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"Head Of Class"
Topic Started: Jan 19 2007, 12:13 PM (24 Views)
27Hampton
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DEAR Jerry Reese: The following advice, while unsolicited, comes from the head and the heart.

Forget, for the moment, running backs and linebackers. As the Giants' new GM, the first thing you should bring to the team is a restoration of class.

Throughout this past season, I spoke with scores of Giants fans - of all ages - and they shared this sentiment: This was the toughest Giants team to root for - to stomach - since they became fans. Some of these folks have been live-and-die fans since Charlie Conerly played quarterback. Others don't go back far enough to recall Elvis "Toast" Patterson.

But they all said there was just too much compromise of the good senses needed to root hard for this team. It seemed more like the University of Miami than the New York Football Giants.

Ignore the rationalists, panderers and yahoos who would excuse antisocial behavior by ridiculing the NFL as the No Fun League. Personal fouls, including taunting penalties, are not a byproduct of having fun, but of a sports world gone nuts.

Right-headed Giants fans are not so naive to think that a jersey makes its wearers resistant to the primal behavior that has become the NFL standard. They knew the Giants were not immune from the garbage. But that didn't make it easier to suffer.

Start with Tom Coughlin's sideline comportment. Insist that he stop with the tantrums. To see the head coach shattering into pieces when something goes wrong is not an image that kindles one's resolve to overcome, rather it presages more - and worse.

Then get in every player's ear and tell them - order them - to grow up.

Put an end to that jump-shooting mime after tackles, especially sacks. Even if it doesn't inspire a back-at-ya reply - the return "diss" that now regularly prefaces on-field street hassles - it's bush.

And stop all the muscle flexing and chest pounding and all the come-with-it taunts and gestures toward the other teams' sidelines and fans. Impress upon your players that they play for the Giants, not for "SportsCenter" or "The Best Damn Sports Show" or the Bloods.

And if it sounds corny, tough. How cool are personal fouls? How cool is it to feed a sports culture that's becoming indistinguishable from prison culture?


And demand that your wide receivers and tight ends cease demonstrating their displeasure when the ball's not thrown to them or if it's badly thrown toward them. Such petulance was supposed to end before the first day of high school practice did.

It struck me that other teams' right-headed fans were for years terribly compromised, forced to cheer for a Randy Moss or a Terrell Owens.

Then there are the fresh, weekly absurdities, such as LaDainian Tomlinson, at the end of Sunday's game, angrily reacting to the Pats' classlessness - which was to mock Shawne Merriman's classlessness. Yeah, No Fun League, yet the next thing you know the "fun" sparks a riot.

I don't claim to speak for all Giants fans, but I do speak for a bunch of them. And this past season, for the first time, they felt they were rooting for something that was against their better judgment, a team that was beneath their dignity.

Can't something be done? Or should Giants fans just get used to it?


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