Bits and Bytes: Of hoops skeds and Huggins starring

No mention of where this guy went to college. Don't worry. It's coming.

Turns out the men’s basketball schedule was further along than I realized the other day. Thanks to Twitter pal Andy Towne and Loyal Reader Jojogunne for sending along the information that Hofstra will host Holy Cross (date TBA) and visit Manhattan (Dec. 18).

The CAA schedule also has its first confirmation: UNC Wilmington released the CAA portion of its schedule (not the entire thing, as I erroneously wrote on Twitter) Thursday afternoon and the Flying Dutchmen will host the Seahawks Jan. 19 and visit scenic Wilmington Feb. 23. Both are Wednesday games.

Below is the schedule as we know it thus far:

Nov. 13: Farmingdale

Nov. 18-21: Puerto Rico Classic (three games)

Nov. 26: Wagner

Dec. 4: CAA opener, site and opponent TBA

Dec. 8: at Binghamton

Dec. 11: Florida Atlantic

Dec. 18: at Manhattan

Dec. 29: at Iona

TBA: Holy Cross

TBA: at Rider

Jan. 19: UNCW

Feb. 23: at UNCW

TBA: Bracket Buster

The non-conference schedule might be complete. Exams take place the week of Dec. 13, so there won’t be any games between Florida Atlantic and Manhattan. I’d guess the games against Holy Cross and Rider will take place the week of and the week after Christmas. Squeezing a game in Dec. 27 would be a good way to begin preparing the Dutchmen for the whirlwind first five days of the real CAA schedule. It's possible another game could be scheduled for Christmas week, but I think what you see is what you’re going to get.

I’d also wager the Farmingdale game will count, because that gets Brad Kelleher one game closer to the floor. Unless someone farts in Kentucky and the NCAA decides to punish the Wildcats by ordering Kelleher to sit out another season. Oh wait, Morehead State just went on probation, we’re probably safe.

Anyway, a couple other bits and bytes for the weekend:

—The first football-free fall at Hofstra since World War II—chew on that for a moment—officially begins today, when the volleyball team becomes the first squad to open its season by hosting the Hofstra Invitational at the PFC. The Flying Dutchwomen will play Canisius at noon and Texas State at 7 p.m.

The women’s soccer team also opens play today by visiting nationally ranked Boston College. Field hockey begins tomorrow, when the Dutchwomen play Boston University at the University of Albany Invitational, while men’s soccer debuts with a home game against Stony Brook Wednesday.

—We won’t forget football here, we can promise you that. The Daily News had a nice article Wednesday about former Flying Dutchmen offensive lineman Kevin Brown, who transferred to Eastern Kentucky and is preparing for his junior season there.

—And it’s beginning to look as if Kareem Huggins, the former Flying Dutchmen running back, is going to do his best to make sure nobody else forgets Hofstra football, either. Huggins is having a monster pre-season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (coached by Hofstra alum Raheem Morris and still, of course, The Official NFL Team of Defiantly Dutch) and has gone from a fringe special teamer to, perhaps, sharing the Bucs’ starting job with Cadillac Williams. Huggins has 99 yards on 16 carries—that’s a mind-boggling YPC of 6.2—and is impressing people inside and outside the Buccaneers’ organization.

Indeed, as I read this St. Petersburg Times column about Huggins, it struck me how remarkably similar his ascension is to the one Wayne Chrebet enjoyed with the Jets 15 years ago this month. Chrebet was trying to make a Jets team that had, almost literally, no wide receivers, while Huggins brings big-play capability to the Buccaneers, who didn’t have a rush of more than 35 yards last season.

Unfortunately, while Chrebet was painted as having come out of nowhere, Huggins kind of does now. But what an appropriate bookend that would be, if Huggins becomes a household name the year after Hofstra football was wiped from the map and 15 years after Chrebet helped put the Dutchmen on it.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Payback is a Bonus

Every single time he trots out to the practice field, Hofstra middle linebacker Luke Bonus recalls how he felt during December 2004, when the high school senior was told by then-Hofstra coach Joe Gardi that the school—the only one to even minimally recruit the undersized Bonus, who is listed at 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds—was no longer planning to offer him a scholarship but that he was still welcome to apply to the university and walk on to the football team.

