mercy of some unseen power. Excepting a few seasons, most recently in the mid-'80s, they - ve been hamstrung by poor judgment and indifferent management and players, haunted by their own local second-class status and saddled with just plain lousy luck. Hope, however, might be just around the bend as the team has acquired its first marquee talent since Namath, coach Bill Parcells, who guided the Giants to two Super Bowl victories. Like Jimmy Breslin's New York Mets chronicle or Peter Gent's thinly fictionalized account of the Dallas Cowboys, this exceptional book should become a staple on every thinking fan's shelf. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Question: What is the only team dating back to the 1970 AFL-NFL merger that has yet to win a division title? Question: What is the only team in the four major pro sports that has existed since the early 1960s and never had a coach leave with a winning career record for the team? Question: What is the only team in sports that plays its home games in a stadium named for another team? If you bleed green and white, you know the answer to these questions as well as you know the color of Joe Willie Namath's shoes. The New York Jets have a record for futility and self-sabotage that is unmatched in the history of professional sports. And nonetheless, they have been rewarded with a loyal following that has made Jets tickets as hard to come by as Jets winning seasons. For Jets fans, the bright beacon of promise has always turned into an onrushing train. They reveled in the joy of the Jets' epic victory in Super Bowl III, when their team beat the 18 1/2-point odds to defeat the Baltimore Colts, just as their cocky young quarterback had guaranteed; they then watched as contract squabbles broke up the core of the team, which would reach just one playoff game in the next twelve years. They cheered as their sleek, explosive team roared into the AFC Championship Game in January 1983; the team was held scoreless after overnight rains pelted the uncovered Orange Bowl field, turning the gridiron into a quagmire that favored the defense-oriented Dolphins. They dared to hope when the Jets went on an unprecedented spending spree in 1996, signing a Super Bowl quarterback and adding a host of fleet receivers and experienced linemen; they saw that team go 1-15, as Rich Kotite's Jets career coaching record sank to a jaw-dropping 4-28. In Gang Green, New York Times sportswriter Gerald Eskenazi details the bizarre history of this remarkable team. From the poor decisions (drafting Ken O'Brien instead of Dan Marino) and bad luck (Joe Namath's knees, Dennis Byrd's near-tragic neck injury) to the horrendous leadership (see Kotite, above) and outright strangeness (team practices held in an open area alongside the Belt Parkway, leRoy Neiman's presence as team artist-in-residence, the Richard Todd/Matt Robinson quarterback duel that wasn't) that have typified the Jets' mystifying approach to football, Gang Green captures the history of this most unusual franchise in a funny, rollicking, nostalgic tale. If you can name the Jet who is the only man in NFL history to run more than 90 yards on a play from scrimmage without scoring; if you remember the glory days of the New York Sack Exchange, when practice was often disrupted by the distracting presence of Mark Gastineau's inamorata, Brigitte Nielsen; if you can still hum the fight song coach Lou Holtz made the team sing after victories -- not that there were enough for them to memorize the lyrics; or if you know which Jets coach told which Jets punter that his flatulence traveled farther than the punter's kicks -- then Gang Green is the book for you.
About the Author
Gerald Eskenazi has been writing about sports for The New York Times for the last three decades, and about the New York Jets since 1975. The author of numerous books, including The Lip: A Biography of Leo Durocher, Bill Veeck: A Baseball Legend, and There Were Giants in Those Days, he lives in Roslyn, New York.
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