Rex Ryan is officially the elephant in the room, and not just because he's a great big loud football coach.
Ryan is the big off-field story with the Jets, which takes some doing, because it has taken a home video to make "Excuse me, ma'am, can I help you with anything?" into the language of the culture, and not just the sports culture.
And that is always a game changer in the modern world. When you turn yourself into an instant punch line and punching bag - assuming Ryan and his wife are responsible for the videos - the whole thing becomes the opposite of a "personal matter." Rex Ryan, who wanted this kind of platform and wanted this kind of stage, who has been carried along by the sound of laughter and applause, has to know better than anyone.
Ryan says a lot of funny things. He has tried to get off good lines in almost all circumstances, all the way until the foot-fetish videos or whatever they are surfaced this week, became a much more interesting conversation-starter for people than Jets at Bears at Soldier Field on Sunday.
At that point the Jets' coach who has made everybody pay attention to him made you so uncomfortable you wanted to walk out of the room even if you were just watching him take the questions about the videos on television.
If this is only about some home movies, then it is a personal matter, absolutely, it's Rex Ryan's business and his wife's business and nobody else's and please leave me out of it. But that is only if you think the videos posted themselves.
So now we have one more thing with Rex Ryan's Jets. We have one more issue in what feels like a non-stop cycle of them, only now the issue is the coach. Not Braylon Edwards. Not Sal Alosi sticking his knee out. Not a sideline wall of coaches and not the way everybody incuding the special teams coach ran their mouths in "Hard Knocks." Not the play-calling of the offensive coordinator or the erratic way Mark Sanchez occasionally runs those plays.
Long before "Excuse me, ma'am, can I help you with anything?" turned the Jets into the equivalent of a Saturday Night Live skit, there was the sense around pro football and around sports that the students had taken over the principal's office down there at the amazing Jets training facility in Florham Park, N.J. It is why Jets players like Bart Scott aren't allowed to sarcastically ask writers, "Oh, you want to talk about football?"
Is Scott kidding? Seriously? He's a Jet. And when you're a Jet, oh man, you're a Jet all the way. You want to talk about everything, you think everything is a show, you think the HBO cameras are still following you around. This is a team that loves the bright lights and all microphones the way Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys did, except those Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years and Rex's Jets haven't, their playoff portfolio - for now, because they could make some football noise again in January - is road wins against the Bengals and the Chargers, which doesn't get you into the running, at least not yet, for Team of the Decade.
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