Guest Column: Jim Rockford on How and Why To Tell The Difference Between Jets and Giants Fans
Editor’s Note: Mr. Rockford is a private detective based in Malibu, California. We here at Dubsism have retained Mr. Rockford at his standard rate of two hundred dollars a day plus expenses to investigate matters of crime and other general shadiness in the world of sports, then report back to us when needed. If you would like to contact Mr. Rockford, at the tone, leave your name and number and he’ll get back to you.
Have you seen the ESPN commercial that feature the two English soccer fans that have no idea they are indistinguishable? After you’ve seen that commercial, you may not realize that situation exists right here in America.
Look at a map of the greater New York/New Jersey area. Pinpoint MetLife Stadium, it is right next to the Meadowlands Race Track, “Meadowlands” being a polite euphemism for “Dismal Jersey Swamp.” Draw a 50-mile circle around it, and it is the Jets and Giants fans who live within this zone I’m talking about. I know one of the contributors to Sports Blog Movement is a Giants fans who lives somewhere in the Midwest; I’m sure his life is already some soulless vortex of suck, so it’s important he knows I’m not talking about him.
So, if you were born within the 50-mile zone of exclusion, you were raised either a Jets or Giants fan. So, how can you tell the difference? In a word, you can’t, because to the untrained eye, like those soccer fans in that commercial they are the same. But unlike those soccer fans, they will change their colors depending on which team doesn’t currently suck. In 2007, their world turned blue based on one piece of blind luck from Eli Manning and that guy who could catch with his forehead. A year later, they all turned green when the Giants were nowhere to be found in January and Rex Ryan found a way to get to back-to-back AFC Championship games with another shit-heap of a quarterback. Last year, the NY/NJ football color pendulum swung back to blue because the New England Patriots are bigger gag artists than a runaway at her first porn audition.
That’s why now is the time to learn the subtle differences present in this seemingly infernally similar group of football derelicts; neither of these teams are in the play-offs so our January will for once be free of their mouthbreather fans. Seriously, the Jets/Giants fans I’m talking about are the most horrible people imaginable. They are worse than vegetarians and Patriot fans combined. One of the advantages of living in a city without an NFL franchise means these assholes aren’t coming here for road games.
But let’s talk about their home games. There more than just the fact they share a stadium that from the outside resembles the world’s largest parking garage. MetLife Stadium rises like a concrete sarcophagus out of the Jersey swamp, but it is in that football hell hole where you can start to see the differences between Giants and Jets fans.
1) The Backgrounds
To make a blanket statement, the Giants’ fan base tends to contain those who pretend to be “classy” while defining “classless.” These are the suburbanites who before they lived in Westchester and commuted to their Manhattan stockbroker/lawyer jobs date-raped their way through (insert Northeastern liberal-arts douche-factory here). They show up at MetLife with their backward ball caps (fitted, of course…plastic straps are for those working-class slob Jets fans). They slug down that cheap-shit stadium because they get off on “slumming” because it reminds them of their cocktail-waitress date-raping days, except they are now in their mid-thirties with bratty children and wives who are about five years away from seducing the lawn guy.
To be fair, not all of them are from Westchester. Some of them are from Bergen County, and they are easy to distinguish, because they are the only people from New Jersey smart enough to never tell you they are from New Jersey. When asked, they will say they live in Bergen County because they can take one look at you and a) know that you likely know what that means and b) know you can’t possibly live there. In either case, the Bergenites and Westchesties secretly share the wish that football wasn’t so popular with the common folk, because while they enjoy football whenever the Giants don’t suck, the only time they would prefer to be around the working class is when they are raping one of them.
This is the only group of people in this discussion who don’t change colors. When the Giants are lousy, like right now, they simply forego football and will prefer to spend their entertainment dollars at places like Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, or at Broadway shows, and they won’t return until the Giants don’t suck again. The easiest way to visually determine them is they will be the only people in the lower deck at Giants home game who aren’t at least 70 years old. Seriously, if you removed all these people from a Giants home game, the lower deck of MetLife would look like a Denny’s at 4:30 in the afternoon; white hair as far as the eye can see and the noticeable scent of soon-to-be-used adult diapers in the air.
Meanwhile, the lower deck at Jets game takes on a completely different feel. While the green side of Met Life still stays in it’s “working class” roots, these are the “rich” working class; construction contractors, union guys and other crooks. This is why they turned on the only loyal Jets fans who had a real and respectable job, he made them look bad. The fact that Jets fans turned on Fireman Ed tells you all you need to know about Jets fans, especially in a city where after 9/11 it was a city ordinance that every firefighter in the greater NY/NJ had to be provided with a blowjob on-demand.
