New York Jets and the New York Giants

[ZornLargentPatera]

If you're from New York, what determines whether you turn out to be a New York Jets fan or a New York Giants fan? Can't be geography or neighborhoods or that sort of thing, they both play in the exact same stadium!

 

[Lagartixa]

Sports-team fandom doesn't necessarily depend on geography.

I've been a Seahawks fan since 1976, and I didn't have any connection at all to the PNW. I never even visited Seattle (or any place closer to it than Lake Tahoe) until 2019. I grew up in Maine, then lived in Chicago and then three cities in California before moving to Brazil. In my case, I was seven, I saw some uniforms I didn't recognize on TV and asked my dad who that team was, and then adopted that team as mine on the spot. It seems like a shaky basis for choosing a team, but even though I let peer pressure get to me in many aspects of my life as a kid and especially as an adolescent, I stuck with the Seahawks despite being the only Seahawks fan I knew. I think it helped that my dad thought it was cool that I had chosen my first favorite sports team, and he supported me being a Seahawks fan a lot over the years.

My parents grew up in northern New Jersey, close to NYC and pretty damn close to where the Giants and Jets play now. My dad was from Rutherford. Giants Stadium (1976-2009) was in East Rutherford, and its replacement, MetLife Stadium, the current home of both the Giants and Jets, is also in East Rutherford.
I don't think my dad had a single favorite NFL team. There were teams he liked (the Dolphins, Noll Steelers, Giants, and Walsh 49ers, for example) and disliked (Raiders, Cowboys, and Elway Broncos), but I don't think he was a fan of any one team. When my dad was a kid, he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but his younger brother was a New York (baseball) Giants fan.

I grew up in Maine, but I was never a Patriots fan. I knew a lot about the Patriots because they were on TV and in the newspaper all the damn time, plus the kids playing football in the neighborhood with me were all Patriots fans, as were just about all my classmates at school who were into football, so when I was involved in conversations about football, Patriots players and games were just about always part of it. When we were playing, we would call a long pass as "Grogan to Francis," referring to the Patriots' QB and Pro Bowl (and second-team All-Pro) tight end. The kid who taught me how to play football was the town police chief's youngest son Chuck, who was about three years older than I was. Through him, I knew all about "Hog" Hannah, Sam Adams, Julius Adams, Leon Gray (Chuck really liked the guys in the trenches), "Sam Bam Cunningham," Grogan, Francis, Darryl Stingley, Mike Haynes, Stanley Morgan, etc.

Here in Brazil, there are pro soccer teams in the northeast, including a few that are in the top league, but I think that in northeastern Brazil, there are more fans of Flamengo, a team from Rio, than there are fans of any one of the teams from the region.

 

[Ruminator]

I'll bet that for a lot of "fans," it's fluid and depends on which team happens to be performing better in a given year. And now, it's time for a mini-rant: Sure, the population may be large and concentrated enough to be able to support two teams, and I understand it's all about business and bucks, but I've always disliked cities having two teams in a league because they get to enjoy way more opportunities to thump their chest while many one-team cities sniff the playoffs only on rare occasion. So if you're a New Yorker, for example, you've got your Jets/Giants, your Mets/Yankees, your Knicks/Nets, your Rangers/Islanders, and your Red Bulls/NYC-FC, and in any given year, there's a very high probability that you have at least a couple of teams in the playoffs. Must be nice!

I get it, though. Preferable to have two financially successful teams in one city than to see one lack needed support in another city and risk folding.

(Edited to add addendum)

 

[Lagartixa]

I'll bet that for a lot of "fans," it's fluid and depends on which team happens to be performing better in a given year. And now, it's time for a mini-rant: Sure, the population may be large and concentrated enough to be able to support two teams, and I understand it's all about business and bucks, but I've always disliked cities having two teams in a league because they get to enjoy way more opportunities to thump their chest while many one-team cities sniff the playoffs only on rare occasion. So if you're a New Yorker, for example, you've got your Jets/Giants, your Mets/Yankees, your Knicks/Nets, your Rangers/Islanders, and your Red Bulls/NYC-FC, and in any given year, there's a very high probability that you have at least a couple of teams in the playoffs. Must be nice!

