FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Let’s say you walked into a rowdy room — doesn’t matter how big, doesn’t matter how many people, just one of those feisty places you find yourself in every now and again. Let’s say a word was exchanged, and then another couple of words, and then someone told you, rather eloquently, to perform an anatomical impossibility.
What do you suppose your reaction would be?
The better angels of our nature want to respond a certain way to this, no doubt. In Sunday school they urge a turning of the other cheek. In college philosophy class, they preach power of non-violent protest. Wonderful options, certainly.
I have to be honest: I think I probably flip someone the bird in that spot, but then I’ve never been guided by the better angels of my nature nearly as often as Sister Mary McCauley would have liked. Maybe that means I get a fist to the jaw or an invitation to step outside, maybe someone keys my car in the parking lot, whatever. It’s what sometimes happens in rowdy rooms. And that’s me being me.
What happened over the weekend across town was Rex being Rex, and for the year-and-change Rex Ryan has been on the job, we have celebrated his honesty, his unfiltered observations on all things Jets.
He is not everyone’s cup of tea. He went out of his way to incite Giants fans last week, calling the Jets “the biggest show in town,” and to listen to the resulting outrage was to think he’d spoken ill of every mother of every Giants fan in the tri-state area. He went out of his way earlier in the year to incite Dolphins fans, and Miami LB Channing Crowder, and Bill Belichick, and offended certain media caretakers who somehow believe dull and colorless is the only way to win a football game.
Here’s the thing, though: The Jets loved this. They lapped it up. They loved seeing themselves on the back page every day. They loved the interest it drummed up, the business it drew: merchandise, PSLs, tickets, the whole nine. They knew what they were getting. They knew what Rex being Rex meant.
It meant sometimes Rex would wander into a rowdy room, which last weekend meant the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise for an MMA event. He said some things. The crowd said some things. And Rex got the final word. With his finger. And yesterday, the Jets fined him $50,000 for that.
Ryan won’t need anyone to pass the hat for him, but that’s beside the point. This fine — coupled with GM Mike Tannenbaum’s harsh rebuke immediately after — flies in the face of what the Jets have asked Ryan to be, what they expect him to be, and sure sounds like pandering for forgiveness where very little, if any, was demanded. This was a place where men pummel each other to a pulp, after all, not High Mass.
The Jets want it both ways, which is just as impossible a request as the act the Dolphins fans in that audience suggested Ryan perform. Forcing an apology was one thing. Adding a fine is downright disingenuous. That’s the NFL’s purview, not the Jets’. The Jets know what they have. They know who they hired.
It’s a mixed message every bit as wrong-headed as saying the wrong thing at a mixed martial arts show. Or any other rowdy room.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com