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 Thursday, January 18, 2001
Spoiled New Yorkers join Super Bowl party
By Marc Connolly
ABC Sports Online
I know most of you are nauseous over the Super Bowl. Not only does it feature two teams that are as exciting to watch as your average MLS team, but also because the NFC is represented by those coyote-ugly upstarts from New York.
If you're like me, you've been watching all this thinking, So what if Jim Fassel is suddenly lovable, Kerry Collins has been brilliantly reborn, and Jason Sehorn has the hottest significant other in the history of professional sports -- they're from New York. The same wretched place that held its own little World Series in October.
Seeing New Yorkers revel in the limelight once again for the next two weeks is like watching the quarterback get the girl, an investment broker win on "Millionaire" and Michael Jordan secure a title for the Washington Wizards, all at the same time. Think Tiger Woods' caddie is fortunate? How 'bout Anna Kournikova's towel boys? They've got nothing on New York sports fans, undoubtedly the most spoiled group of towel-waving, bleacher-dwelling, talk show-calling lugs in the sports world.
| |  | | | New York Giants quarterback Kerry Collins looks for a receiver during
the first quarter of the NFC title game against the Minnesota Vikings.
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What's more sickening is that you don't sense that certain Super Bowl build-up around these parts. It's been a few days since the G-Men finished off the Vikings at the Meadowlands and I haven't seen one piece of Giants paraphernalia on the streets of Manhattan. I shouldn't have to venture to that other universe known as Jersey to get the feeling a Super Bowl team has ties to the area.
If this was Green Bay, they'd cancel school until February and jail you for wearing anything less than one article of green or yellow clothing. If this was Cleveland, they'd organize a Million Man March to Baltimore so that two million butt cheeks could collectively moon Art Modell at the same instant. If this was New Orleans, they'd party with reckless abandon every night between the NFC championship and the first pregame shows on Super Sunday. OK, they already do that.
But no, this is New York, a baseball, hockey or basketball town depending on whom you talk to. Not only is this not a football town, but the waning passion for the sport is divided between the Giants, Jets and whoever is playing against Keyshawn. From my living-behind-enemy-lines vantage point as a Pats fan, that split, probably goes something like this: 55 percent Jets, 35 percent Giants, 10 percent "other."
So New York is a Jets town, which is something that might be lost to outsiders even though many an insurance premium has risen this week due to wagon-jumping injuries. It didn't take much prodding to get similar opinions on the subject.
"Ever since Parcells came back to New York, the Jets are the focus of this town once baseball is over," says one lifelong New York sports fan.
"It used to be easy," says another friend, "Giants fans owned all of Jersey, much of the upstate, southern Conn., and all of the City. Jets fans were found only in Long Island. But now, Giants fans are mostly found in Jersey. Manhattan and most other areas around here belong to the Jets."
One of my more cynical friends, who has loyalties to neither team, put it this way: "Jets fans are Jets fans forever. Giants fans are Giants fans if they're up 20 in the NFC Championship game."
It might not be just the Parcells Factor, either. Ever since L.T. retired, the Giants haven't exactly captured people's imaginations with their boring brand of football and inability to bring in any of the most sought-after free agents each off-season. You won't find many transplanted New Yorkers walking around in a Cedric Jones jersey. They'd rather be Wayne Chrebet, yell J-E-T-S until their life is threatened and reinvent new ways to make excuses for Vinny Testaverde.
"In a strange way, the Jets have exemplified more character and personality than the Giants have, even if it's been through their ability to be vastly unsuccessful in a variety of unique ways," says one fellow sportswriter from the Tri-State area.
Giant Fever hasn't taken over the exotic island of Gotham thus far. You get the feeling an "everything goes" sale at Prada in midtown or a Yahoo! merger for the digit-watchers downtown would incite the locals a lot more than what Fassel's upstarts have accomplished the past month or so.
I see a lot of incessant babbling and chest thumping each fall covering football, and I actually welcome it this time of year: the fans of the two Super Bowl teams deserved to celebrate a bit. Even in the biggest, baddest and boldest city in the land. So, please, someone, anyone, grab me in an elevator or a cab and try to talk me into believing that the G-Men will win by 30. I'll listen and probably smile, because I realize that a berth in a Super Bowl doesn't come around too often.
And you should too, spoiled New York sports fan or not.
Marc Connolly is a senior writer for ABC Sports Online.
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