NFL: A New Hangout For Gang Green

By Noah Davis UsFANS.com Managing Editor

The World Champion Yankees aren’t the only New York team wanting new digs on the island called Manhattan.

Jets owner Woody Johnson is clamoring for a new stadium for his Jets in Manhattan. As the owner of the Jets, Johnson owns an important franchise in the number 1 media market in the U.S. Not surprisingly, Johnson is irked that he has to share facilities with cross-the-parking-lot rivals, the New York Giants. But what’s an owner to do, when the Jets current lease at Giants Stadium – argh, that name! – doesn’t run out until 2008?

Johnson has started playing the public opinion game – now, seven years in advance.

Of course, Johnson deserves credit for striking while the iron is hot. For the first time in its 80-year history, the NFL surpassed the one million paid attendance mark on two consecutive weekends, the league announced Saturday.

Fifteen NFL games last week (November 19-20) totaled 1,011,224 in paid attendance. That followed a total of 1,013,519 in attendance the week before (November 12-13). Overall, NFL attendance is on a record setting pace this year. Games are averaging 66,386 fans through 12 weeks. The all-time record was set last year when games averaged 65,349 in paid attendance.

Thus, Johnson met with the New York media directly to discuss the current state of the Jets. When asked about a new stadium – an obviously planted question - Johnson made it clear that as far as he was concerned a move back to Manhattan and back to New York was something he wanted to see take place. "The West Side would be a pretty good site because it has multiple uses."

Johnson is very serious about his vision of a Jets stadium in Manhattan. Johnson reportedly wants a domed stadium with a seating capacity of 100,000 built on the site of the Long Island Rail Road yards between 10th Avenue and the West Side Highway from West 30th Street to West 33rd Street.

Johnson hired Jay Cross to come up with the preliminary plans for the project. Cross has previously worked on Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and on Miami’s American Airlines Arena.

But as the New York Times pointed out the stadium wouldn’t be in use very often. It would be used ten times a year by the Jets, be used to (hopefully) bring the Super Bowl to Manhattan, and help the city in its bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a facility that would be used on average ten times a year really such a good fiscal idea?

"It's going to take everybody thinking it's a good idea," Johnson told reporters. "Republicans, Democrats, people living on the West Side and the East Side, upstate, New Jersey. It is going to take a lot of continuity of opinion."

Therefore, Johnson - who is from New Jersey and ever the realist - did not completely dismiss the idea of a new stadium in New Jersey.

"I'm a Jersey guy," Johnson said. "I'll talk to anybody. I think the preference is to move it to a stadium that would have more of an identity for the New York Jets, rather than the Giants."

The NFL and Manhattan have been given warning – seven years of warning. The Jets want new digs, and considering the national profile they hold and the owner’s capable media manipulation, Gang Green might be moving on up to the West Side.

Article courtesy of UsFANS.com