{"id":7337,"date":"2011-01-31T19:38:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T23:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jetnation.com\/?p=7337"},"modified":"2019-11-28T07:24:13","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T11:24:13","slug":"jetnation-article-new-york-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/2011\/01\/31\/jetnation-article-new-york-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"JetNation Article: New York Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/news\/intelligencer\/70984\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New York magazine<\/a> embedded a photographer and a reporter amongst Jets fans during the recent road trip to see the New York Jets play the Pittsburgh Steelers.\u00a0 The AFC Championship game did not have the ending that Jets fans were looking for but the outcome never gets in the way of a good time.<\/p>\n<p>Here is their report on the road trip.\u00a0 Special thanks to Todd Hutson from The Stadium Events for an enjoyable trip:<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<h2>Gang Green, Blue<\/h2>\n<h3>This isn\u2019t the  Super Bowl week that Jets fans dreamed about.<\/h3>\n<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/nymag\/9317\">Will Leitch<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Published Jan 30, 2011<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been waiting a long time,\u201d he said as we prepared to walk into the stadium. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t miss this night for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been a season-ticket holder since  they were the Titans, back in the Polo Grounds,\u201d Mike Desepoli told me.  Desepoli is 72, a retired bar owner from Nesconset, Long Island. When  he started going to games, tickets cost $12.<\/p>\n<p>The Jets were five hours away from what  everyone hoped would be their first conference championship in 42  years, and the gravity was lost on no one. I expected that some fans,  after six hours of grilling, screaming, and heavily boozing, would be  too exhausted for the actual game. But as kickoff approached, things  only got more intense. Fans who had scattered began to coalesce around  the bus. The chants became incessant. Everyone put their helmets on.  They painted their faces. This was it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"5\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"560\" valign=\"top\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nymag.com\/news\/intelligencer\/intelposts110207_jets_560.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"560\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"560\" align=\"center\">\n<div>\n<p>Jets fans in Pittsburgh, before the heartbreak.\u00a0 (Shane Sullivan lower right)<\/p>\n<div>(Photo: Brian Finke)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<blockquote><p>The storied  \u201cJ-E-T-S\u201d chant is oddly abrupt. Someone shouts \u201cJ-E-T-S!\u201d and the crowd  responds \u201cJets! Jets! Jets!\u201d and that\u2019s it. There\u2019s nowhere else to go  with it, and it would sound odd to repeat it. So it stops. It\u2019s exciting  in a primal way, but as soon as you start to get yourself wrapped up in  the collective adrenaline, it\u2019s already over.<\/p>\n<p>This is the sort of thing you notice  when you\u2019ve heard said chant about 115 times during an eight-hour drive  on a bus filled with 55 crazed Jets fans, like I did last week, heading  to Pittsburgh for the AFC Championship Game. The trip was promoted by  fan site JetNation and run by The Stadium Events\u2019 Todd Hutson, who  organizes sports outings across the country. (Hutson\u2019s website has  pictures of him in the attire of several different teams; he\u2019s actually a  Chicago Bears fan, though he was wearing a Bart Scott Jets jersey all  day.) The bus left Long Island at 4 a.m. Sunday, picked me up in  Manhattan at 4:45, and made one last stop at the Secaucus Wal-Mart. The  chant started shortly thereafter and continued on and off for the entire  ride, interrupted only by the bus\u2019s televisions, which played Jets  highlight videos and six episodes of <em>The King Of Queens.<\/em> \u201cThat was a request after last week\u2019s trip to Foxboro,\u201d Hutson told me.<\/p>\n<p>In the front of the bus was a gaggle of  fans from Mineola, Long Island, mostly composed of volunteer  firefighters, who were fairly well behaved. In the back there were  groups of cops and bricklayers who got revved up quicker than the bus  itself. At 5:15 a.m., bricklayer Dan \u201cFlash\u201d McNeely handed me a shot of  Jack Daniel\u2019s on my way to the already-wafting \u201crestroom.\u201d \u201cYou can  have this as long as you quote me on this,\u201d he says, pointing at my  notebook. \u201c<em>Fuck. Pittsburgh.<\/em>\u201d He then helpfully spelled it out. \u201c<em>F \u2026 U \u2026 C \u2026 <\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As we approached Heinz Field, Mathew  Sanderleaf Jr., 25, a Mineola firefighter, puts his Jets fire helmet on.  It\u2019s an old Mineola F.D. helmet that he painted in green and white.  (His father, sitting behind him, had worn it for a while earlier, and  told me it\u2019s given him a measure of respect for iconic Jets fan Fireman  Ed. \u201cThis helmet, it kills your neck,\u201d he said, taking it off mere  minutes after putting it on.) The younger Sanderleaf then hands me a  potion called \u201cglogg,\u201d which involves vodka, port wine, and dried fruit,  mixed together in a secret recipe his father will not reveal.<\/p>\n<p>When we arrive at the Heinz Field  tailgate six hours before game time, the bus unloads and a large Jets  flag is quickly hoisted up. We\u2019re immediately crowded by stray New York  fans as if the bus were a traveling embassy. Hutson sets up grills and  unloads the five vats of booze, which are iced, even though the wind  chill in Pittsburgh is approximately minus 85,000. The crowd around the  bus swells to nearly 300 Jets fans, drinking, cheering, and sporadically  starting that chant, and Steelers fans make their way over to  socialize. I expect a scuffle or two, but to a man, every Jets fan I  talk to says the Steelers fans were the friendliest they\u2019d ever  encountered. \u201cThey\u2019re classy here,\u201d says one of the back-of-the-bus  guys, ten minutes before he burns a Terrible Towel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Were you on the New York Jets road trip?\u00a0 Tell us your story in our <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.jetnation.com\/\">NY Jets forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York magazine embedded a photographer and a reporter amongst Jets fans during the recent road trip to see the New York Jets play the Pittsburgh Steelers.\u00a0 The AFC Championship game did not have the ending that Jets fans were looking for but the outcome never gets in the way of a good time. Here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,213],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-featured-editorials","7":"category-jet-news"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-1Ul","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7337"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47498,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337\/revisions\/47498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}