When the Jets called Hofstra home: Roots on campus and the area still run deep 18 years after leaving Long Island

In a quiet area of Hofstra’s north campus where few people ever go, just a few feet away from bustling Hempstead Turnpike, where hundreds of oblivious cars drive past every hour, you’ll find a relic to a nearly forgotten era.

Down a hill behind the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine, next to an asphalt basketball court, an old football scoreboard stands like a grave marker against the years and the elements and the progress.

Above the long-dimmed bulbs that used to display times and downs and distances is a motto that serves as solid advice for any pursuit. “The will to win,” it says in green letters against a white background, “is nothing without the will to prepare.”

And on either side of those sage words is a Jets logo. Or at least one of the older iterations of it.

It’s one of the few vestiges of a time that seems simultaneously ancient and recent to those who lived through it.

The Jets began coming to Hofstra for their training camps in 1968, became full-time residents at Hofstra in 1974 and remained there until 2008, when they moved their operations to Florham Park in New Jersey.

It was an era bookended by two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Joe Namath at the beginning and Brett Favre at the very end. In between, at least three others with Long Island ties — Vinny Testaverde, Boomer Esiason and Jay Fiedler — were among the many others who played that position there.

The Jets won a Super Bowl in the first year they were associated with the Hempstead campus and spent the next 40 years trying to get back to The Big Game. That proved elusive, but along the way, the organization forged a close relationship with Long Island and Long Islanders that was rare and precious.

Thousands of local fans would get up-close looks at the team by attending open training camp practices each summer, the last of which was held on Aug. 20, 2008, 18 years ago this week. The players and coaches were out and about among the fans, too, shopping in the same stores, eating in the same restaurants, going to the same beaches and golf courses.

If you walked into bars such as Bill’s Meadowbrook or Bogart’s or Mulcahy’s on any given night during training camp, you’d be likely to find enough Jets players to hold a scrimmage . . . not to mention the coaches to call the plays. And in the mornings they’d all be lined up at the Coliseum Deli to get their bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches before heading into work.

“It's the roots of the franchise, the story, the heritage of the team for decades and decades,” former Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum told Newsday, referring to the team’s links to Hofstra. “It felt like it was a local community, you know? Very much like a grass-roots feeling . . . I think it's the legacy of the organization.”

That bond still is very much alive, but it certainly has become less intimate and special since the departure.

As Willie Colon, one of the former Hofstra football players who was on campus when the Jets were there, made it to the NFL and eventually played for the Jets from 2013-15 — by which time they were in New Jersey — told Newsday: “It always felt like the Jets were grown at Hofstra. It felt like they landed in Florham Park.”

Signs of the old times

The building once known as Weeb Ewbank Hall was taken over by the Zucker School of Medicine shortly after the Jets left. On his first day there, Dr. Larry Smith, the first dean of the school, looked out the window of his new office — the same space that had been used by Jets head coaches over the years and overlooked the now-abandoned practice fields — and saw that scoreboard. He wasn’t even a Jets fan, having grown up in East Northport rooting for the Giants, but he knew it had to be saved.

“I thought it was an interesting history that tied the medical school to the Jets and both of them to Long Island,” he said. “I thought that was important.”

There were even some early students who had backgrounds in electrical engineering who were able to rig up the wiring and bring the scoreboard back to life.

In the stairwell of the School of Medicine is a framed, autographed Namath jersey and a small plaque that explains why it is there, but there are other easier-to-miss echoes of the Jets’ time at Hofstra, too. Walking around that quiet corner of campus can be a bit like surveying an archaeological site for shards of pottery and glimpses into an extinct culture.

An NFL-sized goalpost, once vibrant yellow and now faded down to a dull gray, is at the end of what once was the team’s turf practice field. Half of the exterior of the building, which was expanded to more than double its size for the medical school, still has the original deep green trim that was there when it was Weeb Ewbank Hall. The “bubble,” an indoor practice space installed by Bill Parcells when he arrived in 1997, now is used by Hofstra’s varsity teams during inclement weather but also is rented out to various sports leagues from youth lacrosse to adult soccer roughly 350 nights a year; it has become as much a revenue stream for the school as it is a landmark.

