The unveiling of the 2010 season for the New York Giants and New York Jets caused noticeable electricity amongst all the fans. The wait that seems eternal from every year’s Super Bowl to opening kickoff is finally over.
The New York Giants and New York Jets are in a race to make their mark on New Meadowlands Stadium first in its inaugural 2010 season.
With aspirations of reaching the Super Bowl, each team took the field for their home opener in a new, state-of-the-art, 1.6 billion dollar stadium. The New Meadowlands opens its doors to both the Jets and the Giants, but just whose house will this be?
First and foremost, the Giants have a richer and longer history than the Jets do. The Giants have three Super Bowl titles, the Jets have one. The Giants have 20 Hall of Fame members, while the Jets only have three. The Giants have 11 retired jersey numbers, the Jets have four. It’s impossible to argue which team has a bigger influence on the history of the city of New York, but the stadium is a sign of new life, change and outlook towards the future, not a place to dwell in the past.
Talk may be cheap, but the Jets are backing up each and every word so far. As far as the free agent market, they’ve brought in future hall-of-famers with Jason Taylor and Ladainian Tomlinson, household names in Antonio Cromartie and Santonio Holmes and return with all the swagger they left-off with last season. Their coach has everyone believing they’re a Super Bowl contending team, and with good reason.
They were 30 minutes away from a Super Bowl berth last season, while the Giants lost by 32 points to close out an embarrassing 2009 season and final game at Giants Stadium. They did atone, however, winning the first official game of the new stadium against the Carolina Panthers. The Jets, on the other hand, lost their first official game at the new stadium 10-9, committing almost twice as many penalties as points scored.
The face of the Jets franchise, Rex Ryan, can barely be squeezed into a driver’s license photo, yet is still known throughout all of football with help from his mouth and ego. The face of the Giants franchise is a shy quarterback in Eli Manning who was a few bad games away from being exiled from New York. At least the Giants have a player representing them.
Then again you could pick Mark Sanchez as the Jets representative; a quarterback that barely completed over 50 percent of his passes and had a horrific touchdown-to-interception ratio in his rookie campaign, nearly matching Joe Namath’s career numbers. Maybe that’s why Jet fans love him so much.
Neither team sold out their first game of the season. The Giants had a waiting list to purchase season tickets up until last year and the Jets, along with a lot of “experts” and all their fans, believe they’re going to the Super Bowl this year. Yet neither of them were able to sell the extra 2,000 seat difference from Giants stadium to the new stadium. The Jets did, however, sell more seats than the Giants, even with the memory of the Giants remarkable upset in Super Bowl XLII against the New England Patriots only three years removed. The Patriots were heavily favored to win that game, but it just proves that nothing is as sure-fire as a “Broadway Joe” prediction.
No longer can the Giants use the excuse that they came around first. The cost of this stadium was split evenly between the Giants and the Jets, so neither team gains the upper hand financially over the stadium. The New Meadowlands Stadium won’t stick for long, and to avoid controversy they won’t call it Giants Stadium or Jets Stadium.
Which team will rise and take the stadium for their own? One of these teams will have bragging rights to call this stadium their home, but with that victory comes the cost of claiming that ugly Xanadu thing next door as a neighbor.
No comments:
Post a Comment