“Most every school I’m playing against was a school that said I couldn’t hack it,” Bonus said. “Including the one I’m at. So I come out to practice with a chip on my shoulder.”

Gardi retired after the 2005 season, which Bonus spent on the sidelines as a redshirt freshman, and his replacement, Dave Cohen, not only made Bonus a starter but also granted him a full scholarship prior to the 2006 season. Still, if Bonus gets fired up for practicing for a coaching staff and against a bunch of teammates who had nothing to do with his recruitment—or, as Bonus calls it, the “lack thereof”—imagine how he’ll feel Saturday, when Hofstra visits top-ranked Richmond.

An ex-Richmond coach has a pretty good idea of what’s in store for the Spiders. Bonus took great pleasure the previous three seasons in tweaking former Hofstra defensive coordinator Mike Elko, who now serves in the same capacity at Bowling Green and was on the Richmond staff when Bonus was in high school.

“I used to like to tell him, because he was at Richmond before I came here, ‘I love playing for you because you didn’t recruit me,’” Bonus said Thursday. “So everyday, I’m getting to prove him wrong. Every game is something to me that I have to prove to somebody. Every team that I look at on our schedule is a team that said I wasn’t good enough, [that] I couldn’t hack it. And I love it. It’s something I get to go out on the field with every day. I don’t need any extra inspiration.”

Bonus’ emergence from walk-on to All-CAA player and All-America candidate is remarkably similar to the story penned at Hofstra in the early ‘90s by Wayne Chrebet, who put Hofstra on the map when he followed a brilliant senior season with the Flying Dutchmen in 1994 by making the Jets as a rookie free agent the following summer and eventually becoming one of the most successful and beloved players in franchise history.

Long before he was a household name, though, Chrebet was an undersized New Jersey kid whose football career almost ended with his high school graduation because even Division I-AA programs would not look beyond his unimposing 5-foot-10, 180-pound frame. Chrebet’s father sent tapes of his son to several area schools and Hofstra—which was years away from awarding football scholarships as it began the transition from Division III to Division I-AA during Chrebet’s freshmen year in 1991—finally offered Chrebet a chance to play.

Bonus’ father also sent footage of his son to Hofstra and other schools, but Bonus—who earned all-state honors in New Jersey as a senior and holds the Shawnee High School record for career tackles—was ready to leave football behind when it looked like the opportunity to earn a scholarship to Hofstra had disappeared.

Pep talks from his parents convinced him to give it a year, but like Chrebet—who caught just 36 passes for 309 yards his first two seasons and pondered transferring—Bonus didn’t get much of an initial opportunity. He thought about quitting once again after a frustrating redshirt freshman season in which he was shifted to safety but decided to give it one more season after Cohen arrived and moved him back to linebacker, where he won the starting job during training camp and immediately began paying back the programs that ignored him a couple years earlier.

Bonus led Hofstra in tackles as a freshman and a junior, earned All-CAA honors last year and has collected 10 or more tackles 14 times in 37 career games, including last week against Bryant. He was named team MVP last year and selected a captain this season as much for his passion and production on the field as his efforts off it: Bonus has been named to the conference’s all-academic team in each of his three seasons.

“He just plays snap to whistle as hard as anyone I’ve ever coached,” Cohen said. “He’s just relentless. He’s very bright, he’s over a 3.2 [GPA] student, he’s a complete person. And then you add that relentlessness, that motor that never stops, it just creates someone very fun to coach.”

Now, the guy who needs no extra inspiration may be on the verge of providing some, a la Chrebet. Bonus was just eight years old when Chrebet played his final game at Hofstra, but he was familiar with Chrebet’s tale long before he began following in his footsteps. As a teenager in 1999, Bonus read Chrebet’s autobiography Every Down, Every Distance.