I get it, though. Preferable to have two financially successful teams in one city than to see one lack needed support in another city and risk folding.

(Edited to add addendum)

In my experience, fans in cities with multiple teams tend to like one of the teams and dislike the other (or, in the case of fans of one of New York's three baseball teams before 1958, the others). Giants fans tend to dislike the Jets, and Jets fans tend to dislike the Giants, for example.
As I said before, my dad grew up close to NYC and was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan when he was a kid, and I remember him mentioning "the hated Yankees" when talking about his childhood. And of course, the rivalry between the Dodgers and (baseball) Giants continues to this day, now on the opposite coast.

I know for sure that most White Sox fans dislike the Cubs, and most Cub fans are vaguely aware that the Cubs are a baseball team (tho' they're not real clear on things like how baseball is played or what players have ever played for the Cubs), and some fraction of them knows there's another baseball team in Chicago.

 

[RockinHawks]

I live in Central NY, up by Lake Ontario... TONS of Bills fans here. I know a few Giants and Jets fans, most of whom became fans because of their family/Dad, etc. The Bills fans seem to be the ones that have regional ties... I'm not sure how many Bills fans live down by or in NYC.

The stores here sell all three teams, as well as Eagles merch (barf).

 

[chris98251]

I have heard that Giant fans are legacy fans, Season Tickets handed down to family Members through inheritance etc, Jets fans are still looked upon as second tier in NY, Originally Jets fans were happy to go to games, tickets were readily available that and they had a young flashy QB that attracted a lot of attention and was a heartthrob of many of the female fans. Very Mets and Yankees type situation.

 

[bileever]

In New York for 25 years. This is the general breakdown of Jets/Giants fans. Because the Jets played at Shea Stadium in Queens (and had their training facilities on Long Island), Jets fans were from Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. Giants fans from west of there, including New Jersey and Connecticut. (But southern Jerseyites root for the Eagles.) There is also the perception that Giants fans are more upscale, and Jets fans more blue collar, but not sure if that mirrors reality. But these are all generalizations, and with the Jets and Giants now both training and playing in New Jersey, I think it's all mixed up. More recently, with the Giants having been more successful than the Jets (except for the brief Rex Ryan years), I would suspect that new fans jumped onto their bandwagon rather than cheering for the hapless Jets. I think a lot of people end up rooting for the team their parents rooted for, so some of the old geographic/demographic divisions probably still apply.

 

[Lagartixa]

I have heard that Giant fans are legacy fans, Season Tickets handed down to family Members through inheritance etc, Jets fans are still looked upon as second tier in NY, Originally Jets fans were happy to go to games, tickets were readily available that and they had a young flashy QB that attracted a lot of attention and was a heartthrob of many of the female fans. Very Mets and Yankees type situation.

My mom told me that she and my dad went to see the Mets in the 1960s for the comedy value.

My mom's brother used to have (football) Giants season tickets. He was given the opportunity to get tickets to Super Bowl XXV (the one after the 1990 season, in which the Giants ended up beating the Bills in what was considered the greatest Super Bowl to that point), and I couldn't believe he didn't go.
He didn't inherit the tickets. I don't know when he got them or how hard it was. I lost contact with him a long time ago and suspect he's no longer alive. I doubt anyone in his family has the tickets now. He might have gotten rid of them as he got older, because I don't think anyone in his immediate family was interested in them.

 

[Hawkinaz]

I dont know as far as football is but for baseball it a location issue at least with Chicago which a friend of mine is from the north and south sides are very segregated the friend grew up in the south side and went to high school with Mr T and has told me a few stories about the Mr T playing on their football team. If you live on the south side you were a Sox fan and if you live on the north side a Cubs fan. One year the White Sox were not doing well and the Cubs were and he tried to claim the Cubs my response was “I don’t think so”. We had a good laugh about it