Ryan Still Talking a Good Game

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Sullivan: Jets coach Rex Ryan still talking a good game

Thursday, May 5, 2011

By TARA SULLIVAN

RECORD COLUMNIST

NEW YORK – The paths he promised us someday would intersect both made their way through lower Manhattan on Thursday, but no, Rex Ryan hasn’t yet shared a handshake with President Obama.

Jets coach Rex Ryan, left, and team owner Woody Johnson are interviewed during a television show earlier this week. His magical media tour has included radio visits with WFAN, 1050 ESPN, NPR and Sirius XM, TV interviews on Fox, MSNBC, “The Colbert Report”, SNY and YES and David Letterman, and countless other outlets across the country.

AP

Jets coach Rex Ryan, left, and team owner Woody Johnson are interviewed during a television show earlier this week. His magical media tour has included radio visits with WFAN, 1050 ESPN, NPR and Sirius XM, TV interviews on Fox, MSNBC, “The Colbert Report”, SNY and YES and David Letterman, and countless other outlets across the country.

Yet neither has the Jets’ outspoken coach stopped declaring the eventuality of said meeting on the White House lawn, where Ryan still expects a presidential celebration of his team’s Super Bowl win.

“We’re going to arrange a meeting all right, but it won’t he here,” Ryan said following a taping of the YES Network show “CenterStage” at a studio a few dozen blocks north of Ground Zero, where the president later would lay a wreath in memory of 9/11 victims. On an all-out media blitz befitting a coach who believes in nothing less on the field, Ryan has spent the better part of a week promoting his book “Play Like you Mean it,” a junket that included 21 interviews Wednesday alone.

While the NFL stalls in lockout ridiculousness, it’s business as usual for Ryan: Talk, talk, talk.

Ryan’s words Thursday only echoed the ones that punctuated his initial introduction to the long-suffering Jets faithful, when his unscripted reaction to the packed house at his news conference was to suggest it would better befit our head of state.

“I think we’ll get to meet him in the next couple of years anyway,” Ryan declared.

And with that, the image of the Jets went from boring old joke to brave new contender. Ryan gave himself at least the length of the president’s first term to fulfill his promise, and with two trips to the AFC Championship game, he’s come tantalizingly close. But if he’s going to avoid becoming a permanent punch line to a never-ending Jets joke, he’s going to have to make it come true.

We know it.

He knows it.

Critics know it.

Fans know it.

That’s but one price of such outward confidence.

“I want to win a Super Bowl, this organization wants to win the Super Bowl, everyone feels the same way,” Ryan said during the interview with host Michael Kay. “It’s not about AFC Championship games or beating this team or that, it’s about the Super Bowl. I believe it takes away from the game if we have any other goal. Why you compete at anything if you don’t want to be the best?

“I’d much rather fall short of reaching the highest goal than to set a lower goal and reach it.”

This is how Ryan wins fans over: by sharing his passion for winning and declaring anything else unacceptable. “I do feel like a failure,” he said of the Jets’ two consecutive AFC title losses.

But that won’t make him stop talking. OK, he’s almost finished for now, admitting that even he has tired of the sound of his own voice. “I know Giants fans and Patriots fans will be happy to hear that. [They’ll say], ‘We’re tired of listening to you all the time, too.’ But it’s been fun,” he said.

He managed to squeeze in another shot at Giants defensive end Justin Tuck, who has matched Ryan’s vocal outbursts with a few of his own. When Kay asked Ryan about the Super Bowl ring he won as an assistant coach with the Ravens, Ryan said with sarcasm, “I never realized I own that ring, according to Justin Tuck. He’s got one. My family’s been to six Super Bowls and won five of them.”

Rex has long since won the family big-mouth award, shouting down his famous father, Buddy, as well as twin brother, Rob, the new defensive coordinator for the Cowboys. This is a title he has coveted since his a childhood colored by divorced parents, countless moves and a likely undiagnosed case of dyslexia that made school days tortuous. He understands the risks he runs – “We know I get myself in trouble. That’s a given,” he said, before proving himself yet again with an unexpected quip involving his wife’s feet.

For all the talking Ryan does, he had steadfastly refused to discuss salacious Internet rumors about a foot fetish video involving him and his wife of more than 20 years, Michelle, repeatedly referring to it as a “personal matter.” He did not include 2010’s midseason, embarrassing revelation in his book and had maintained silence until Kay used a favorite personal expression to ask Ryan how badly he wanted to beat New England last season. Kay wondered if Ryan would trade his pinkie toe, to which Ryan apparently answered that maybe his own, but not his wife’s.

It was the first crack of his magical media tour that has included radio visits with WFAN, 1050 ESPN, NPR and Sirius XM, TV interviews on Fox, MSNBC, “The Colbert Report”, SNY and YES and David Letterman, and countless other outlets across the country. Such is the price of too much talk. But for Ryan, that’s business as usual.

“It would be wrong to be somebody I’m not,” he said.