“You always heard about Wayne Chrebet, a small kid, this school Hofstra,” Bonus said. “And then everyone was saying ‘What’s a Hofstra? What is Hofstra?’ But it was always kind of how I knew about it. [It was] a turning point for me to really look at this school.”

Bonus met Chrebet during his redshirt season in 2005, when Chrebet would occasionally stop by practice during his final year with the Jets. “It’s the ultimate complement, man, [for] someone to tell me that I’m compared to someone like Wayne Chrebet, who is obviously a legend at this level [and] especially at this school,” Bonus said.

Between Bonus’ resume and the success of Chrebet and other recent Hofstra alums in the NFL, there seems little doubt Bonus will elicit some interest in the months leading to April’s draft. He may not have to take a Chrebet-path like to the NFL, but the slights of 2004 and 2005 will nonetheless keep Bonus as hungry as ever.

“I think that the walk-on process, as tough as it is, I really believe it’s a great gauge for people,” Bonus said. “When I first came in, I didn’t get the feeling that I was needed here, you know what I mean? I didn’t get that feeling at all. But I grinded through it and obviously I worked my way to the top.”

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Tiger Beat?

If you ever picked up Tiger Beat expecting to read about Towson, you were sorely disappointed. Or so I've heard.

Like with Bucknell on the football schedule a couple months back, seeing Towson (do you think there’s a blog in Maryland called Stubbornly Towson State? I hope so) next up on the docket for the Flying Dutchmen basketball team brings back some fond memories.

Actually, the memories shouldn’t be so fond, since all Towson did during the Defiantly Dutch era was kick Hofstra where it hurts. But what can I say? Nostalgia is strange and unpredictable.

The Tigers knocked off the top-seeded Dutchmen in what was supposed to be the final ECC championship game in March 1992 (of course, that didn’t really upset me at the time, since I was skipping class to play hearts at community college and couldn’t have found Hofstra on a map). There was no automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament at stake and no expectations of an at-large bid by Butch van Breda Kolff—who had no idea he was proving the more things change the more they stay the same when he told Newsday the selection committee would “…rather take a seventh-place team in the Big 10, the ACC or anything other than the ECC”—but a win over Towson would have made Hofstra 21-8 and given it a pretty good shot at an NIT bid.

Towson gave the selection committee—albeit in a different sport—all the ammo it needed to keep an underdog Hofstra squad out of the postseason in October 1994, when the Tigers stunned the unbeaten Flying Dutchmen football team, 24-21, in an instant classic at Hofstra Stadium. Towson led 24-7 entering the fourth quarter, but the Dutchmen stormed back, whipped a crowd of 5,829 into a frenzy and appeared to take the lead when Nick Johnson scored on a 34-yard reverse. But the Dutchmen were called for a ticky-tack holding penalty (oh sure, I’m over it) and the drive eventually stalled at the Towson five-yard-line in the final minute.

Fourteen years later, I’ve still never seen a post-game locker room sadder than that one. That’s the difference between the pros and mid-major colleges: The pros almost always have next year as well as piles of million dollar bills on which to sleep. The mid-majors have one random, light-streaking-across-the-sky shot and an eternity to wonder what could have been.

Offensive lineman Ricky Wyatt, officially listed at 6-foot-2, 230 pounds but unofficially A Very Big Dude, sat stoically at his locker, still dressed in his uniform, for a while before his shoulders began to shake and tears began to stream down his face.

“We played hard and the fans were awesome,” said Wayne Chrebet, who had no idea he was four years away from playing for the AFC title. “But we lost, and it’s a loss that myself and the other seniors are never going to forget for the rest of our lives.”

