There was no remorse the last time the Jets changed
facilities. Hofstra looked like the Taj Mahal compared to the place where they had been practicing.
"Peekskill Military Academy. It was awful. The bugs were unbelievable," said John Schmitt, who was doubly glad about the move in 1968 because he had played for Hofstra before he was a Jet.
Hofstra instantly proved magical for him and everyone else in the franchise. That very season, using the plays Joe Namath and Matt Snell and the rest had practiced in Hempstead, the Jets won the Super Bowl and changed pro football. Hofstra has been where the Jets have gathered for every working week ever since.
It is where generations have met, with Bill Parcells working at Weeb Ewbank Hall and Brett Favre inheriting Namath's legacy. It is where they went for refuge, regrouping after The Spike and the Lou Holtz and Rich Kotite eras.
So here's to you, Hofstra. Here's to being such a good friend for 40 years.
We all know the score: the Meadowlands is the Jets' home field, Hofstra was their home.
That changed forever this past week when the team officially left Hempstead Turnpike for a fancy new practice compound in Florham Park, N.J. Schmitt, who still lives on Long Island, said they might as well have moved to Wyoming. He couldn't get himself to go to the last practice.
"Coming here every year was like putting on a comfortable pair of old loafers," he said. "I'm sure the new facility is beautiful. The guys deserve the best. But they're never going to have the feeling they had on Long Island."
The Island is poorer for the switch, and so are the Jets. They wanted to move closer to where their games are, which is understandable. Yet they moved away from where their identity and fans are, which is a shame.
"The heartbeat of the team is here," said Sharon Rueter, an eastern Long Island postal worker and season ticket-holder for 29 years who spent four days off going to Jets camp this summer because she knew it would be her last shot. "It breaks my heart."
Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz was on the field for the last practice, talking with owner Woody Johnson and general manager Mike Tannenbaum. "We all felt nostalgic and sad," he said, optimistic that the Jets will come back for a few days every summer for scrimmages and a Jets Fest.
"They have an open invitation," Rabinowitz said. "But we are very, very sorry to see them leave. It was a great two-way relationship."
Ira Liederfarb of Staten Island probably can get to Florham Park easier than he can to Hofstra, and he is sad nonetheless. "For the fans, it never will be the same," said the man who has been coming to practices since his dad brought him from their Sheepshead Bay home 40 years ago.
"I remember going there when there wasn't even a fence around the field. People would bring their folding chairs or they'd just sit on a towel," Liederfarb said, adding that he never will forget the time he got Snell's autograph on a little white football, then brought it to show his grandmother in the hospital, only to have a nurse disinfect it and wipe off the autograph. (Snell signed a ticket stub for him in 2002 when he heard the story.)
You can't make this stuff up, and you can't take it with you.
Don Maynard and George Sauer never ran routes in Florham Park. Hofstra is where Emerson Boozer and John Riggins and Freeman McNeil ran the ball, where Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko worked so hard to get so tough. Boomer Esiason, Rob Moore and D'Brickashaw Ferguson had homecomings there. Greg Buttle became a Long Islander there. Wayne Chrebet made an unlikely career for himself there, at his alma mater.
This is where Al Toon tearfully announced he just couldn't play anymore. This is where teammates got together and rejoiced to hear Dennis Byrd's happy voice on a speakerphone. This is where Richard Todd stuffed a sportswriter into a locker, where Bill Belichick ended his one-day reign with the most rambling, disjointed monologue in NFL history. This is where Curtis Martin wrapped up a classy Hall of Fame career.
Everyone moves on. Rabinowitz said Weeb Ewbank Hall will be the temporary home of Hofstra's new medical school, and then a permanent biology center. But he wishes the Jets had stayed.
Johnson could point out that New York didn't go out of its way to build him a new stadium. But he's got to know that the Jets always will be the No. 2 team in New Jersey. On Long Island, they were both kings of the hill and part of the landscape. You could see Randy Beverly at Island Garden for a Nets game, Herm Edwards in the next pew at church, pretty much anybody on the roster at a Nassau County restaurant.
Maybe the new digs will help the Jets play better. You just wonder if they've left their soul behind.
