I don't know much about American Football so I couldn't answer this when I faced faced with this question; "which team's more popular? NY Giants or NY Jets?" anybody know an answer to this one?
Giants are definitely more popular. Of course it takes a certain kind of masochism to want to become a Jets fan.
Giants by a lot. One of the NY Newspapers (Newsday I think) did some research into popularity of teams in the NY Metro area. The top 4 were: 1) NY Giants (football) 2) NY Mets (baseball) 3) NY Yankees (baseball) 4) NY Jets (football)
My impression is that the Giants are popular in Manhattan, the western suburbs, parts of Connecticut, northeastern PA, and especially North Jersey, whereas the rest of NYC proper plus Long Island is Jets territory. They both suck.
Being a Met fan, I find it hard to believe that the Mets rank #2, in front of the Skanks. I remember they did a survey during the Subway World Series by borough and upstate, and the Yankees held an advantage in every single area, even Queens. To answer KF's question though, Giants are definitely the most popular, but I guess it's broken down by each region as some people pointed out. I know the Jets are real popular out in Long Island, possibly because they practice at Hofstra and Chrebet is a Hofstra product. But yeah, the standard among New Yorkers for the teams you root for are Giants-Yankees-Rangers, then you have Jets-Mets-Islanders. First group you have long storied franchises with tons of tradition, and the second group you have the teams that all came later and are considered the underdogs. However, I'm a Mets and Rangers fan and couldn't care less about the NFL. God I seriously chose the wrong teams to root for.
My grandfather was a fan of the Giants in baseball and football. When the Baseball Giants left, he became a Mets fan when they started. I know a few other Mets-Giants fans and it happened for their families the same way. Other than that, it Mets-Jets, Giants-Yanks. there is no way the Mets are more popular than the Yankees.
On Mets-Jets, remember that the Jets played in Shea Stadium (home of the Mets) for a while as well, plus both teams started in the 60s with a rebellion against the "established" teams of New York, the Yankees and the Giants (who also played in Yankee stadium for a while). The Met-Jet-Islander thing is geographical from Queens on out, but the Islanders were also born in a similar time period and were a point of rebellion for younger fans (kids, mostly, who are now 40) against the teams of their fathers or older brothers. Frankly, the only thing that has kept me sane being a Knick-Ranger-Jet-Metro fan is that I became a Yankee fan before I turned 5. One team is great, the others take turns kicking my SS all year long. So the Giants are more popular, I'd say by ~ a 2-1 (or 3-2) margin. The Jets waiting list is 12 years for season tickets, 26 for Giants if that is a barometer. Also, remember that New York Newsday is the paper of Long Island, where the Mets are more popular than the Yankees because a lot of Queens folks made money and moved onto the Island, whereas city peeps (Bronx, Mahattan) moved north to Westchester. A Westchester paper would have the Yankees as the more popular team. On baseball, I think 40% are Yankee fans, 30 % are Met fans and 30% swing with the popular team (sad but true; it's why all Met fans call Yankee fans front-runners, but conveniently forget that the Mets had the same issues in the mid eighties).
I'm a Giant-Ranger-Met fan, and live upstate, so somehow I totally missed the boat on this. I'd think a lot of it has to do also with where and when you first got involved with it. I started getting into football and baseball in 86-87, so the Mets won the World Series, and the Giants won the Super Bowl, that did it for me. I followed the Rangers because when I started really getting into hockey, I'd go to games for the Rangers minor league affiliate in Binghamton, NY. Your family probably will have something to do with it too, but not always. (My father is a Bills fan, and watches the Yankees and Mets pretty much equally.)
Another factor is that the Giants have had much more success than the Jets in the last twenty years. The Giants of the 1980's to early 1990's were an especially good team. IIRC, they won the Superbowl in 1986 and 1990. And they had argueably one of the NFL's best defensive players of all time, Lawrence Taylor. Another way to gage popularity is the wait for season tickets. For the Giants, that wait is decades, and the season tickets are something your kids will fight each for to inherit.
thanks for the reply guys. Interesting to know the boroughs broke down and the reasons behind it. No wonder the girl I knew from Long Island liked the Mets.
I was watching Who's The Boss a long time ago (yea, go ahead and laugh) and Tony Danza was making fun of some rich guy for being a Giants fan. You know, he was the male maid who lived in Connecticut with a rich family that just happened to be missing the father...Tony said that real New Yorkers were Jets fans.
New Yorkers are a bunch of homers. The most popular team is the one higher in the standings at any given moment.
Funny........I still hate the Yankees. It's true though that most New Yorkers are homers, but can't you say that about any city? It's better then some cities just now showing any support. Look at the Devils. Kick ass every year and they still can't sell out the friggin Meadowlands. But one thing that annoyed me was how all Knick fans jumped on the Nets bandwagon after they got good. I mean c'mon. Have some friggin dignity.
Right all the true fans are in Michigan where they burn cars and riot when they win something. Luckily, that's pretty infrequent.
Explain the popularity of the Knicks or Rangers. Even when the NY Giants were mediocre to bad horrible (Ray Handley/Dan Reeves), season tickets were still impossible to get. Though, the Yankees...
The people who suffer from mental problems are Jets fans. The people who don't have mental problems but just don't know any better are Giants fans. The people with brains don't root for NY football (or baseball) teams. And BTW, I am a Dolphins fan.