The stakes weren’t as high at University Field in April 1996, because, well, has there ever been a high stakes Hofstra baseball game? But Towson’s 9-3, 11-inning win over the Dutchmen was much more compelling and dramatic than the final score would indicate. (I’m not going to subject you to the overwrought prose I churned out for The Chronicle that week, so you’ll just have to trust me on it) It also extended the Tigers’ win streak over Hofstra to 19 games. NINETEEN GAMES! That’s unpossible!

A decade later, a 94-91 loss to Towson in men’s basketball may have been the loss that kept the Dutchmen out of the NCAA Tournament. Had the Dutchmen—who, as Michael Litos reminded us earlier today, were missing Adrian Uter, who was in the midst of a four-game absence due to a bad ankle—won that game, they would have finished 15-3 and in a three-way tie for the CAA championship. Winning a share of the regular season crown was among the pile of crap reasons the band of roving idiots provided for giving Mason the at-large bid. Of course, had Hofstra shared the regular season title but lost in the CAA tourney, this guy probably still would have come up with another reason to keep Hofstra out.

Where was I? Oh yes. All that said, for the handful of heartbreaks Towson has provided the Dutch, Hofstra’s actually had the upper hand in the rivalry.

Football is 4-3 against Towson, and I would have bet my increasingly meager fortune that the two teams had played two or three times as many games against one another. The baseball team is 22-35 all-time against Towson, which is not bad at all given that 19-game losing streak. Women’s basketball is 22-26 against Towson while the volleyball team is a robust 34-7 all-time against the Tigers.

Men’s basketball, meanwhile, is 11-5 against Towson under Tom Pecora and 29-19 all-time. The Flying Dutchmen have recorded as many or more wins against just four other schools—Delaware (42-23), Wagner (33-16), Drexel (31-35) and Kings Point (29-6).

The two programs have been going in opposite directions since they were reunited in the NAC/America East in 1995-96. While the Flying Dutchmen won consecutive America East titles and have become a regular CAA contender, Towson has endured 11 straight sub-.500 seasons, hasn’t finished higher than seventh in the CAA since joining in 2001-02 and finished higher than eighth just once in its final five years in the America East.

But maybe this is the year the rivalry is renewed. Hofstra and Towson were both picked to finish in the bottom half of the CAA, but they’re among the few—if not the only—teams in the conference to exceed expectations thus far. Litos likes the Tigers, a lot, and the stats he produces in today’s blog indicate Towson is putting together a team that will look familiar to the Flying Dutchmen.

Towson has nine players averaging at least 16 minutes a game, Hofstra has seven. Towson has four players averaging at least 10 points a game, Hofstra has two (and a third, Tony Dennison, with 9.8 ppg). Both teams have seven players averaging at least three rebounds a game.

Hofstra ranks eighth in the CAA in points per game (68.2) and third in points allowed (65.3). Towson ranks ninth (67.7) and sixth (67.9), respectively, in those categories.

Add it all up and this is the most intriguing December game the Flying Dutchmen have played in a long time. A win Saturday, in a place where close games are the norm (five of the seven games in Towson in the Pecora era have been settled by seven points or less), could be a springboard to a season much better than anyone envisioned.

Of course, I predict a narrow victory. And of course, if the Dutchmen fall, I reserve the right to say it’s just one game and it’s too early in the season to declare watershed moments. Hey, my blog, my rules.

Alas, win or lose, we won’t be there. We’ll be listening to or watching the game (which you can also do right here) as we put up the Christmas tree. So if you crane your neck just right, you’ll probably hear me yell “FINE! YOU’RE SO SMART, YOU RIG UP THE LIGHTS!”

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

The Retiring Types

Lousy couple weeks for the guys on the right hand side of the Defiantly Dutch header. First Lance Schulters got his walking papers from the Saints. Then Marques Colston, who last year broke Wayne Chrebet’s record for most catches by a player in his first two NFL seasons, learned he almost certainly won’t break the record for the most catches by a player in his first three seasons due to a broken thumb that will sideline him for four-to-six weeks.

