April 16 th this day in NY Jets history

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April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 9:42:21 GMT -5 joepnyj1 likes this

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Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:42:21 GMT -5

Good day fellow Jet fans!!!!!!

3 Jet Birthdays today...

J J Jones, Jets QB for a brief moment, in 1952 was born in Memphis TN. He played 7 games in 1976....

Mr. Jones passed away in a house fire in 2008....

Last Edit: Apr 21, 2015 22:05:54 GMT -5 by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman

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April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 9:45:54 GMT -5 joepnyj1 likes this

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Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:45:54 GMT -5

Also, on this day in 1982 Former Jets LB Jonathan Vilma was born in Coral Gables, FL.

He played for the Jets from 2004-2007 and was drafted in the 1st round in the 2004 draft with the 12th pick.

Happy Birthday Jonathan!!!!

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April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 9:49:15 GMT -5 joepnyj1 likes this

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Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:49:15 GMT -5

Lastly, former Jets RB Joe McKnight was born on this day in 1988 in River Ridge, LA.

Joe played for the Jets from 2010-2012, and was taken in the 4th round of the 2010 draft.

Happy Birthday Joe!!!!

Have a great day Jets fans....

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Post by Lithfan on Apr 16, 2015 10:00:12 GMT -5

April 16, 1971: George Sauer Jr announces his retirement from the NFL at the age of 27. Sauer was one of my favorite players as a kid, back then, I never really understood why he gave up the game in his prime. Below is an article from the NY Times from Dec 2013, a few months after he passed away:

www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/george-sauer/

By Hugo Lindgren

By all outward appearances, George Sauer’s dreams came true. At 25, he was a Super Bowl hero. In the 1969 game that ordained Joe Namath’s future as a modern TV celebrity, the Jets quarterback racked up 133 yards of passes to Sauer, who, as the son of a highly decorated player and coach, was born and bred to be right there. He went to the University of Texas, where he developed a fluid, intuitive understanding of the game. Watch the old Jets highlights, and you see a receiver who ran his routes more elegantly than could be drawn in a playbook — he had “the best moves,” Namath said. “Nobody can cover him one on one” — and who plucked balls from the air with strong, soft hands.

Sauer’s Super Bowl performance was the greatest of any pass catcher until Lynn Swann’s spectacular show in 1976, and yet he played only two more seasons after that, retiring at 27, too young by even the merciless standards of football. He left with a year and $40,000 to go on his contract, a big number for a football player in those days.

Then he did something that almost nobody had done before and astonishingly few have done since: He opened up about just how awful it was to play professional football. The words he used were not ambiguous. He described how “the structure of pro football generally works to deny human values” and criticized its “chauvinistic authority.” He told Dave Anderson of The Times that “for me, playing pro football got to be like being in jail.” His plan for self-liberation was to become a writer — he took an assignment from Life magazine for an article about quitting pro football. He wrote 12,000 words that were never published.

A few years after he retired, in 1973, another disillusioned football player — also a wide receiver, for whatever that’s worth — would accomplish what Sauer could not. Peter Gent, who played five seasons for the Dallas Cowboys, published a dark, funny, profane novel called “North Dallas Forty,” which dramatized the ruthlessly competitive, militaristic elements of the game that tormented Sauer. In Gent’s voice, you can hear Sauer’s: “When an athlete, no matter what color jersey he wears, finally realizes that opponents and teammates alike are his adversaries, and he must deal and dispense with them all, he is on his way to understanding the spirit that underlies the business of competitive sport. There is no team, no loyalty, no camaraderie; there is only him, alone.”

The great sadness was that Sauer loved the essence of football and could not stay away from it. Failing to make headway as a writer, he returned to the sport, tentatively at first as a coach for Oberlin College, where the competitive atmosphere must have been a tad more humane. Then he signed up again as a player for the short-lived circus known as the World Football League.

The rest of his life was spent wandering, writing constantly but never publishing. He couldn’t bear the imperfections of his own prose, perhaps discovering, as Gent confessed in a new preface he wrote for “North Dallas Forty” in 2003, that “writing is the only thing I have done that comes close to being as terrifying as being a football player.” Like many football players before him, and surely many, many more to come, Sauer suffered from dementia at the end of his life. It is impossible to know whether it was caused by football, but there is no doubt that as much as the game made him, it also destroyed him, and that he sensed this even at the time.

Watching how football is played now — in which every single achievement on the field is rapturously celebrated, as if human experience scales no greater heights — it is hard not to wonder how much of this is compensatory, a high-pitched attempt to disguise the inhumanity of the game. Could these really be the happiest, most exuberant men on earth, or are they compelled to behave that way for our enjoyment? How many George Sauers are trapped behind those steely masks, dreaming of something else they would rather do with their lives if only they could escape? Every now and then, the secrets spill out. This season, people around the N.F.L. were shocked when John Moffitt, a journeyman lineman, up and quit the Denver Broncos, leaving a hefty salary on the table and leveling an indictment of football even bigger and more sweeping than Sauer’s. “How much do you really value intelligence,” Moffitt told ESPN the Magazine, “when as a society you continue to do unintelligent things?”

Last Edit: Apr 16, 2015 10:00:48 GMT -5 by Lithfan

Bing© in Buffalo Chairman bing of le hamplar Hampur Owner 12% wants you to post on Ze Hampler Posts: 87,027	April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 10:03:41 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 10:03:41 GMT -5
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Bing© in Buffalo Chairman bing of le hamplar Hampur Owner 12% wants you to post on Ze Hampler Posts: 87,027	April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 10:04:04 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 10:04:04 GMT -5
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LoneStarLady Site Supporter Posts: 3,376	April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2015 20:35:57 GMT -5 Bing© in Buffalo Chairman and The Tax Returns Are in Kenya like this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top Post by LoneStarLady on Apr 16, 2015 20:35:57 GMT -5 Today is a popular day for birthdays.

bxjetfan Cliquey Hampur Elitist wiseass Posts: 23,120	April 16 th this day in NY Jets history Apr 16, 2016 7:58:43 GMT -5 Bing© in Buffalo Chairman likes this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top Post by bxjetfan on Apr 16, 2016 7:58:43 GMT -5 Apr 16, 2015 20:35:57 GMT -5 LoneStarLady said: Today is a popular day for birthdays. They had a power outage in China 9 months ago.

April 16 th this day in NY Jets history

Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:42:21 GMT -5

Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:45:54 GMT -5

Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 9:49:15 GMT -5

Post by Lithfan on Apr 16, 2015 10:00:12 GMT -5

Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 10:03:41 GMT -5

Post by Bing© in Buffalo Chairman on Apr 16, 2015 10:04:04 GMT -5

Post by LoneStarLady on Apr 16, 2015 20:35:57 GMT -5

Post by bxjetfan on Apr 16, 2016 7:58:43 GMT -5