This is just one reason why the upper-deck at a Giants game is indistinguishable from the whole crowd at a Jets game. The same people who would Tweet the most vile things about a retired firefighter are the same ones who will be more than happy to brain you with an ice-chunk coming from the cheap seats. In other words, three-quarters of the butt-loafs who say they are either Jets or Giants fans are exactly the same people; a stereotypical bunch of greaseballs who all think they are Joe Pesci. These are the people who make Axe deodorant and spray-tanning profitable businesses. These are the people who make a past-time out of grabbing their dicks in front of strange women. If you made all the Jets and Giants fans swap jerseys, you’d never be able to tell the difference. Of course, you don’t have to make them do that, the won-loss records do that for you. They should all get rectal cancer.
2) The Attitudes
At first glance, it’s hard to figure out why there is such an attitude difference, given the fact the fans of these two teams are the same people, but despite what anybody wants you to believe, these people get decidely worse when they are Giants fans. The trick is figuring out why.
We already know Jets and Giants fans are the same people We already know both these teams play in the same $800 million parking garage in the same reeking swamp. We also know that the experience of attending a Jets or Giants game is largely the same. You drive out to a stadium in the middle of nowhere, you pay through the nose to park, and then you tailgate in the parking lot.
But that’s not exactly how it works at MetLife. If you go to a Jets/Giants game, and don’t buy a parking pass, you have to park 2 miles away in some unlit factory parking lot, and ride a school bus to the stadium. At first, you are a little worried that a school bus smells like beer and urine, but you get over it because you soon remember you just got skinned $30 to ride a piss-stinking school bus.
The real fun begins once you make it to the stadium.
If this is a Giants game:
To get to your seat, you are going to make your way past about a half dozen “clubs” on the way, all of which are filled with the aforementioned Bergenites and Westchesties. In no time at all, you find yourself awash in a sea of dickweeds who know jack-shit about football and spend all day uploading pictures of themselves to Facebook so all the other Todd and Buffy Uppercrusts can see how cool they are. Naturally, you are just passing through, because these clubs are filled with money people who can afford to be there because the god-awful personal seat licenses and ticket prices don’t bother them. Once you get to your seat, you feel more like you are at a football game, because you are now surrounded by fat drunks who in between chants implying the incestous and/or homosexual nature of that day’s opponent, have plenty of exceptionally offensive commentary concerning specific body parts of the bleach blond sitting two rows in front of you.
If this is a Jets game:
You still pass the clubs, but they aren’t filled with the same people, Now you find yourself surrounded by guys who spend all day hauling garbage and delivering wholesale groceries, and are making a killing doing it because either they are “connected,” belong to a shady union, or are just plain crooks. You don’t have to be a “blue blood” to afford “club-level” prices, but there aren’t a lot of hourly-working guys who can drop a few grand just for a Sunday afternoon’s entertainment. So, once you make your way past the extras from “The Sopranos,” you get to your seat where you feel more like you are at a football game, because you are now surrounded by fat drunks who in between chants implying the incestous and/or homosexual nature of that day’s opponent, have plenty of exceptionally offensive commentary concerning specific body parts of the bleach blond sitting two rows in front of you.
So, what makes the difference? Winning.
See, the Jets haven’t won squat in over 40 years, which is why when these people wear blue, they are simply insufferable. When calling themselves Giants fans, these people become horrible human beings. These are the people who call WFAN and verbally fellate Bill Parcells while demanding Tom Coughlin be taken out in the weeds somewhere and shot in the head even though he’s won them two titles they didn’t deserve.
Do you know what else makes a difference? Old-school versus New-school. Just because they’ve been around longer, the Giants act as though they own New York. The fact they too used to play in Yankee Stadium somehow gives them this aura of respectability. Face it. For some reason, the Giants get to pull of this scam that they have a clutch quarterback, good coaches, a respected owner, and a competent front office, all of which is supposed to cover the fact they have a quarterback who has the I.Q. of a lug wrench and literally stumble-fucked his way into two Super Bowl rings. They can do this because the Mara family has owned the Giants forever and they’ve been rich so long nobody remembers how they made their money in the first place. For another unknown reason, Americans hate rich people unless they’ve been rich for a long time, then we make royalty out of them.
In contrast, there’s the Jets’ owner Woody Johnson. Because he got rich last week, for yet another unknown reason, that means everything around him has to be a soap opera. He hires one dipshit general manager after another, who makes one dipshit move after another. He probably made his money mulching aborted fetuses into fertilizer, which explains why God made sure his team into a walking ball of bad karma. Wouldn’t you be concerned if you woke up one day and realized a blowbag like Rex Ryan is your voice of stability?
Boil it down to gravy and the Giants are the luckiest franchise ever in the history of the NFL. Three of those four Super Bowl titles should have been gift-wrapped. 1991 gives them Scott “Wide Right” Norwood. 2007 gives them David “Helmet Catch” Tyree. 2011 is a luck smorgasbord. Just getting to the Super Bowl was courtesy of a division schedule featuring teams led by Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder, and the dear-departed Andy Reid. In the play-offs, they got to face a Packer club lulled to sleep by the fact they hadn’t played a “real” game in over a month. In the NFC Championship game, the biggest help to the Giants offense was 49ers punt returner/fumble aritst Kyle Williams. Then there’s the Super Bowl, where the Giants get a touchdown from a running back who is trying not to score, a catch that Mario Manningham makes exactly zero times if you gave him a hundred chances to do it again, and a Tom Brady “Hail Mary” that a healthy Rob Gronkowski may very well have caught.