News of Colston’s injury broke a day after Hofstra announced Colston is one of 20 former star athletes whose numbers the school will retire. (How’s that for a segue?) Noted in the press release was Hofstra’s plans to honor the player during his or her “…respective sports season, unless schedules dictate otherwise.”

Colston’s forced convalescence would seemingly present an opportunity to squeeze in a halftime ceremony, but with the Flying Dutchmen embarking on a month-long road trip following the Sept. 20 game against Rhode Island, don’t expect to see Colston at Shuart Stadium until the Saints’ bye week in 2009.

The sight of retired numbers at the stadia and arenas on campus will lend an additional layer of legitimacy to the school’s athletic programs, so kudos to an administration that hasn’t always seemed interested in honoring and embracing the past. Colston and hoops icon Speedy Claxton are the most notable of the honorees, who follow in the footsteps of football’s Wayne Chrebet (3) and Walter Kohanowich (33) and softball’s Crystal Boyd, whose number 13 was retired last year.

The favorite ones here are, of course, the Defiantly Dutch-era stars: The mountainous Dave Fiore, who nearly matched Chrebet by making the NFL as an undrafted free agent and playing for eight seasons; softball star Stacy Jackson, whose dominance and durability—she ranks first all-time in innings pitched (885, including 256 in 1995), wins (96) and no-hitters (six)—helped jumpstart the Flying Dutchwomen’s dominant era and lacrosse goalie Stephanie Clarke, who was the first Hofstra player to make the national team.

The selection committee did a nice job of spreading the wealth, so to speak, with nine of the 20 athletes having graduated prior to 1990. Among the truly old school honorees is Steve Nisenson, who set the career scoring record in the era of freshman ineligibility and held on for 43 years until Antoine Agudio—another no. 13—broke it in February. But fear not, Agudio fans: The Yankees proved you can retire the same number for more than one player.

Cruel Summer?

Wayne Chrebet wasn’t even the Hofstra player most likely to make a professional football roster in the summer of 1995. Linebacker Herve Damas and defensive end Fritz Avin seemed to have much better chances of making the Buffalo Bills and the CFL’s Ottawa Roughriders, respectively, as undrafted free agents than Chrebet did of making the Jets, even after Chrebet’s brilliant senior season (1,200 yards, 16 TDs) and a similarly impressive workout with the Jets, for whom he caught something like 48 of 50 passes during a workout on campus shortly after the NFL draft.

Even then, it was hard to envision him as anything other than a training camp curiosity: The local star who gets a cup of coffee before his inevitable departure with the first cuts. It was a neat story, some good publicity for both the Jets and Hofstra.

Chrebet entered training camp last on the depth chart at receiver. People were mispronouncing his name and the security guard wouldn’t let him into the Jets complex because he didn’t think Chrebet could possibly be a football player.

Of course, as we all know, the cheapest free agent signing the Jets ever made turned out to provide unimaginable dividends. In retrospect, though, should we have been surprised that Chrebet made play after play to earn a spot in the week one starting lineup?

First of all, the Jets had a starving need for competent wide receivers following the trade of Hempstead’s Rob Moore and the release of the aging Art Monk. Tight end Johnny Mitchell (snort) and backup running backs Brad Baxter, Richie Anderson and Adrian Murrell didn’t exactly throw fear into anyone. The most experienced wide receiver in camp? That would be second-year player Ryan Yarborough, he of the six career catches.

The Jets selected two wide receivers in the draft, but fourth-rounder Tyrone Davis ate his way to tight end (and caught two passes with the Jets in two years) and seventh-rounder Curtis Ceaser never caught an NFL pass. The Jets eventually acquired Charles Wilson from the Buccaneers, and his 45-catch season did nothing to disprove the notion that you’re not going to trade for a savior late in the summer.

Plus, even at 21, Chrebet had already spent his entire life proving people wrong and maximizing his slivers of opportunity. Chrebet wasn’t pursued after high school—his dad sent out videotapes to numerous colleges, a process he’d repeat with every NFL team following the 1994 season—and he was an afterthought in Manny Matsakis’ offense for most of his first two years.

