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Rex Ryan borrowed Jim Fassel’s old poker analogy the other day, throwing his imaginary chips in the middle of the table, urging the Giants to do the same, talking about how important and meaningful and apocalyptic today’s intramural football clash at MetLife Stadium is going to be.
And sure; he’s right. It’s a big game. The Jets need it to advance their wild-card hopes. The Giants need it to extend their division title aspirations another week. It’s the first time the teams will meet this late in a season with both still in the postseason hunt. In its own way, it’s the Game 7 we never got in the 2000 World Series, the Game 7 we did get in 1994 between the Devils and the Rangers.
But it will not mean what Ryan — what so many Jets fans — want so desperately for it to mean. A win will not parole the Jets from the Giants’ shadows. It will not transform Butch into Sundance, will not turn Simon into Garfunkel, will not shatter the natural order of things. Not now. Not yet. Not for the foreseeable future.
“Quite honestly, I never came here to be little brother to anybody,” Ryan said this week, firing the opening salvo of a week that has grown increasingly lousy with empty epithets on both sides of the great divide. “So it’s on.”
This isn’t Danny Zuko challenging Craterface at Thunder Road, racing for “pink slips, ownership papers.” The winner today doesn’t get the deed to the city. The one person on either side who has made any kind of sense this week is Justin Tuck, who recused himself from the silly debate about who owns New York by simply conceding the race to Mayor Bloomberg and to the Yankees.
Look, here’s the thing: History matters around here. The Giants had a 35-year head start on the Jets. They have a more crowded trophy case. They have more recent success. Before they tore down their perfectly useful stadium, they had something like a 400-year waiting list for season tickets. This isn’t a scientific study, but if I had to guess I would say New York breaks down this way: 50 percent Giants fans, 40 percent Jets fans, 5 percent Cowboys/Steelers/Raiders/Dolphins fans, 5 percent undecided.
Have the Jets made a play for that latter 5 percent the last two years, the fans who gravitate to the hot team, the fun team, the more interesting team of the moment? Sure they have. Ryan deserves much of the credit for that, because of his personality and because his team has reached back-to-back title games, and that’s a wonderful accomplishment.
But the city’s football soul isn’t up for grabs today, and it won’t be for sale for quite a while. Think about this: The year the Jets won their Super Bowl, the Giants were right in the middle of an 18-year stretch where they never once participated in a playoff game. Eighteen years! And even then, the Jets couldn’t supplant the Giants, even though Joe Namath was 10 times the superstar that Ryan is.
This isn’t baseball. Though the Yankees have padlocked the city’s gates since 1993, baseball has forever been a battleground for the city’s shifting loyalties and fickle demographics, going back to when it was a three-team town. The Mets have twice commanded the city’s baseball soul for extended periods of time — 1964 through 1975, and 1984 through 1992 —and though it would take years to make that happen again, history tells us it can happen again.
But that’s the only place it can happen. The Nets never came close to unseating the Knicks, even as they made consecutive trips to the Finals while the Knicks were foundering, and I’ll believe the Brooklyn move will make a serious inroad only when I see it. The Islanders and Devils have seven titles to the Rangers’ one during their shared time in the area, and the Rangers have more fans than the other two combined.
Football isn’t like that anymore, and because of Ryan it’s probably fair to say that for the first time ever there’s a narrower gap between them and the Giants than there is between the Mets and the Yankees. It’s something; not everything. This game will determine two different football seasons. But not ownership. Not now. Not yet.