Flare game

When Jets meet Giants the heat is on

Seven months after the Jets shocked the Colts to become Super Bowl champions, they finally added the title of champions of New York when they embarrassed the Giants in the first-ever bragging rights meeting in 1969. It was only August and it was only the preseason and the Giants were stuck in the middle of a 17-year run of not making the playoffs, but it was still Super Bowl III 1/2.

Sadly, the passion has diminished over the years from the Joe Namath vs. Fran Tarkenton days and the Giants and Jets have managed to peacefully co-exist in the same market.

But now this has become an extremely sensitive and emotional time in the Jets-Giants relationship. The friction that developed from the two-a-day practice that turned into a day at the fights in Albany two weeks ago could resume when they play Friday night.

And in the board rooms, team executives are trying to work out the complex issues of a 50-50 partnership of a new $800 million stadium in the Meadowlands after the Jets jumped into the project when their bid to get a West Side stadium failed. There are already major areas of contention in how each team envisions their new home.

The Giants and Jets have met in the preseason every year since 1969 and 10 times in the regular season, but not since that first meeting will the emotions be as high or tempers as short as they will be on Friday night. The Giants invited the Jets to practice with them on Aug. 6 and the Jets decided to fight instead. By the time the morning and afternoon sessions were over, there were four altercations and plenty of trash-talking. The Giants promised revenge Friday night.

"They're going to get hit," Giants linebacker Barrett Green said. "Hard."

The Jets went to Albany with a swagger and an agenda. They wanted to prove their toughness. Their tempo caught the Giants by surprise. They will have the same tempo Friday night. The starters usually play about three quarters in the third preseason game, so it is closer to regular season intensity than any of the other practice games.

The last thing Herm Edwards and Tom Coughlin need is to get somebody hurt two weeks before the opener. And there have been some devastating injuries recently in this game. Jason Sehorn tore up his knee returning the opening kickoff in 1998 and was lost for the season. Chad Pennington broke his left wrist two years ago and missed the first six games. Those injuries came in the normal flow of the game and without any residual hard feelings from a nasty practice session.

Considering it's a game that doesn't even count, there will be extraordinary hype, accentuating the mistake the NFL made when it passed on the opportunity to create annual rivalry games during realignment in 2002. As the league changed the scheduling formula, there was consideration given to playing the Giants-Jets, 49ers-Raiders, Cowboys-Texans and other natural rivalries every year. But the idea was tossed out because there weren't 16 rivalry matchups.

Meanwhile, the Giants want the Jets to share the new stadium with them. It would reduce their financial risk. The Jets have a meeting Tuesday in Queens about the proposed project that would return them to New York near the site of the 1964 World's Fair. Jets president Jay Cross said Friday night the team will go wherever the best deal develops first.

The Giants and Jets have differing views of the project. The Jets are embracing the Xanadu project - a retail and entertainment area on the Meadowlands grounds - that has the Giants upset because they don't want the extra traffic it would create on Sundays. And the Jets' blueprint indicates how concerned they are about spending $400 million and still feeling like second-class citizens.

The Jets' vision of the new stadium moves the Giants training and practice facility away from the stadium and way out behind the racetrack. The Jets consider the area next to the stadium prime real estate for either parking or retail, but just as important, Cross admitted it is also an identity issue. By moving the Giants away from the stadium, it would prevent it from being identified only with the Giants. The Giants' plan has their training and practice fields adjacent to the new stadium, the setup they have now.

The answer, of course, is for the Jets to move their operations to the stadium complex as well. There's been talk about the Jets relocating from Hofstra to Monmouth, N.J., which hardly is a suburb of East Rutherford. Will that make them feel any more at home if they are still only at the stadium 10 times per year and the Giants are still based in the Meadowlands? As long as the Giants are there, if the Jets want to feel like equal partners and not visitors, they need to be there year-round, too.

Since the Jets are late getting in on this deal, it seems pretty ambitious for them to dictate where the Giants should be located. But the attitude they brought to practice a few weeks ago was pretty ambitious, too.