Yet anyone who saw the guy over the course of the 1994 season could tell he had “it”—even if people have a hard time explaining what “it” is. I remember my dad, who gets excited about nothing, raving about Chrebet as we walked through the Student Center after Chrebet’s impressive performance in the Homecoming win over New Hampshire.

You can’t teach the toughness needed to climb from undrafted free agent to starter in the NFL. Nor can you teach the toughness needed to perform Chrebet’s non-glamorous yet essential job—the possession receiver who went over the middle on short yardage situations, absorbed the punishment and held on to the ball for the first down.

The guy who wasn’t supposed to make it past mid-August proved to be the ultimate survivor—and a prophetic one as well. “I plan on being here for a while,” Chrebet told Newsday in the summer of 1995.

Chrebet locked up a starting spot with five catches in the preseason finale against the Bengals. He caught his first touchdown pass in week two against the Colts, caught another one a week later against the Jaguars and made his most memorable catch against the Falcons in week four, when he outraced a bunch of defenders for a 31-yard gain before he was dragged down inside the five-yard-line. I remember hanging out at a bar near UConn, where we were celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday—hey, I told you there’s nothing to do there but drink—and when Chrebet’s play appeared on NFL Primetime I jumped up and started yelling about how I went to school with that guy.

He finished second on the Jets with 66 catches, all the while rooming with an ex-Hofstra teammate a few blocks west of campus. Chrebet finished first or second on the Jets in receptions seven times in his first eight seasons (in 2000, he finished third with 69 catches, one behind Curtis Martin) and was one of the few constants on the ever-tumultuous Jets.

The Jets drafted receivers with their first two picks in 1996—including this moronic “author”—and four more receivers over the next seven seasons. Chrebet outlasted them all (though Laveranues Coles came back to the Jets after two seasons with the Redskins). He caught passes from 13 different quarterbacks (including Martin against the Buccaneers and the “author” in 2000), played for four different head coaches and sported one of the best-selling uniforms in team history.

He was so good for so long that we eventually began to wonder what could have been for the guy who was never supposed to play a down in the NFL. The aftereffects of the multiple concussions he’d suffered—the “official” count is nine, which is a surely and frightfully conservative estimate—started piling up in 2001 and he caught just 73 passes while missing 17 games over his final three seasons.

He put off retirement following the 2003 and 2004 seasons before he had no choice after this. Chrebet once seemed destined to surpass Don Maynard as the top pass-catcher in team history, but he finished with 580 catches, 47 shy of the Hall of Famer.

In the end, the toughness that created an inspiring story also ensured it would have a conclusion as sad as it was inevitable. It’s easy, from here, to wonder why Chrebet kept going back for more until retirement was foisted upon him.

Most of us would spend the rest of our days with a smile plastered to our face if we ran made one catch and heard the appreciative roar of 80,000 fans. But we can’t comprehend the narcotic rush that must provide, nor why one catch is not enough. Or why 580 weren’t enough.

“If someone said I could play again,” Chrebet told the Newark Star-Ledger last September, “I’d be back out there tomorrow.”

Now you can only hope there’s not a sad coda to Chrebet's story. The Star-Ledger article—in which Chrebet talks of his awful memory, his inability to drive without a GPS and how he still regularly battles post-concussion malaise—paints a sobering and worrisome picture. And the pro football landscape is dotted with too many stories—some tragic—of players whose brains never recovered from the abuse they took on the field.

Chrebet made it clear to the Star-Ledger he has no regrets about his career and whatever price he may be paying. But still: You hope that, in his quiet moments, the guy who was never supposed to play an NFL snap doesn’t wonder what could have been if the summer of 1995 was the end instead of the beginning.

Channeling Carlos And Kharon

Bad news for the Flying Dutchmen Thursday as it was announced starting QB Bryan Savage—who was scratched minutes before last week’s opener against UConn after feeling numbness in his feet during warmups—will miss the year following surgery to repair a herniated disc. He’ll be replaced behind center by Cory Christopher, the Nassau Community College transfer who struggled during his short-notice start against the Huskies.

