Sunday Scaries: It’s Hell Being a Lifelong Fan of the New York Jets

The Sunday Scaries are upon us once again! Yes, as the weekend concludes, most of us feel an oncoming sense of anticipatory dread about the week ahead. Anxiety about work manifests itself into a feeling that’s known as the Sunday Scaries. However, we at Awards Radar are here to combat that, by taking back the name. Now, we want you think about a horror-centric piece on the site when you hear the term. So, let us continue on with another installment of the Awards Radar Sunday Scaries! Today, we’re diving into the world of sports fandom, which can be quite the horror show…

A true sports fan knows that you don’t get to pick the teams you root for. In a very real way, they pick you. Whether it’s a family member passing the fandom down to you or a seminal experience as a child, there’s a special sauce that creates a fan. After all, why wouldn’t you just pick a good team to root for, given the choice? I say that as a lifelong fan of the New York Jets and New York Mets. I’ve written about the Mets many times on the site, but today, I’m turning my attention to the Jets.

The Jets are the main reason people joke that I don’t like sports (the Mets too, but they’re not on my mind as much today). Year in and year out, they claim to be on the upswing, yet somehow turn out worse and worse. I’ll be 40 in March and have never seen them in the Super Bowl. Hell, they’ve only been to one Super Bowl, and that was in 1969 (they won, at least). Even the Mets won their last World Series while my mother was pregnant with me in 1986, so if you’re a hardcore conservative (I’m not), you can claim I was alive for that one. The Mets have at least been to two more World Series since then, and lost in the National League Championship Series four other times. They come close on occasion. The Jets? No no. The Jets have been to three AFC Championship games in my lifetime, in 1999, 2010, and 2011. Since then? THEY HAVEN’T EVEN MADE THE PLAYOFFS.

Even more so than the Mets, the Jets torture me. The Mets break your heart by teasing greatness. The Jets destroy you with ineptitude and a sense of inevitable failure. Trust me, if I could root for better teams, I would. I would, however, argue that these shitty teams build character. I disagree with Chris Christie on just about everything, but he’s a fellow Met fan (as well as a Bruce Springsteen lover), and his requirement that his children be Met fans, while allowing them to root for whatever team they want in other sports, is a lesson I agree with. As a guest on Bill Maher‘s show years ago, he was asked by Maher, a fellow Met fan, about his fandom, leading to a story about why his kids couldn’t choose another baseball team. Christie said that when his wife asked why he wouldn’t just let the kids root for the Yankees so they could actually be happy, Christie said: “No. Life is full of pain and disappointment. They need to learn now about that.”

Here’s the interview where he said that, coming about eleven minutes into the conversation:

I bring that up to show that fans of bad teams know their team is bad, we just choose to take lessons from it. Why am I bringing up the Jets? Well, I’m actually in Missouri right now, as I’ve flown to Kansas City to see the Jets play the Kansas City Chiefs. I’ll be there later on today with friend and fellow writer Mike Ryan, a diehard Chiefs fan like I am a Jets fan, as well as Kate Erbland, and a few others. They’re all going to be happy, as the Chiefs will almost certainly win, and they’ll see Taylor Swift too (though we notably met her last Sunday, as I detailed on the podcast here). Me? I’ll have spent a lot of money to see my team potentially be embarrassed.

Why do we do it? Well, much like a horror movie, it’s a curse. I’m cursed with the hope that the Jets will one day turn it around. Almost two decades ago, they were seen as a potential emerging powerhouse. Since then? Zero playoff appearances, one winning season, and embarrassments like the infamous Butt Fumble. Don’t know what that is? Prepare to see something that could only happen to the Jets:

Sundays are fun for most football fans. For a Jet fan? It’s waiting for the next horror show to emerge. I’m once again hoping that next year will be better. Spoiler alert, it probably won’t be. Even when the Jets a few years ago traded for a Hall of Fame player in Aaron Rodgers, things went badly. When I interviewed NFL sportswriter Ian Rapoport here, he insisted that better days were ahead for my team. Guess what? They feel worse than ever, even if I’m deluding myself and thinking that next year will be the year when the Jets finally turn things around.

Spare a thought for me today as I root on the Jets. It’s hell being a Jet fan. I’ll never stop being a Jet fan, either, so this is my lot in life…

Stay tuned for another Sunday Scaries installment next week!