The football teams that insist on calling themselves the New York Giants and the New York Jets have agreed to continue playing in New Jersey for good, or at least for the next 99 years, which qualifies as for good unless you expect to be around in 2104.
Now that they are committed to the West Bank (of the Hudson), may a New Yorker be permitted a tiny question, humbly asked:
Can our city have its name back? Please? Hasn't it been abused long enough?
PHOTO: AFP
"Yeah, you can have it back," Acting Governor Richard Codey of New Jersey said by phone from Trenton.
He would love to have the teams fly under the banner of New Jersey, where the Giants and Jets have played for about 50 years combined. Their clinging to NY logos instead of giving NJ a try "rankles a lot of us," the governor acknowledged.
He has his priorities, though. For him, keeping the teams in his state is a much bigger deal than names. "I know and understand that marketing people told them they're better off with the NY for marketing purposes," Codey said.
"But you know what?" he added. "I wouldn't put it past myself late at night to go onto the field and do away with the Y and paint a J. I'm capable of that."
Does anyone want to read the governor his Miranda rights?
Not that redoing the field would help him any. The New York label is here to stay, the teams say. No one has thought about changing it, said the Jets' chief spokesman, Ron Colangelo. Pat Hanlon, his counterpart with the Giants, said in an e-mail message: "We are the New York Giants. Always have been. Probably always will be."
"We are not trying to make a political statement with our name," Hanlon wrote. "It is who we are. We proudly represent the New York metropolitan region, which encompasses New Jersey, New York and Connecticut."
Hmm. Maybe two of New Jersey's leading newspapers, the Record and the Star-Ledger, could get into the act by rechristening themselves the New York Record and the New York Star-Ledger. Why not? There is certainly nothing to stand in their way (except local pride, of course).
New York officials may trademark logos like NYPD and FDNY or slogans like "I Love New York." But "that doesn't give them rights to every incarnation of the words `New York,'" said Jane Ginsburg, a professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia University.
That is so, said Daniel Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. The name New York "is in the public domain," beyond trademark protections pursued by a city agency under his supervision, the Marketing Development Corporation.
You will recall that Doctoroff was the mayor's point man in the failed attempt to build a West Side stadium for the Jets. Despite that setback, he is fine with the team's holding on to the New York name for dear life. "I'd probably be a little more upset if I lived in New Jersey and they weren't called the New Jersey Jets," he said.
But even without a legal issue, doesn't truth in packaging matter at all?
This is a question raised in other cities as well. The baseball Angels, who play in Anaheim, California, have changed their name over the years almost as often as has Sean (Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy) Combs. They now go by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, even though they have about as much to do with Los Angeles as free-flowing traffic.
At least Anaheim and Los Angeles are in the same state. That is more than you can say about New York City and East Rutherford, New Jersey.
"In my column, I refer to the Giants as Jersey/A and the Jets as Jersey/B," said Gregg Easterbrook, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, who writes for the National Football League's Web site, nfl.com.
The issue is simple for Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. "I think we should demand honesty from our sports teams," he said.
"Now I say this with bias, because I'm a Buffalo Bills fan," said Vaidhyanathan, a native of Buffalo. "They're the only team in New York really."
They are indeed. Then again, as he himself noted, his Bills do not actually play in Buffalo. They're in a suburb, Orchard Park.
Tricky stuff, this truth business.
For the first few weeks of the NFL season, it seemed a foregone conclusion Philadelphia would win the NFC East, even though the other three teams in the division had improved markedly.
Not now. The Eagles' trip to Landover to play the Washington Redskins on Sunday has the aspects of a survival game.
There seems little reason to panic. Both of their records are 4-3, a game behind the New York Giants and a half-game behind the Dallas Cowboys in a very balanced division.
But there have to be questions after last week: Philadelphia losing 49-21 in Denver and Washington 36-0 to New York.
"I think it's going to be a defining moment for this team, for this season," Redskins quarterback Mark Brunell says. "I'll tell you, if we can get this one, we'll be back on track. If not, we're going to be in a hole, and we'll have to fight our way out of it."
Complicating the issue is the way the two teams above them have played, especially the Giants.
New York's next two games are at San Francisco and at home to Minnesota, meaning there's a good chance Philadelphia will be facing a 7-2 team when it goes to Giants Stadium on Nov. 20. Dallas has played well enough to be 7-1 and keeps finding fill-ins like Marion Barber III, who rushed for 127 yards in last week's win over Arizona.
Washington had its fans thinking Super Bowl after a 52-17 win over San Francisco two weeks ago, but it deteriorated on both offense and defense against the Giants.
Philadelphia's problem has been offensive imbalance, exposing already injured quarterback Donovan McNabb to more hits. Just 101 of the 438 offensive plays have been carries by the running backs, although with wideout Terrell Owens nursing a sore ankle, the Eagles might be forced to run more often.
There are also problems on a defense that allowed Denver to roll up 564 yards.
Meanwhile, it's a measure of the New England Patriots' decline that Indianapolis is favored on Monday in Foxborough, where the Colts haven't won in 10 years.
Indianapolis has been eliminated by New England in the playoffs the last two years, and lost six straight games to the Patriots. Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, whose career began in 1998, is winless in seven matches at Foxborough.
Throw away history and everything else favors the Colts, especially Manning against a patchwork New England secondary and defensive end Dwight Freeney against rookie left tackle Nick Kaczur, subbing for the injured Matt Light.
"What we have to do is treat it like it's a big game, but not like it's a monumental winner-take-all game," said the Colts' Tony Dungy, coach of the NFL's last unbeaten team. "I think we've done that pretty well this year."
The game was more important to New England, bearing less resemblance to a three-time Super Bowl champion than a team struggling to win the AFC East and make the playoffs. It is playing badly, and making mental errors uncharacteristic of Bill Belichick's teams. But New England is still winning at 4-3, as it almost always seems to do at home. And as it always does against the Manning-led Colts.
In other games on Sunday, Atlanta is at Miami; San Diego at the New York Jets; Oakland at Kansas City; Houston at Jacksonville; Cincinnati at Baltimore; Detroit at Minnesota; Tennessee at Cleveland; Carolina at Tampa Bay; Seattle at Arizona; Chicago vs. New Orleans at Baton Rouge; the Giants at San Francisco; and Pittsburgh at Green Bay.
NFL star Brett Favre says he would be reluctant to return to Green Bay next season if Mike Sherman isn't still coaching the Packers.
The Packers (1-6) are off to their worst start since 1991, which has led to speculation about Sherman's future.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Favre said Sherman's status would play an important role in his annual decision to keep on playing or to call it a career.
"I don't think there's one specific thing that would make me say yeah or no. It's just a culmination of a lot of different things, that being one of them," Favre said. "Maybe you're on the verge of saying yeah, and then you say, `You know what, do I really want to sit in meetings and have to learn something all over again?'
"That could be the straw that breaks the camel's back."
General manager Ted Thompson, who has refused to comment on Sherman's future, was out of his office and didn't immediately return a call from AP.
Sherman, who signed a two-year, US$6.4 million contract extension on Aug. 23 that would take him through 2007, declined comment on Favre's remarks.
Favre, who turned 36 last month, previously has said he wouldn't want to finish his career in another uniform because he's too set in his ways to learn a new offense.
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