NY Jets #6, an excerpt from Top-Rated NFL Blog Infinite Jets
Martin RocheEditor's Note: Congratulations to Lunch Break Writer Martin Roche for his NY Jets blog, Infinite Jets, being listed as one of the Top 50 NFL Blogs by sportsmemoribilia.com. Read an excerpt below and check out more of his writing at http://edlsjets.blogspot.com/
I remember sitting at a wedding once next to an older woman who claimed that she had spent some time in her early 20s in Miami during the weeks leading up to Super Bowl III. When you read about Namath's record of liaisons in Mark Kriegal's biography, it is remarkable. Any man who dated Suzy Storm alone is a star in my book. He had poise.
Image by Ed YourdonMark Sanchez #6 might someday get his own entry on our gloriously unread blog. At first, the funniest part of Mark Sanchez's fame was his overstated attribute of "poise." Deadspin used Sanchez as a poster boy for sports media's absolute dearth of original thought in its profligate use of the word. Because poise was all we were looking for in him, our expectations of his rookie year at the starting position were minimal. What else could we expect from a young, overpaid underwear model? Neil O'Donnell had poise, too, and it didn't do us much good, but he was an old man by football's standards when he was a Jet.
What we've discovered is that Mark Sanchez is intelligent on the field, with a manner of being that is Namath incarnate, the manner of champions who use their own self-confidence to deflect away the fear of failure. I suppose that's what poise is, isn't it? He played like Namath in his first season because he threw more interceptions than touchdowns, though made very good decisions in the postseason in January 2010 which did not involve red, green, and yellow colors on his sleeve, or even handing off to Shonn Greene.
Then in 2010, his numbers improved. He reversed his touchdown to interception ratio, with a QB rating that moved from 63.0 to 75.3. The Jets did their December dive, but they rebounded. When they took the field against the seemingly unbeatable Patriots in Foxboro, I noticed that Sanchez ran out of the tunnel with a calm, blinding confidence in his own happiness that Colisseum spectators must surely have seen in an occasional defenseless Christian who was about to be fed to the beasts. I suppose I would have still remembered that expression even if the Jets had lost. But they didn't. He is our quarterback.
But in case you haven't noticed, people in the field of athletics are twisted. They post very easily found videos about their wives' feet. They father children with different women with the speed of Genghis Khan. They accidentally shoot themselves. They also rape women in the bathrooms of bars, or possibly (well, "possibly" in Sanchez's case) even on college campuses. They send photographs of their penises to women who give them only the vaguest sign of professional interest. Then it all ends up on Deadspin.
Mark Sanchez's possibly/possibly not heated romantic relationship with a 17 year-old fits somewhat squarely into this paradigm - one that befits a person who has grown up believing, through community and educational reinforcement, that he is above the moral law. When people have razzed me about Sanchez'srendezvous with Eliza Kruger, I have caught myself nearly saying the same thing that Eliza said to Mark about her being legal in New York. How can I possibly defend it? I cannot. I certainly know the difference between an adolescent and an adult, but a 24 year-old man should, too. It's not exactly trapping a woman in a bathroom, but it's still morally wrong.
By Ed YourdonAnd what's remarkable is that, like Joe Namath in his time, Mark Sanchez could have any woman in any borough of America's largest and most culturally diverse city. But instead he texted a 17 year-old girl from Connecticut. This is also an aspect of the successful athlete's experience. His pampered life cloisters him from the real experiences of failure and success that the rest of us had to have with romance. Apparently the key to a great athlete's psychological growth is his ability to "forgive" himself when he fails on the field. I'm not always so sure that such failures are acceptable off it. This isn't a rationalization, but it is a psychological explanation for why men who take the field against an unbeatable team with the smile of a winner can also appear completely unable to grasp that a sober, intelligent grown woman might be interest in him for something other than his own vanity.
More likely, Mark Sanchez was not interested in conversation, but in exactly the kind of ephemeral, superficial adoration that a 17 year-old girl bestows on the high school's hottest football player. One senses that he needs to join the adult world, not just as an athlete, but as a human being.
This post originally appeared as part of a larger work on Martin Roche's top-rated blog Infinite Jets.
Reader Comments (1)
Great post -- now I have no liking towards Mark Sanchez since I feel the Jets steal the Eagles colors and he ran over Penn State in probably our last Rose Bowl appearance ever. Well, maybe if Ohio State tailspins like Michigan or PSU starts buying tatoos for our players.
The last line is classic -- a 17 year old's adoration to a high school football star. They really are our gods and belong in the Colliseum. For all their off the field antics and tragedies, for all their pain and suffering from playing a sport for a living, they are icons. Even as a grown man, when I see a star athlete, I feel a sense of amazement.
I wish you well in your Inifinite Jets blog. I only wish there is an Eagles one -- which I will begin seraching for upon hitting the create post button below. We humans need to forget for a few hours a week of our struggles, and pitiful states, and watch some super humans play a sport. It is good for the soul to lose ourselves in sports, and even better when it you can write about it.
It is sad when they end the game and they must join us, where all endings are pretty closely linked. But as they wear the jersey and number, we can remember them as they wanted to be on a perfect Sunday afternoon.
Thanks