I am a New York Jets fan. I enjoy butt fumbles, losing the AFC Championship, and watching Miami and Buffalo fans cry. We are a class organization, with classy players like this one:

Oh Mark!

I hate the Patriots. They make it easy, with their Tuck rule, their Spy gate and their ability to piss this man off:

Just google “Kraft ring Putin” I’m too lazy to figure out how to embed a link right now.

I think the above makes a fairly solid case for why the Jets are better than the Patriots. If you need more convincing, remember that as a Jets fan you’ll be disappointed with the season and over it by November, while the Pats wait until January to be disappointed.
Also, the Jets don’t murder people in cold blood:

I figured out how to embed links!

For those of you living under a rock, former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez has been accused of executing Odin Lloyd. The facts are still emerging, and the case probably won’t be clear for months, but don’t let that stop the media from jumping to conclusions.

There is a lot of really terrible writing going on about this crime now (this blog included), but by far the worst Article I have seen so far was Ashley Fox’s July 1st article “No Clean Break From Aaron Hernandez“. In this article she demonstrates a surprising lack of understanding of how football, and America, works. Her article includes a lot of ridiculousness, but I’ve picked out a few relevant sections right here:

[The Patriots] were the team that picked Hernandez 113th overall — after 31 other teams had repeatedly passed on a player who was viewed as a first-round talent — because he was big and strong and could catch the football and make their team better….Hernandez was part of the Patriot Way because he could catch passes and make the team more successful. The franchise, led by Kraft, needs to recalibrate and be more selective going forward, starting now.

Here, Ms. Fox falls for the common misconception that Football players are role models, and somehow better than the rest of us. The sooner we teach our children that football players are not pinnacles of virtue, the better. They are real, flawed people who, through a combination of luck, skill, and hard work, made it to the top of their chosen profession. M. Fox seems to think that, because Aaron was a troubled teenager, and failed some drug tests (for weed no less), he should have been black listed from the NFL. The irony of a sports writer suggesting that someone in the NFL is irredeemable is amusing, as “powerful redemption stories” is any sports writers bread and butter, and about 80% of HBO’s sports content. We love sports for their ability to transform aimless young men and women into disciplined, focused athletes. Do you remember Anthony Hargrove? After being suspended for a year for violations of the NFL’s substance abuse policy, Hargrove returned to the NFL Clean and sober, and won the 2009 Ed Block Courage award. Where would he be if the Saints had been unable to look past the poor decisions he had made as a young man? He wouldn’t be mentoring young people, that’s for sure.

The fact is, “Character Concerns” that address off field activities should have no bearing on a players prospects, just asmy questionable character has no bearing on my prospective jobs. Playing in the NFL is a job, one that Aaron Hernandez was very good at and threw away. We don’t know why he did it, but to claim the Patriots were wrong to draft him is just silly.