3) Why The Difference Is Important
Boil it down to burnt stuff in the bottom of the pan, and you get the tale of two franchises who are as alike as they are different, but one stands out as the team more deserving of the hatred of the average NFL fan. That would clearly be the New York Giants.
Every Giants fan over the age of 35 remembers winning four Super Bowls, and tends to forget three of them were pure luck. All the while, these same Giants fans who have been given more joy than they deserve will bitch about trivial shit like how the Giants play too many close games. This should be maddening to a good part of the rest of the NFL fan base because most teams I can think of would love to have a quarterback like Eli Manning who, lucky or not, manages somehow to deliver.
Think about that for a minute. Imagine being a fan of some other teams while you are listening to Giants fans bitch about the fact Eli Manning has literally found a way to pull Super Bowl rings out of his ass. How would you like to listen to that crap if you were a Chicago Bears fan, considering you’ve had to live through watching Rex Grossman completely sodomize a Super Bowl winning opportunity, only to follow that with the Jay Cutler era? How would you like to listen to that crap if you were a Chargers fan, considering you’ve had to live through the 14-2 Marty Schottenheimer season that got him fired, only to live through the Norv Turner era? How would you like to listen to that crap if you were a Cowboys fan, considering you’ve had Eli Manning’s dick in your butt consistently since 2005, only to live through the Tony Romo era? You can do this with just about any team that hasn’t won anything in the last quarter-century when the Giants were finding Super Bowl rings in the street.
Giants fans, do you get the point? If not, just go back to being a Jets fan where it won’t matter. Nobody hates the Jets except Patriots fans (I’ll come back to that later), and hating the Jets is like wanting to beat up the crippled kid in the schoolyard. Patriots fans do that exceptionally well, which is why everybody should hate them as well (again, I’ll come back to this).
Before you accuse me of trolling, consider this. This blog publishes all sorts of nasty comments about all sorts of people, but in this case, it’s a public service. After all, this isn’t about beating on the New York Giants because they happen to be lucky. In order to be lucky, you have to be in the right place at the right time, so the Giants obviously have the ability to do that. Rather, this is about calling out the ridiculous turd clumps who call themselves Giants fans. Honestly, the Giants could very well be America’s Team if they didn’t have one of the worst fan bases in all of sports. Americans love lucky guys, until they act like dicks about it, which is exactly the sin Giants fans commit.
Do you know what else Americans love about the Giants and the Jets? The fact that they make Patriots fans spew bile, and everybody hates Patriot fans. All you have to do to watch any Patriots fan lose control of his bodily functions is to mention anything about either New York football team. To do so is a not-so-subtle reminder that the New England Patriots are like that guy who hangs around at a party far too long and his mere presence makes him completely hateable. Face it, there’s almost nobody more responsible for the prominence of Rex Ryan and Eli Manning than the Patriots. Nobody would give a shit about either of them if the Patriots hadn’t been the source of most of their luck. Worse yet, the entire reason why Patriots fans hate the Giants is because they are the only team luckier than the Patriots.
Remember that thing about how Americans love lucky guys until they act like dicks? Karma works the same way, and that is important to note here. Everybody knows Tom Brady and Bill Belichick won the lottery; Brady was well on his way to being a career back-up quarterback and Belichick was a guy the Patriots would have fired years ago if fate hadn’t brought him and Brady together. But then Brady started showing up on the cover of GQ, and Belichick started believing the crap in the press about how he’s a great coach, and voilá, Lady Luck hands the Giants two Super Bowls.
Again, here is where the distinction between the Giants fans and the team is crucial. The team aren’t the ones acting like lucky dicks, in fact they do quite the opposite. The Giants win a Super Bowl, and then promptly spend the next season sucking swamp water. It is an exercise that keeps the team grounded while showing us all what corks in the asshole of progress the Giants fans are. WFAN is the perfect place to hear it in action. As you read this, somebody is on New York sports radio getting bleeped for calling Tom Coughlin a “cocksucker.”
So, here’s what it all comes down to. While the Giants have endeared themselves to America by taking out the Patriots twice, pick up a New York newspaper and you are more than likely to see a headline about the dysfunctional circus known as the Jets. No wonder their fans have no loyalty.
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The Jets own the tabloids. The Giants own the rings.
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Hmmm. I don’t know. Maybe we just appreciate our luck. It’s a possibility.
Meehan
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That’s what I was going to say, Mee.
The Giants fans are the ones obnoxiously reminding the rest of us about their recent rings while Jets fans have nothing better to talk about than their coach’s tattoo.
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