It's a tough sell at new home for Giants, Jets

For most of my first half century living in Football Nation, it would have been nonsensical, something out of an alternate sports universe. But there it was this week:

Ads for Giants tickets, on TV and in print, the last featuring a large picture of Eli Manning screaming under a headline that reads, "YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?! JOIN THE CLUB!''

Left unmentioned was the price of admission - personal seat licenses ranging from $7,500 to $20,000 and game tickets for $400 to $700 per.

Truth is, the Giants are in better shape with ticket sales as they prepare to open a new stadium than the Jets, Yankees, Mets, Devils and Red Bulls at similar stages.

At last count they had about 1,250 club seats left to peddle while the Jets still were working on non-club seats even after slashing some prices.

But that doesn't lessen the shock for those of us alive during an era when the Giants' season ticket list was one of the most impenetrable fortresses in sports, which covers anyone over the age of 3.

Not anymore, though, not after a list 140,000 names long rapidly evaporated, leaving us where we are today, less than a month from the regular-season opener and getting yelled at by Eli Manning.

SEE PHOTOSNew Meadowlands Stadium

It is the latest turn in what until two or three years ago widely was expected to be an exciting, overdue building boom in New York sports, with not a baseball or football ticket to be had for years to come.

Then the economy went bust, and suddenly the local teams' pricing plans devolved from ambitious to ridiculous, and the Yankees and Mets found themselves cutting prices and explaining empty seats.

It only got worse when the Giants and Jets added personal seat licenses to the mix, a notorious device that allows fans essentially to buy a house for the privilege of renting it.

PSLs exacerbated the sticker shock that was inevitable when the cost of premium football seats, which had been selling to longtime fans for under market value for years, skyrocketed.

So, here we are.

Monday night, the costliest stadium in American history ($1.7 billion) will open for football on national TV when the Giants "visit" the Jets, and what should have been a celebratory moment in New York sports instead seems surprisingly joyless and perfunctory.

Part of it is the fact the stadium has hosted a number of events already, creating an air of anticlimax. But more of it is because of the long slog to sell tickets and PSLs, which led many fans to wonder what exactly was wrong with Giants Stadium in the first place.

(Duh! Narrow concourses.)

The biggest excitement surrounding the preseason opener will be the NFL Films cameras covering all angles for the second episode of HBO's "Hard Knocks."

The season premiere Wednesday was an entertaining start, featuring a head coach with a spectacularly naughty vocabulary and offering insights into the grim quest for a new contract for Darrelle Revis.

But like much of the news surrounding the Jets in recent months and years - dating to the acquisition of Brett Favre - their participation is believed to be at least in part a function of their ticket-selling push.

Capping the gray cloud hanging over the predominantly gray new stadium is the name of the place itself.

New Meadowlands Stadium? No one would have predicted pre-recession that the Giants and Jets would christen the joint with a depressingly generic name still attached to it.

It's a sign of the times, though. Tough times.