As the Jets I had known in Florham Park dissolved, only to reanimate in these far-flung places, I followed all their teams. The map of the country had been transformed for me; I saw it in dark silhouette with a series of small, bright beacons designating football coaches. But it was also true that as they spread around the United States, the coaches remained fixed in place and time as Jets for me, still voices in the same headset wire. In unexpected moments, I would find myself thinking about them.
I would think about how, during games, when emotions ran high in the coaches’ box, I knew that it was difficult for Devlin to hear the defensive coaches’ dismay, but I never saw Devlin show it. I would think about how Weeks liked to talk about the outsize popularity of football in his native South; if you came from less, he said, whatever you did have meant more to you. I would think of how every morning Carrier would ask me about the traffic I’d confronted the night before on my way home. The thirty-mile drive could take me as long as three hours, and he’d always want all the details of the various snarls and impediments because he knew, better than most men, what they meant to the people at the end of the journey. I would think of how Pettine would not allow any father to use the term “childcare” or “babysitting” in reference to his own children because “it’s called parenting.” I would think of Smitty, who had never in his life seen a lazy Susan until one night at the O’Neil family table. He’d asked what that round little thing was called, and now, when any of the others saw one, they’d text out to West Texas a picture of it, a way of saying all the things that most guys don’t say to each other. I would think of how, during the season, when Ryan was going through his lowest times as a coach, Sutton would find occasion to talk about Ryan’s gift, how he, Sutton, could watch the same film five times through while Ryan would look at it only once and still Ryan saw more there “than I ever could.” I would think of Ryan in abstract relation to all of the departed, how they were all his graduates now, spreading his message and their own, filling up a league with their hopes for the coming season, how if their plans were good enough and they had the luck, any one of them might earn a jewel for his finger.
And I would think about that last day of my season when I’d driven out of the gated community of the facility into the half-light of the world. Immediately I’d been downcast. I missed the big, bright facility, had wanted the year to go on for them, wanted for them the success they had pursued through so many hours to the exclusion of all else. I thought of how often football players struggled after they left the sport, how their marriages ended and their finances went into arrears, how life as part of the crowd in the outside world undid them. Although none of his coaches yet had any idea of it, BT was beset with such domestic miseries. The police would visit his tidy home and he would be charged with domestic violence and possession of drug paraphernalia. With his wife’s encouragement, BT was admitted into special counseling programs. “I blame myself and I regret it,” he’d tell me months later. “It’s much better now.”
Leaving the facility, I could see how such tragedies happened. It was the gravity of the place. In football the facility was designed to be difficult to leave. Everything was there for you. A barber came in regularly. So did a dry cleaner and a car washer. Three meals a day were served. And best of all, there was the built-in coterie of brothers and fathers and uncles and a mutual sense of binding purpose. “It is a pull,” said Revis.
Driving home from the facility with a garbage bag full of workout clothes in the trunk, thinking back across the year, my mind had returned to Miami, to something I saw out the team bus window in the parking lot after the final game of 2011, on New Year’s Day 2012, as I waited for everyone to board. It was Ellis Lankster in crisp jeans, a polo shirt, and shiny new high-tops standing at the barricades that separated the visiting team’s buses from the public. Lankster was talking with two women whose resemblance to him was so close it was obvious they were his mother and sister. It turned out that they and Lankster’s stepfather had driven nine hours from Alabama in a pickup truck to watch Lankster play special teams. That was nothing; when Lankster had been a college football player in Morgantown, West Virginia, they’d driven fifteen hours for those games. And even then his mother had been back in Alabama to work her Monday shift. “A lot of turnarounds,” as Sayinka Lankster put it. Lankster had his mother’s face, a face that made you like a person right away, a face full of sunny personality and easy affection. His sister also had that face. Looking through my window, I saw both women were tender with Lankster, patting him, resting a hand on his shoulder, and he was that way with them. I sat on a bus full of wounded, crestfallen men older than Lankster, and it was easy to see how much the two women cared about him, easy also to see how shadow could veil what was going on in the light.
Through the bus window, Lankster was neither wounded nor crestfallen. He looked so young. The night before every game, his ritual was to pray, to call his son and his mother and his high-school coach. After high school Lankster had planned to “get a job, help my mom,” until the high-school coach intervened and urged him to go to college: “He told me, ‘You have a gift. God’s blessed you. Try it out.’ ”
For some people, the American football Sundays have the quality of holidays. There are even those who revere the game as a kind of national religion. It was Sunday, New Year’s Day. All around Lankster and his family, crowds of people were passing, heading home, many dressed in the festive costumes and uniform shirts fans wear to football games, some of these costumes already a little dated, the numbers on the shirts now remnants from another year.
And suddenly, looking past Lankster, there on the bus, I had thought of this day of celebration that seemed to be inadvertently marking an occasion different from the one ordained, that instead of welcoming the new bade farewell to a place and a time, to all those facility faces and all those facility hours, to people who had shared something as one and now would be forever linked even as they dispersed. There was a sense that they had been through something transformative together, something powerful and unexpected, something easy to remember for what it hadn’t been. When football was falling, not glory, the disappointment was so everyday-public you could almost forget how difficult it was.
