Insensitivity shows Jets coach is classless

Phil Mushnick

EQUAL TIME

The written and spoken autopsies of the Jets’ season thus far have not included what, to me, was the most enduring and revealing moment, one clearly captured by TV — on Fox — as reward for observing fundamental attention.

Two weeks ago, with four minutes left in the Giants-Jets game, Jets’ LB Aaron Maybin was flagged for a flagrant late hit, out of bounds, on running back D.J. Ware. In the process, the Giants’ 65-year-old coach, Tom Coughlin, was run over and left in obvious pain.

Minutes later, with the game over, Jets coach Rex Ryan was seen approaching Coughlin, then briefly shaking his hand, although not really. It was more a quick, perfunctory touch than a gentlemanly shake before Ryan quickly and petulantly split.

AP

CARE FREE: Jets coach Rex Ryan (right) didn’t ask Giants coach Tom Coughlin how his leg was, after Coughlin was knocked down during the Christmas Eve game.

If Ryan was concerned for Coughlin’s condition, if he regretted his injury or the cause of it, or if he just wanted to pretend that he was minimally a gentleman, he didn’t spend one second trying to show it.

In that moment all previous benefits of doubt and debate ended. In Ryan, win or lose, these Jets were in the hands of a slug, the antithesis of sport — even in its current state of advanced decomposition.

And the Jets, the next week during and after their loss against Miami, reaped what they so steadily had sown. Classless self-regard may have lost the game, but it won the day, and the day after.

Much of the football media here were eager to have Ryan and his team believe that it was OK, even preferable, to act like jerks. The media kept insisting on more, mining for more.

Rex the Wonder Slug. “Come on, dance for us, Rexie! Whattya got for us this week?” Yet, after every Jets loss the same media were ready to throw it in his face.

“Now do it again, Rex. Please?”

Class isn’t tidal. It doesn’t run both ways. Either you have it or you don’t, and Woody Johnson’s Jets, top to bottom and left to right, have become distinguishable for classlessness.

Its PSL and ticket sales approach was modeled after a boiler room pump-and-dump operation, so much so that the club’s heavily promoted, hand-picked, 50-yard-line PSL Auction “winner” — a bombastic team insider and mortgage broker, David Findel — now is doing seven-plus years for bank and bankruptcy fraud.

The team’s roster is lousy with big-ticket talent — Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress, Antonio Cromartie — who were deemed too selfish or socially insufferable to remain with other teams.

And its head coach is now a confirmed, certified slug.

In 1964, the Jets’ new owner Sonny Werblin — who quietly radiated, recognized and rewarded class — was eager to make for his team a big and lasting splash, one that would give the AFL Jets a legit presence in the NFL Giants’ town. He decided to spend a stupendous amount to sign one of the two top college QBs of the time, Tulsa’s Jerry Rhome or Alabama’s Joe Namath.