Gang Green fans feeling the blues
Jets are depressing – like, clinically – shrinks say
Rooting for the Jets is not good for your mental health.
So say local shrinks whose Gang Green-loving patients grow more depressed with each loss.
The 4-11 Jets, who mercifully end this miserable season Sunday against the Buffalo Bills, have missed the playoffs for the sixth consecutive year.
“The Jets have been mismanaged since 1969,” says Dr. Jay P. Granat, a psychotherapist who has worked with Olympic athletes.
“They’ve been through quite a few head coaches and quite a few quarterbacks. The fans are down and the players are down. There is a hopelessness to the Jets. The feeling of hopelessness is one of the main things we see with depression.”
Granat said several of his patients are ready to give up their season’s tickets, and one New York City cop who has been in therapy for three years is mulling becoming a Dallas Cowboys fan to save his sanity.
Granat said the 48-year-old starts off his sessions saying life “isn’t so good and the Jets are making it worse, losing year after year after year.”
Another of Granat’s desperate patients yearns for third-string rookie quarterback Christian Hackenberg to take the team’s helm.
“People are so frustrated,” the River Edge Ph.D. said. “They want to see something new. They want change and they want hope.”
Losses like the Jets’ 41-3 drubbing last week at the hands of the archrival New England Patriots can spread despair among the fan base.
“People really identify with their teams. Wearing the colors. The tailgating. But there’s not much to celebrate. That affects their mood,” Granat said. “Sports can provide an outlet from work problems, economic problems, family problems and political problems,” he continued.
Staten Island psychologist Angelo Contino has a patient who “wastes the first 10 minutes” of every session fuming about what the Jets “should have done” to avoid yet another brutal loss.
“He’s convinced that if only he could call the plays, they’d do much better,” Dr. Contino said.
Aldo Fossella, a psychotherapist in practice for over 35 years, says the Jets are contributing to the crash-and-burn of one Staten Island marriage.
A Wall Street guy in his 30s in weekly couples’ counseling since October “doesn’t communicate,” Fossella said.
But after the team was humiliated by the Colts, 41-10, on “Monday Night Football” recently, he became especially sullen.
His wife complained, “He’s moping around, and he’s taking it out on me. The Jets are ruining our marriage.”
Granat’s advice to sad-sack Jet followers? Switch teams.
“It’s America. You are free to root for whatever team you like if it makes you feel better. Like a bad marriage, [you] don’t have to stay forever,” he said.
That’s easy for Granat to say. He’s a Giants fan.