New York Jets - How Did They Get That Name?

Question

I remember the old New York Titans of the AFL, but then one day, they were called the Jets. How did they get that name (West Side Story?), and where did it come from?
Rod, are you home?
Hunt

Answer 1

hiya...hehe... was crying ...jets lost...boo hoo....
gotta admit ne pats defense and offense were just too good...couple turnovers and jets = dead ducks ( making that gargling sound in throat as they bit the dust ).
why jets name ??? dont know really...not definitetively...
My dad was into gymnastics pretty much entirely ( a little into figure skating ). not baseball or football. bowling a little as a " do it " sport, not a "watch it " sport. The only "watch it " sports us kids did ( only had 1 tv ) was gymnastics and skating olympic stuff mostly but some other competitions too.
Gymnastics is weird in a way...( as was my father ). It is extremely personal ( about beating your "self" ..doing better than you did " before" ).. very individualistic ...even though you are on a " team "... it's just points mostly for the team to win , accumulation of individual scores...  father was very anti weight lifting, very opinionated about these things to his kids... so even when I got into wrestling, for example, or football ..in high school, he was very critical of any weight lifting that was part of the practice and training. He " coached " or " taught " gymnastics on Saturdays at my high school in a sorta unofficial (unpaid ) position...so me and my brother got sorta hooked into that more than doing football, wrestling etc. In fact, we started doing gymnastics when we were like 1 year old.. and it is so stated in some newspaper clipping by howard cosell (when he was a newspaper columnist before radio ) interviewing my father after a ny athletic club gymnastic competition ( trials for olympics sorta thing )... " Yes, Howard, I have 3 children, and they are already doing floor excercises and some tumbling... kirk, age 3, rodney age 2, and susan age 1 .... "  that sorta thing.  We were famous !
We could roll on the floor with pet dog real good !
This gives you general idea how I never got into "watching" football seriously, or baseball...I am basically ( like my brother ) a sport idiot re: following football and baseball like normal american kids.  Of course I did follow favorite teams for a while in high school... ( oakland raiders were my favorite with a couple other teams kinda floating in and out of my interest ) but I have only been to 2 pro baseball game, never to any pro football game, and only 1 college football game ( army navy as guest of family who's son went to west point .. they got season tickets and tailgate spot etc ).
Baseball games were 1 polo grounds where the only thing I remember is having a hot dog and I dropped my plastic thing of mustard and for some stupid reason stomped on it... and it squirted mustard like it was shot from a canon onto this lady's leg ( stocking ).. and she yelled at me and I felt bad and said I was sorry and she tried to get it off but I think her leg was stained with mustard forever.
Other baseball game was yankee stadium box seat next to yankee dugout roof as guest of guy who's brother in law owns the boxes complete with free parking nearby and tickets to some yankee club after games.  fancy seats ( 4 of them ).  I put my beer on the roof of the yankee dugout, it was like right in front of me. I got a ball thrown to me by a yankee after pre-game practice ( as they came to dugout to start game ). Actually he faked me out at first...went to throw, I ( startled by his hand action ) put my hands up fast to catch.. but he didnt throw ( like faked me out )... but then as he disappeared under dugout roof his hand came up and flipped the ball right to me ( which of course I caught since I am so quick with my reactions due to rolling with dog when 2 years old ).
So thats my only baseball story of any interest. It was the game " after" the boston yankee game with the pine tar incident in boston with billy martin.. so this was the next day IIRC in ny with boston again... yankees won.  and didnt have to do tricky stuff to win ( like complain about pine tar ).  The mustard story doesn't get told often.
So now you know that I am a total idiot re: sports in general due to total immersion in gymnastics, and most of THAT was just doing it, not following particular athletes ( though of course some became sorta famous at the olympics etc ) We had high bar and parallel bars IN THE BACK YARD !  LOL... I once saw a friend try a giant swing ( we had no mat.. just grass ) and fly off and landed about 20 feet away ... he let go cause all the skin on his girly hands got ripped off as he was twirling around... goes to show you... be careful when trying new things.
His eyes had rolled up into his head so you could only see " white" for a little while... but then he came back to life ( whew ! ) .  We quit for the day doing gymnastics.
Sooo, in answer to your question.. given my idiocy about these matters.. the Jets ( from Titans at polo grounds and 1 season I think at the new Shea Stadium --where the METS were ) with change in ownership and all that going on... could have been from west side story ( cause I think there's a long history of some stadium dreams over on the west side of manhattan ( which would be a total nightmare for traffic by the way ) ).. and since it rhymes with METS maybe.. and also maybe because when you go to shea stadium all you can hear most of the time are GIANT JETS FLYING LOW OVERHEAD on way to and from LaGuardia Airport which is like 100 feet away from home base.
A lot of New Yorkers liked the Jets at first because Joe Namath go them to the superbowl and won, much to the surprise of everyone on earth and mars too..   but really because it was a ny stadium instead of NJ ( everyone in NY makes fun of people in NJ ).  The giants suffer for this cause a lot of people call them the NJ Giants. And now ( of course ) a lot of people call the Jets the NJ Jets too... since they left shea stadium ( which was a mess because they had to go on road games till the METS were done playing baseball...and then that stadium on the west side got blackballed again by a couple lawmakers in Albany ( they actually OWN the city and state, Sheldon Silver and some other guy ). Im not really up on that whole history of west side stadium but in part the cablevision guys who own madison sq garden dont want competition. They got it with the javits center for conventions but not for sports teams.. so I guess they're happy for now.
Now we got citi field and met life field and will probably rename the midtown tunnel " JP Morgan Tunnel " soon... but as I say, .... I don't go to any of these games and travel as little as possible so who cares.