My desire to get back into following Hofstra football is one of the reasons I started this blog, so I won’t pretend to predict what the switch means to the Dutchmen’s chances. I will say that they’ll be in pretty good shape if Christopher can channel the spirit of Carlos Garay and Kharon Brown, who emerged from anonymity to become stars during the magical 1994 and 1995 seasons.

Brown, the Kansas transfer who backed up George Beisel and Garay in consecutive seasons before he threw for 17 touchdowns and rushed for almost 1,000 yards in leading Hofstra to the I-AA playoffs for the first time, was long viewed as a potential star who just needed a chance. Garay’s ascension was far more surprising. The versatile Garay was so low on the depth chart at quarterback in 1993 that he played running back and special teams—barely: He had four carries and three tackles before a dominant ’94 season (21 TDs/4 INTs) vaulted Hofstra into the top 25 and, eventually, earned Garay a handful of stints in the Arena Football League.

Of course, Garay is not the most famous pro football player from the ’94 squad. How’s that for a segue to a Wayne Chrebet post? Alas, it’ll have to wait until later this evening. As the 9-5 gig beckons in just a few hours. Stop back tonight and prepare for the first weekend of the NFL season (this Thursday night opener stuff is a joke, by the way) by looking back on Chrebet’s remarkable rise to Jets icon.

Edit: Check that. Stop back tomorrow evening, during a break in Hanna, for the Chrebet post. I spin it as wanting to save it for the first weekend of the NFL season, but the truth is it's been a busy day and my battery's just about empty.

J-E-T-S (Just Exiting This Campus)

I took this picture while on campus the other day and figured it would make for a neat picture for a post I’m writing about Wayne Chrebet’s surreal summer of ’95, which began with a security guard denying him entrance to the Jets’ complex because he didn’t think he was actually a football player and ended with Chrebet earning a spot in the starting lineup. (That post is coming later this week)

But I realized almost immediately that it’s a better summation of the end of Hofstra’s association with the Jets. The sun officially set on the 40-year relationship last week, when Gang Green packed up and made the 63-mile drive to its new palatial digs in Florham Park.

There’s no denying bigger and better and more important things than a football team will eventually take place on the land once occupied by the Jets. That said: For all the talk of the boost in recognition the presidential debate will give Hofstra, the truth is that the best free advertising school will ever have just bolted for the Garden State. Even if only half of the news reports about the Jets mentioned Hofstra, how many stories/standups is that? Hundreds. You watched clips on TV and tried to figure out if your dorm was in the background.

Hofstra, whose decision-makers spend every waking hour obsessing over publicity, could not pay for anything that effective. Especially 13 years ago, when Chrebet, an unsigned free agent from Hofstra, walked across the street and made the Jets.

Even before Chrebet became a star, untold numbers of people from outside the state knew of Hofstra as where the Jets practiced. I didn’t go to Hofstra because of the Jets connection, but I brought this book with me to campus because I was sure I’d see Ronnie Lott scarfing down a Hofstra Burger in the Student Center. In retrospect, of course, that was foolish. I blame the sitcoms of my youth, where famous people just randomly showed up to hang with normal folks like you and I.

Four decades at Hofstra made the Jets Long Island’s football team (and the closest thing we’ve had to a major professional sports franchise the last 15 years, that’s right, I’m not counting these guys). It also made the Jets the metro-area football team worthy of the New York moniker. If they didn’t play their home games in the state of New York, at least they practiced and were headquartered there.

Being a Jets fan isn’t easy—I’ve never rooted for the Jets, but having rooted for this historic loser, I know all about loyalty in the face of unrelenting bleakness—but there was an endearing accessibility at Hofstra, even under control freaks such as Bill Parcells and Eric Mangini.

