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City's football fans on verge of despair

By Max Dickstein, amNewYork Sports Editor | mdickstein@am-ny.com

September 21, 2007

The first, light chills of autumn are in the air and Jets and Giants fans enter this weekend with nary an NFL victory to which they might anchor any feelings of promise.

Here in Week 3, it's almost not too early to say that a winless weekend could usher in the doldrums of a lost NFL season in New York City.

The Giants are a sad, stuffed-up outfit with a nearly jobless coach, Tom Coughlin, a venomless quarterback, Eli Manning (SI.com recently named him one of the Least Fun Athletes to Watch), and, despite it all, a sense of pride that abides.

The Jets, the more appealing and star-crossed team, may suffer through the horrid season many predicted for them last year, when the team managed a 10-6 record and playoff berth quite against the odds.

The emotional stakes are high, and they're borne by the teams' despairing fans, not their ownership, whose financial stakes do much to compensate for the losing.

Forbes Magazine recently determined that the Giants and Jets are among the 10 most valuable teams in the NFL, worth an aggregate $1.94 billion, partially on the strength of the $1.3 billion Giants Stadium scheduled to open its luxury boxes in 2010.

Like other New York teams, the city's professional football franchises are losing as lavishly as they spend and earn.

The $195 million Yankees followed that formula with such devotion early this season that despite the Bombers' winning surge, they may lose out on their AL East title birthright and enter the postseason as a wild card.

And it is hoped that the $116 million Mets will win half of their remaining games, hold off Philadelphia for the NL East title and at least advance to the NL championship series, as they did last year.

If not, we'll be stuck with the overfed Yankees, the swampy Giants and Jets and, uh oh!, here come the $89 million Knicks.

Correction: In the Sept. 14 column on Greg Oden's injury, the view that the Trail Blazers should have drafted for talent instead of position ought to have been attributed to Portland talk-radio and blog opinion instead of Josh Stark, who backed the choice of Greg Oden.