Steve Serby

Steve Serby

NFL

Idzik pal: Jets are ‘in good hands’ with this general manager

He was there at Hofstra on Thursday evening, watching the team he rooted for as a boy, the team his best friend John Idzik is currently building, return to its roots on Family Night.

“I tell Jets fans whenever I see them, I say, ‘Be very optimistic about the future of the Jets. They are in very, very good hands,’ ” Dave Howard said.

“John is an exceptional person. … I keep telling them it’s not coincidental that the teams [Buccaneers, Cardinals, Seahawks] he was involved with, were Super Bowl-bound ultimately. He was an important piece in all those organizations. And all that learning is going to be applied here and will benefit Jets fans.”

Howard, a highly-regarded executive with the Mets and MSG, and Idzik, whose Jets lost 35-24 to the Giants in the Snoopy Bowl on Friday night, met as Dartmouth freshmen — Howard a brash quarterback who wore No. 12 at Half Hollow Hills High School of Dix Hills, L.I., and Idzik a tall, skinny blond receiver and son of a Jets coach.

“Lockers [were] arranged alphabetically,” Howard resaid, “so H and I is pretty close. I notice this tall blond guy laughs at a lot of my jokes. So I’m like, ‘Hey, I like the guy!’ ”

It turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

“I recognized the name, I was a Jet fan so I knew that his dad was a coach, and we immediately hit it off,” Howard told The Post. “And when I tell that story in his presence, he’ll say, ‘Guys — I’m a wide receiver, he’s a quarterback. Of course I’m going to laugh at his jokes.’ ”

They didn’t tear up the Ivy League — Howard was a backup and never got to throw a touchdown pass to his friend — but they were Ivy League champs as seniors, and first-round draft choices in the classroom.

“We took three classes together,” Howard said. “He graduated Phi Beta Kappa there. I graduated Magna Cum Laude, I missed Phi Beta Kappa by two one-hundredths of a point, which drove me nuts, but — the three classes we took together? I had a 4.0, and he didn’t. So I say, in head-to-head competition, I actually edged him out.”

Howard laughed. “The one that I got the A in and he didn’t, was a philosophy of argument class,” he said. “ I always say, ‘You were totally overmatched, no one can out-argue me.’”

Fate works in strange ways sometimes. Howard had been a pitcher-shortstop growing up in East Farmingdale, L.I.

“The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, that previous year Burger King was having a sweepstake to win a week at Joe Namath’s Football Camp,” Howard said. “And, I literally stuffed the ballot box. I would go down to that local Burger King on a regular basis, and I would stuff it with entry forms. I come home from school one day, and my mom is so excited. She just got a call, I won the week at Joe Namath.

“He was my coach. He taught me how to throw a football. And I’ve said this to Joe, when I met him a few years later at Shea Stadium. I said, ‘I just want you to know, that week arguably changed my life.’ I became a very good high school quarterback, I got recruited, I went to an Ivy League school as a recruited athlete, and in many respects it changed the course of my life. So my devotion and love of the Jets, it’s deep. And Namath in particular. As much as a lot of guys who grew up on Long Island our age or so, we all had this fascination with him. But he actually touched me in that one week that really changed the course of my life.”

Howard knows better than most that there is more to Idzik than meets the eye. Just because he is ice on the outside doesn’t mean there isn’t a fire burning on the inside. The time machine takes Howard back to the spring of 1982 in Foxborough, Mass.

“It’s our senior year,” Howard said. “In fact, he and I got invitations to try out as free agents with the Patriots. So we’re working out for this, and some of the guys who were going to be playing the following year were working with us. We’re doing some passing drills. Some of the footballs we had, they were a little inconsistent. There was one ball that was kind of a balloon. And when I would throw that one, it would sail a little bit. It was a different ball than the others, and it just so happened that, for about two or three passes in a row, when John’s turn would come up and I would throw to him, I got that ball. And he got a little ticked off. And he’s like, ‘Let’s go! Throw it!’

“Now I’m ticked. He comes up, and sure enough, I got that ball again. Now I want to put it like, split his hands, or put it through him, and I overthrew the ball and I sail it again. He … is … livid. He goes and he gets the ball, and he actually has a good arm, he throws it up way into the stands at the stadium. I really had never seen him like that.

“He’s burning. And he just walks past me and walks out of the building. You saw that fire and that intensity which he has. He’s very mild-mannered, he’s very understated. Don’t take that as any indication that he’s not other than the most competitive, fiery person. … There is a fire that burns within that’s very intense. He wants to win, and he wants to win a Super Bowl here, that’s his goal. And he will do everything within his power to move the organization in that direction.”

They graduated together, Howard with a degree in economics, Idzik with a degree in mathematics.

“I was best man at his wedding, godfather to his son Brad,” Howard said. “I have one brother, but he’s that level of relationship.”

Howard is one of the best and brightest in the sports field, just like his friend.

“One of the finest men of character I’ve met in my life,” Howard said.
“Just an exceptional person.”

Howard beamed with pride when asked to provide a scouting report on Idzik.

“Brilliant from an intellectual standpoint,” he said. “A high-character, high-integrity, extremely positive football pedigree, loyal, trustworthy, all the values and characteristics that you’d want in a friend and certainly in an executive or GM of your team.

“I’m encouraged as a Jets fan, I’m thrilled that one of my best friends in the world is leading the team that I grew up rooting for as a kid.”