Recently I had a very fun weekend in New York. On top of my normal routine of preparing for Sunday Night Football I got to spend time with two of New York’s top sports teams, The Jets and the Yankees.
My trip to the Jets came about because of a comment I made on Dan Patrick’s radio show this summer. Dan asked me my opinion of HBO’s coverage of the Jets on their Hard Knocks show. I said I really didn’t watch it because of the profanity that was shown. I feel that, even though there is a lot of profanity in NFL locker rooms, it didn’t have to be shown and glorified like that. I went on to say that I wouldn’t hire coaches on my staff who couldn’t control their language. Rex Ryan, head coach of the Jets, heard my comments and felt I was attacking him personally. He called me and told me he felt I was judging him without really knowing him. He invited me to come to their offices, watch their team practice and get to know him a little better.
I took Coach Ryan up on his offer and had a great time with the Jets on Saturday morning. I did get to know Rex a little better and was able to tell him that I respect the coaching job he has done in New York and how his players have bonded together and play with so much energy. We talked about the profanity issue and he explained to me how it just seems to come out from him in the highly competitive situations that come up in the job of an NFL coach. My point to him was that he is impacting not only the young men on his team, but also the young fans who watched Hard Knocks. He understands that and I believe he does regret when young people hear that type of profanity.
We also talked about the situation with his star receiver, Braylon Edwards, who had been stopped by the police and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. We talked about the messages you send when you choose how to discipline players in situations like these. Coach Ryan and the Jets aren’t alone in the way they handled it—taking Edwards out of the lineup for the first quarter of the following game—but I feel we need to do more. The NFL needs to send a message to its players, and its fans, that these types of incidents are not acceptable, and the discipline has to be stern enough that it reinforces this message. In the short run, fines and suspensions are tough, but in the long run, everyone will benefit if we impose them to convey that certain behaviors are unacceptable.
I had a great time discussing things with Coach Ryan. Even though we didn’t agree on everything, there were actually quite a few things we did agree on, and I think we came away from it understanding each other a little better.