Source Notes and Acknowledgments
The New York Jets allowed to me spend the 2011 year with their football team in order to write something deeply reported about this country’s most popular sport. I carried a pen and notebook paper everywhere I went in Florham Park and made over eight thousand pages of notes as I witnessed most of what takes place in this book. (A few events and conversations took place in the spring and fall of 2010, when I spent a number of weeks with the Jets.) What I didn’t see, I did my best to validate with those involved. When events required it, I talked about them later with the participants to achieve clarity. After the season ended, I visited from time to time, but I mostly kept in touch by telephone and e-mail. It was obviously essential that I remain objective. One way I did so was to pay for my hotel rooms on the road as well as for everything else that could be paid for. When someone told me that a conversation was off the record, I put my pen down. That happened only a few times. The Jets placed no particular restrictions on me. They simply showed me their world.
Jets owner Woody Johnson very generously permitted me to immerse myself in the day-to-day life of his football team because, as he told me, “people don’t know what it’s like. They want to know what it’s like.” The Jets players seemed to feel similarly. Bart Scott, the bright, ebullient linebacker, advised me to “be sure to give the raw, uncut truth. Football is not always pretty.” And Patrick Turner, a receiver who backed down from nobody, including Darrelle Revis, said, “Keep it exactly what it is. Show how much goes into it.” I tried on all counts to follow their advice.
It was really Mike Tannenbaum and Rex Ryan who welcomed me to Florham Park so I could see how everything worked and who then took the time from their highly involved lives to help me to understand
what I was seeing. They treated me with great patience, kindness, good humor, and consideration, for which I remain appreciative.
I had no special knowledge of football when I began to seek to write about it, and all the Jets coaches did their best to help me overcome this liability—“Just trying to make you football-perfect,” as Bob Sutton would tell me.
My day-to-day life was spent with the defensive coaches led by Mike Pettine. It can be difficult to have an outsider walk into your world, but the coaches weren’t defensive with me. Thanks to Pettine and his staff: Dennis Thurman, Bob Sutton, Mark Carrier, Jeff Weeks, Jim O’Neil, Mike Smith, and Brian Smith. Thanks also to Sean Gilbert, Clyde Simmons, Anthony Weaver, Karl Dunbar, and Mark DeLeone.
Brian Schottenheimer and his offensive coaching staff, Bill Callahan, Mike Devlin, Anthony Lynn, Henry Ellard, Matt Cavanaugh, Lance Taylor, Samson Brown, and Andy Dickerson could not have been more welcoming. Thanks also to Tony Sparano.
The special-teams coaches Mike Westhoff and Ben Kotwica were a privilege to talk football with.
When I ventured upstairs, the game broadened for me because of Scott Cohen, Joey Clinkscales, Terry Bradway, Brendan Prophett, JoJo Wooden, Ari Nissim, Dan Zbojovsky, Jacqueline Davidson, and Greg Nejmeh, and the scouts Michael Davis, Jeff Bauer, Jesse Kaye, Matt Bazirgan, Joe Bommarito, Jay Mandolesi, Jim Cochran, Brock Sunderland, and Cole Hufnagel.
Tim Tubito, Ryan O’Heir, Sal Aiello, and Mike Giuliani had the videotape.
Bill Hughan, Kevin Stewart, and Bryan Dermody showed me strength.
Injuries and physical health are a crucial part of the life of a football team, which I came to better understand because of Dr. Kenneth Montgomery, John Mellody, Josh Koch, and Dave Zuffelato.
Peace of mind is likewise vital in ways David Szott and Sara Hickmann helped me to grasp.
Gus Granneman, Vito Contento, and Brendan Burger were always nice about an extra man going out to Blake Hoer’s practice fields in hunter green and white.
Robert Mastroddi, Rich Bedell, Aaron Degerness, Montelle Sanders, Casey Lane, and especially Clay Hampton and Steve Yarnell kept me out of day-to-day confusion.
My presence meant more work for Lauren Reed, Laura Young, and Kathryn Smith, and they were kind about making it not seem that way.
That was also true for the Jets media-relations staff of Bruce Speight, Jared Winley, Meghan Gilmore, and Nikolaos Filis, who treated me with exceptional courtesy.
I am also grateful to Matthew Higgins and Thad Sheely.
I met and talked with well over two hundred football players and coaches during my time with the Jets. Many of them are named in the text. To a man, they were helpful as I tried to learn about the game. In some cases, they put me in touch with members of their families, conversations that broadened my understanding of what it takes to play or coach professional football. Many thanks in particular to Aileen Gilbert, Sayinka Lankster, Joyce and Mike Pettine Sr., Julie Posey, Michelle Ryan, Michelle Tannenbaum, Stacy O’Neil, and Emily Fitzpatrick.
As I worked, I kept up with the daily Jets coverage published by the Associated Press; Newsday, the Star-Ledger, ESPN New York, the Record, New York Post, New York Daily News, Metro New York, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. I read Peter King’s Sports Illustrated column “Monday Morning Quarterback” and Austin Murphy’s sterling coverage of college football for the magazine. I depended also on Pro-Football-Reference.com, NFL.com, ESPN.com, and back issues of the Baltimore Sun.
