By Max Sass, Assistant Sports Editor
Q. Why are New York sports fans like politicians and gymnasts?
A. Flip-flopping is part of the job.
How about those long suffering New York Jets faithful? Last season, after Gang Green beat the Titans in week 12 to hand the Titans their first loss of the season, New Yorkers – – and Jets fans in particular – – were ready to push Mike Bloomberg out of office and replace him with Brett Favre. Disappointing losses to the Broncos, 49ers and Seahawks put the team out of the playoffs and Brett Favre on the fan’s fecal roster. Where is the loyalty?
My point though, is not to dwell on the faults of New York sports fans; after all, I am one myself. My point is to give you a peek into the future and let you know the next New York fan favorite who will have a fall from grace. As I sit behind my crystal ball (which is really just my laptop), the spirits tell me that the next player New York sports fans will turn on is Mark Sanchez, the rookie quarterback of the Jets. Yes, Broadway Mark is the next New York sports icon who will get the cold shoulder from the fickle fanatics.
Why do I prognosticate that Sanchez acolytes will reverse their field? Because Sanchez is a superstar who can be super stupid. The man, after all, has a history
In 2006, while a scholarship athlete at the University of Southern California, Sanchez was arrested when a female USC student accused him of sexual assault. He was released from jail the following day after posting $200,000 bail. The football team placed Sanchez on suspension. Two months later, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office dropped charges, announcing that it was just a one-on-one, his word versus her word case, which would be difficult to prove.
When I brought this up in Sanchez’s defense to my father, a lawyer, his response was, “If all his word versus her word cases were dropped, there would never be sexual assault prosecutions.” Sanchez’s record does not include a sexual assault conviction, but I question whether this was the DA not being able to get enough evidence or was it a superstar athlete being given the benefit of the doubt in our justice system?
USC made Sanchez take a rape awareness class, and then disciplined Sanchez again because of two other separate incidents.
Allow me to set the scene for the first. Imagine you are a highly publicized recruit who is a quarterback for one of the top five college football teams in the nation. You would expect that most people on campus would recognize you and know who you are. You might expect it but apparently Mark Sanchez did not when he used a fake identification to get alcohol on the same night in 2006 that he was arrested for underage drinking. To be fair, the vast majority of college students under the age of 21 go out drinking, and many even use a fake ID. But what Sanchez overlooked is that the vast majority of college students are not highly publicized quarterbacks in glamorous college programs. Where was his common sense?
The USC Department of Public Safety detained Sanchez another night (but did not arrest him) when he broke a window at a fraternity house. Clearly Sanchez enjoys partying, and clearly has no sense of the public figure that he is.
Sanchez’s history suggests that he is bound to make a mistake in New York. Plaxico’s stupidity put a bullet wound in his thigh and landed him in prison for a two year stretch. I would guess that Sanchez’s stupidity might get him nothing more than an STD, but still the negative press, combined with the rookie mistakes he is bound to make, might be enough to have Jets fans begging for Kellen Clemens.