I remember Long Island native Vinny Testaverde biking from Weeb Ewbank Hall to the Netherlands, where fans would gather for autographs as players entered the cafeteria (home of the best Hofstra tradition ever: Steak night on Wednesdays!). And as Newsday’s excellent Mark Herrmann wrote Sunday, dozens of Jets came from elsewhere but became Long Islanders.

Of course, it’s not the Jets’ job to publicize Hofstra. It’s just business and the Jets owe Hofstra nothing. But by picking up and moving to New Jersey, Woody Johnson proves he’s another guy who can spend a billion bucks buying and putting together a professional sports franchise but can’t buy a clue as to how to read his fan base. But hey, the Jets have more T&A than most teams! (A brilliant idea, given the Jerry Springer Show-like behavior exhibited by some Jets fans last year)

The Jersey move should also serve as a reminder that Johnson promised his tenure would be measured by his ability to give the Jets a home of their own…in New York. Page 564 of the Jets’ 2004 media guides includes and an artist’s rendering of the riverfront stadium the Jets expected to open on the West Side of Manhattan in 2009 and the promise that “[T]he Jets and their fans will finally have a home to call their own; a home that they have long deserved.”

So, of course, as of this writing, they’re localized entirely in New Jersey and preparing for a new stadium they’ll share with the Giants. It’s not all Johnson’s fault: Having been screwed by Cablevision, he does in fact have at least one thing in common with his Long Island-based fans. Still…if I’m rooting for the Jets, I see his failure to come through as he promised and I’m not exactly holding my breath on him bringing the Lombardi to New Jersey.

Oh sure, the Jets are spinning this as a victory and an opportunity to finally develop some identity. The name of the new stadium will go to the highest bidder—meaning, perhaps, the next generation of football fans won’t associate the Jets with Giants Stadium—and the place will be decked out in the colors and décor of whomever is hosting the game. And as part of the stadium deal, the Jets agreed to set up operations in New Jersey, which presents them a chance to establish a new tradition.

Except, of course, the one tradition the Jets had WAS Hofstra. Indeed, Hofstra was more a part of the Jets’ identity than the Jets were a part of Hofstra’s identity.

For nearly 50 years, the Jets have been the tri-state area’s nomadic franchise—too often leaderless and perpetually homeless. Their Super Bowl III win was perhaps the biggest upset in football history (surpassed seven months ago by this, I’d say), but it was more fluke than a sign of things to come for a seemingly star-crossed franchise known best for ineptitude and an amazing ability to grab defeat from the jaws of victory at the most gut-wrenching time. Like they did here. And here. And here.

The 2003 media guide commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Jets with five special then-and-now covers (Joe Namath/Chad Pennington, Ewbank/Herm Edwards, Freeman McNeil/Curtis Martin, Joe Klecko/John Abraham and Don Maynard/Chrebet) that only served as a reminder of how meager the Jets have been. In addition, 10 of the team’s 17 head coaches lasted two years or less, including the guy who wigged out after one day.

The Jets have been secondary citizens in their “own” stadia, and come the fall of 2010, when Giants Stadium follows the Polo Grounds (1960-63) and Shea Stadium (1964-83) by meeting thousands of sticks of dynamite, the Jets’ history will be a pile of rubble.

The one place the Jets could authentically call their own was the northeast portion of Hofstra’s campus. It’s the only place that paid homage to the Jets—and, as Herrmann noted, the only place that linked the Jets generations.

The Jets have a new home now, one that is as extravagant as it is empty. Left behind is Hofstra and the sprawling canvas they’d spent 40 years creating—one that was rarely impressive but always unique.

Hofstra went out on top, though, as the Jets’ final paint strokes provided the school one last splash of free advertising better than any promotional campaign it could have mustered. It’s hard to imagine anything that happens in New Jersey topping that. And even if Peyton Manning comes out of retirement in August 2015 to try and snap the Jets’ 46-year championship drought, big deal. In New Jersey, nobody tunes in to Jets reports to see if he can find Vander Poel Hall in the background.