Rex Ryan and a few others suggested books about football that I should read. The most edifying of these for this project were The Last Coach: A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant by Allen Barra; About Three Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount; Bringing the Heat by Mark Bowden; Bear by Paul “Bear” Bryant with John Underwood; End Zone by Don DeLillo; A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley; Great Football Writing: Sports Illustrated 1954–2006, edited by Rob Fleder (especially helpful was Jeff MacGregor’s Jets piece, “Muddied But Unbowed”); This Was Football by W. W. “Pudge” Heffelfinger as told to John McCallum; Run to Daylight by Vince Lombardi with W. C. Heinz; Out of Their League by Dave Meggyesy; The Fireside Book of Football, edited by Jack Newcombe (especially helpful was Herbert Warren Wind’s piece, “On Any Given Sunday”); Paper Lion by George Plimpton; Meat on the Hoof by Gary Shaw; and Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh with Brian Billick and James Peterson. The best account of how football coaches think that I’ve encountered is a book about the making of a painting—James Lord’s A Giacometti Portrait. A football team is, in some measure, a surrogate family. Anybody interested in contemplating that enormously consequential subject ought to read Ian Frazier’s masterful book Family. There is a grave, complicated, mortal, holiday feeling to the end of a football season and as I experienced this firsthand, I thought enough about Philip Larkin’s poem “The Whitsun Weddings” that it would be remiss not to say so.
The Brooklyn Arts Exchange offered me an inspiring place to work.
I received crucial assistance from Greg Bishop, Kevin Byrne, Wendy Herr, Cindy Mangum, and Michelle Schmidt.
I’m very indebted to my friend Gerry Marzorati, a writer’s editor, who, with help from Ilena Silverman at the New York Times Magazine, in 2010 told me to consider the idea that football was a big, important subject in our time and then urged me on all the way through. David Remnick, with help from Willing Davidson and Michael Spies at the New Yorker, gave me the ideal way to measure my progress. Michael Spies later reviewed this book’s manuscript for factual accuracy. Any errors are, of course, my responsibility alone.
At Little, Brown, the meticulous, sore-kneed, bright-eyed catcher John Parsley and Michael Pietsch have been (my) champions since the beginning. Many thanks as well to Amanda Brown, Fiona Brown, Malin von Euler-Hogan, Heather Fain, Chris Nolan, and Tracy Roe. And I’m beholden in so many ways to Ben Allen, who always brings his (Louisville) bat.
I am that fortunate man who never lacks for excellent counsel and thoughtful readings because of my loyal agent David McCormick. Bridget McCarthy at McCormick and Williams did me a thousand benevolences.
Even as I spent most of my waking hours in Florham Park, I was sustained by a number of friends and family members who took an interest in the project and offered me advice and encouragement and criticism as I worked. Thanks to Alexandra Alter, Kathy Chetkovich, Heidi Dawidoff, Mike Desaulniers, Ian Frazier, Jake Goldstein, Estelle Guralnick, Jake Halpern, Larry Harris, Tom Hjelm, Richard Howorth, Ben Koren, Greg Lyss, David Means, Amelia Mirsky, John Pitkin, Catherine Sheehy, Charles Siebert, Freddy K. Trois, Colson Whitehead, and Kevin Young. Vijay Seshadri read the manuscript for me with unusual care. Throughout the course of the project, no matter how busy they were, Jonathan Franzen and Jan Pantucky always found time to talk it through with me, often in the small hours, and then they read the completed manuscript, indulgences that always made me feel fortunate in their warm friendship.
The most enthusiastic Jets fan I ever met was my friend of thirty years John Solomon, the very picture of a lovely person whose big, good heart stopped far too young.
I got some sense of the personal sacrifices that go into a life in professional football because of all the time I spent away from my own family. Ozzie and Bea will soon be old enough to read about what besides missing them very much their dad was up to all the days and nights. My beloved wife, Kaari Pitkin, is my safety and my center.
About the Author
NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF is the author of four previous critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling The Catcher Was a Spy and The Crowd Sounds Happy. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy, and an Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, and is now a Branford Fellow at Yale University. A Pulitzer Prize finalist (for The Fly Swatter), Dawidoff is a contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his family.
Also by Nicholas Dawidoff
The Catcher Was a Spy
In the Country of Country
The Fly Swatter
The Crowd Sounds Happy
Baseball: A Literary Anthology (editor)
Appendix I
Principal Characters—2011 New York Jets
Woody Johnson, owner
The Coaches
Rex Ryan, head coach
Defense
Mike “Pett” Pettine, defensive coordinator
Bob “Sutt” Sutton, linebackers
Dennis “DT” Thurman, defensive backs
Mark “Hammer” Carrier, defensive line
Jeff Weeks, assistant defensive line
Jim O’Neil, assistant defensive backs
Mike “Smitty” Smith, assistant outside linebackers
Collision Low Crossers Page 48
