Keeler: A painful Super Bowl for Jets fans

The rational parts of my brain are arguing that I should be writing about this week's portion of Great Matters. You know, like the war in Afghanistan that won't go away, or the presidential election that won't go away. But my reptilian brain roars its demand that I write about the next two weeks of pain -- the run-up to Super Bowl XLVI.

As too often happens, the flight-or-fight center inside my head wins. So humor me while I whine about the miserable prospect of one more Giants vs. Patriots Super Bowl.

Step back briefly from all the screaming headlines about the Giants' win Sunday night, and try to understand the angst of Jets fans. Think back XLIII Super Bowls ago, all the way to Super Bowl III. That episode of our great annual sports ritual, of course, was the only one ever to include the New York Jets.

Just as I've been a Mets fan from the start, it seems I've always rooted for the Jets. I like to attribute it to the charisma of Joe Willie Namath and the more wide-open style of the old American Football League. But there's probably a more deep-seated psychological reason for this, buried in a footnote in the shrink's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Whatever the pathology, once you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way. But the one and only time the Jets played in -- and somehow won -- a Super Bowl, I mostly missed it.

I was in Korea, in the service of the nation. The game came on the Armed Forces Radio Network in the middle of the night, and I followed it on a radio in my room in the bachelor officers' quarters. But my roommates were asleep, which meant I didn't dare cheer. Stifling that primal scream probably damaged me in a fundamental way -- as if just being a Jets fan were not damage enough.

Ever since, of course, I've been waiting for my chance to be right here, on the North American continent, for the next Jets trip to the big game. But something bad always seems to happen, during the regular season or the playoffs.

A few really painful games leap to mind: the 1983 Mud Bowl playoff against the Miami Dolphins, and overtime playoff losses to the Cleveland Browns in 1987 and the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2005. For the Steelers game, I was in a Boston bar, surrounded by serious-looking people in Steelers black and gold. (Don't ask. It was my son-in-law's idea. Oddly, he's still my son-in-law.) But there are so many more wince-worthy moments.

Take the time Bill Belichick became the head coach of the Jets -- only to announce a day later, in one of the most bizarre news conferences ever, that he was leaving. Then he signed on as head coach of the New England Patriots, and he has been tormenting the Jets ever since.

Typically, it was a hit by a Jet that knocked Drew Bledsoe out as Patriots quarterback in 2001, giving Tom Brady a chance to start. Who knows how far boring Belichick would have gotten without glamour boy Brady, a great quarterback who is wildly rich, married to a supermodel, and, by the way, hates the Jets. Not much reason to dislike him, right? So, no true Jets fan can root for the Patriots.

Then there are the Giants. Don't get me wrong. The average Jets fan doesn't loathe them the way, say, the average Mets fan despises the Yankees. But most of us do dislike them. Even when the Jets do well, the Giants seem to own this town. And they definitively drubbed the Jets in December. Sorry, we can't cheer for Big Blue.

So we're left hoping for something to distract us from the pregame hype and the game itself. As for me, all I can do is hope that one of Rex Ryan's Super Bowl predictions comes true, sometime before they box and plant me. Memo to Rex: I don't have much time left. In a couple of weeks, I'll turn LXVIII.

Bob Keeler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.