Disney World has its Hidden Mickeys, obscure mouse logos embedded around the property that are fun to find and remind people of where they are. Hofstra, it turns out, has this hidden Mickey of its own, a reminder of its own history.

Locked up in a shed nearby is an old ride-on lawn mower that the Jets left behind that Hofstra still uses to manicure its fields. On a window in the shed, an old photograph of Mickey Rendine, a former assistant equipment manager for the Jets, is taped to the glass with a caption that reads: “Hey Young Man!” That was Rendine’s nickname, ''Young Man''.

Rendine, who lived in Roslyn and also worked for the Yankees, died in 2010 at the age of 92. No one these days knows when that photo was put up on the window. No one will take it down, either.

How Jets landed in Hofstra

Jay Artinian, Hofstra’s vice president for athletics and chief operating officer, has been at the school since he was a student-athlete in the 1990s and used to help out with the Jets in the summer. In 2010, when the team returned for a special workout, he famously tackled a drunk fan who had wandered onto the practice field, an incident captured on “Hard Knocks” complete with a scouting report from Rex Ryan. A photo of the takedown is framed in his office.

Yet he often is confounded when he talks with some of the newer students and employees about those links with the Jets.

“I’ll say something about that time,” Artinian told Newsday, “and they’ll look at me confused and say, ‘Wait, the Jets used to be here?’ ”

They weren’t supposed to be.

Hofstra was the team’s training camp home beginning in 1968, but it was not the team’s first choice for its year-round facility. In the early 1970s, the Jets still played their home games at Shea Stadium and would practice there when they could, but as the Mets became better in the late 1960s and the potential for baseball to need that space through the middle of October — as it did for the 1969 World Series — became more likely, the Jets needed alternatives. They found fields wherever they could. They even practiced on Rikers Island with prisoners watching through the fences. It was like “The Longest Yard”.

Then they approached a Long Island college to talk about a partnership. C.W. Post had just built new air-conditioned dorms, had plenty of open space and had hosted the Giants for their training camps in 1970 and 1971. But according to Larry Bloom, who was the director of housing at Post at the time and later became director of athletic facilities at Hofstra, the Jets’ proposal to make a home at Post was denied by the school’s administration.

“We had to go to the chancellor at LIU, Albert Bush-Brown, and his response was ‘absolutely not,’ ” Bloom, now 79, retired and living in Bayville, told Newsday. “It seems the Giants, when they left, left an outstanding bill with the food services and they never paid it. And Bush-Brown, that's all this guy could relate to with professional football, and so he said no. The Jets wanted to be on Long Island and so their second choice was to come here to Hofstra, and that's how that happened.”

Grounds crews from Shea Stadium began work on the fields at Hofstra in 1972, and in 1974, the Jets moved in as leasing tenants on the campus. Weeb Ewbank, the coach who had won Super Bowl III, retired in 1973, and the new building promptly was named after him.

The Jets instantly became staples in the community and players settled into various nearby areas. Some remained long after their playing days ended. Wesley Walker, who grew up and went to college in California, became a physical education teacher in Kings Park after his career as a Jets wide receiver from 1977-89. Greg Buttle, a linebacker drafted in 1976, knew hardly anything about the region, but he grew up on the Jersey Shore and quickly settled with many other players in Point Lookout.

Others lived in Westbury or Manhasset or Long Beach and would drive to the facility each morning. Buttle is one of those who never left. Now, as a Jets analyst, he lives in East Northport.

“I look back on that and say, ‘Gee, everything I have done outside of football has been located here on Long Island,’ ” Buttle told Newsday. “It’s been a pretty good ride after getting drafted by the Jets.”

