Cancer won't keep Buddy from Ryan Bowl

Buddy Ryan got the bad news last week: Medical tests confirmed he has glandular cancer. He will require surgery almost immediately to remove the tumor from his neck area.

But Ryan, the father of Jets coach Rex Ryan and Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, told his surgeon he wants to do one thing before the operation.

"I asked the doctor if it would be OK to go to the game before I had the surgery," Ryan said yesterday in an interview with Newsday from his Kentucky horse farm.

"He said I could go."

So Ryan will be at MetLife Stadium on Sunday night when son Rex's Jets host son Rob's Cowboys in the regular-season opener. Two days earlier, Buddy will watch his grandson, Seth, play for the Summit (N.J.) High School Hilltoppers.

The 80-year-old Ryan, architect of the Chicago Bears' "46 defense" that was the key to their 1985 Super Bowl championship season, then will go home to undergo surgery in Lexington, Ky., on Sept. 16.

"Glad to be going," he said of the games. "Wouldn't want to miss it for anything."

There is no greater thrill for Buddy Ryan than to see his family compete and share in their love of a sport that now spans three generations of his family. And there is no bigger stage that his twin sons, now 48, will compete on than this Sunday night. As special as it is for Rex and Rob, the boys know it will be just as special for their father, who has battled numerous health problems in recent years.

"It's going to be great to have him here. I know this is huge for him. He's looked forward to it for a long time," Rex Ryan said Monday. And even though Buddy has overcome other forms of cancer in the past, Ryan said there is still "huge concern" about his father's condition.

"He knows this is a big thing for him and a big thing for the Ryans," Rob Ryan told reporters Monday at the Cowboys' Valley Ranch practice facility. "He's about the only guy who's beat cancer about every time. He's been through it about four or five times, so I'm sure the prognosis is great for him because he always wins."

This isn't the first time Ryan has watched his boys coach against one another, but it may be the most important.

"They've done it a hundred times, and I went to a bunch of 'em," Buddy said. "There was Baltimore [Ravens] and Oakland [Raiders], and Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee State, and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and then last year when the Jets played the Browns. We've had a lot of 'em. They're all good to be at."

In their first meeting with Rex as a head coach and Rob as a defensive coordinator, Rex's Jets beat Rob's Browns last year in Cleveland. It wasn't easy, though; the Jets needed Santonio Holmes' touchdown reception in overtime to beat the Browns, 26-20.

The boys go at it again Sunday night, when the Jets embark on what they hope will be a Super Bowl season.

Rob Ryan is in his first season as the Cowboys' defensive coordinator, hoping to turn around a unit that gave up the second-most points (436) in the NFL last season.

"They're both excellent coaches, top of the league," Buddy Ryan said. "In any profession, you like to see that."

What's best about each one?

"They're really very similar," Buddy said. "You see one, you see the other. One talks in front of you, and you don't know which one you're talking to sometimes."

Actually, Buddy can always tell them apart, but not everyone else can. "With teachers, sometimes they used to pretend like they were the other one," he said. "It worked a lot of the time."

Sometimes there's no telling the two defenses apart, either. Same aggressive style. Same bold play-calls. All in the mold of their father, one of the great defensive minds in NFL history.

Together again for one more special moment.