CORTLAND — Jets owner Woody Johnson must not have watched the Broncos last year.
Johnson, making his first appearance at Jets training camp yesterday, said he has been surprised at the amount of media attention surrounding the franchise since the trade for quarterback Tim Tebow.
“I think the enormity of the coverage kind of surprised me a little bit,” Johnson said. “I knew there would be press, [that] there would be plenty of interest. But, even by our standards, this is pretty amazing.”
The owner, who watched from the sidelines yesterday and said he will be at Friday night’s preseason opener in Cincinnati, admitted he is happy to see the Jets being on the tips of everyone’s tongues.
“Absolutely,” he said. “We’re in a media business. We want to give our fans an insight, and the fact that they’re interested, I think, portends well for us.
“We’d rather have them interested, rather than apathetic and not paying attention.”
Despite the obvious attention Tebow has brought, the team still is trying to sell out MetLife Stadium. To that end, the Jets recently decided to lower some of its upper deck ticket prices.
“We just thought we wanted a higher percentage of season-ticket holders in the upper bowl seats,” Johnson said. “We would sell them on an individual game basis, but having a season-ticket holder we thought was valuable just from a fan, communal standpoint. So we did that and the fans are enthusiastic. We’ve got a lot more season-ticket holders than last year as a result.”
He said he thinks that will translate to the stadium being full this fall.
“We will be sold out, guaranteed,” he said. “I’m going to be like [Joe] Namath.”
Johnson also addressed some of the criticism the Jets have drawn in recent days over the acquisition of Tebow. One prominent critic is President Obama, who said last week on an Ohio radio show that he would be nervous about the move if he was a Jets fan.
“I’m glad he’s a New York Jets fan, first and foremost,” said Johnson, a prominent fundraiser for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, with a smile. “That’s important, the president of the United States being a Jets fan. That’s good.
“He’s passionate about the New York Jets, obviously. … I think it’s a positive.”
tbontemps@nypost.com