Not everyone fell in love with the location, though. Current Jets coach Aaron Glenn, who grew up in Texas, played cornerback for the Jets from 1994-2001. He said his memory of being at Hofstra included “me, Webster Slaughter and Wayne Chrebet playing dominoes until 1 o'clock in the morning for the most part because there was nothing else for us to do.”

Glenn said he tried everything to make Hofstra feel like home, especially during training camp, when the players stayed in the dorms on campus.

“You'd take the double beds and put the beds together to make a king-size bed, you’d bring a TV in — a color TV at that — and you’d try to make it as comfortable as you can,” he said. “I thought Hofstra did a hell of a job with how they handled the fields and how they handled everything. But 1 o'clock in the morning playing dominoes, that was the deal.”

Fond memories

It wasn’t only the players who (often) enjoyed those times. Some of the most prominent and influential people in the league today had their first in-person introduction to NFL action through the Jets at Hofstra.

Bucs assistant general manager Mike Greenberg, who grew up in Bellmore, remembered attending practices with his father and brother as a kid. It was such a formative memory that when he interviewed for the Jets’ vacant general manager job in January 2025, he put a picture of himself from one of those visits as a youngster on the cover of his presentation.

He also went to law school at Hofstra and often would go right up to the fence that served as a very thin barrier between himself and the NFL on the other side.

“They were right there,” he said. “I’d be in class every day and I would be like: How do I get in there? I could see where I wanted to go. It kind of made it feel more attainable.”

Lions vice president of roster operations Rob Lohman had a similar experience. Before he went to South Carolina, worked on the Hofstra staff and began his NFL career, he was a kid from Oceanside just looking for an autograph.

“I was a huge Al Toon fan,” Lohman said. “That was my guy growing up. I loved Al Toon. I remember I wore his jersey at the practice one day at Hofstra and he said hello to me, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.”

Commanders coach Dan Quinn, 49ers defensive coordinator Raheem Morris and Titans executive vice president of football operations Dave Gardi all worked for Hofstra football and saw the Jets up close in their formative years.

Young players, too, were impressed. Esiason said he remembered attending a Jets practice at Hofstra with the All-Long Island team after one of his seasons at East Islip. “I remember meeting Joe Klecko and Marty Lyons,” he said.

Later, when he returned as quarterback of the Jets, Esiason said he would give the keys to his truck to a teenage Jets intern to take it to be washed. That kid was Lane Kiffin, the current LSU coach.

Jets tight end Jeremy Ruckert said he mostly remembers the big inflatable slides and bouncy houses in the parking lots when he went to Jets training camp with his family while growing up in Lindenhurst, but he was aware of the football, too, even though he was only 7 years old when the Jets left.

“It was something we looked forward to every summer,” he said. “It’s not often you get to be around people like that as a kid. Just being able to look up to those people and seeing what it looked like was awesome. I thought it was the coolest thing.”

The person who wound up rising the highest in the league from his humble Hofstra beginnings, though, probably is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. His first and only season working for a team was 1983, when he was a communications intern for the Jets.

“A lot of things happened in that year and it was interesting for a young guy like me to be able to see that from the inside,” Goodell told the Jets’ website several years ago. “I’ll always be grateful for that opportunity and for the relationships I had not only with the people who ran the team but the players: Kenny O’Brien and Freeman McNeil and Marty Lyons. I still see them from time to time. They always like to tease me about being their intern and I love that.”

'Great partner on campus' 

In the early years, Hofstra and the Jets had a very open relationship. Students could freely walk right up to the facilities and many sat and casually watched practices between classes in the fall. That changed when Parcells arrived in 1997, though. He upgraded the amenities to include the bubble and the turf field, but he also established a security perimeter that included high fencing to keep prying eyes away.

It was an evolution that the entire league was going through at the turn of the century as the NFL blossomed into the sports behemoth it has become. Soon it became clear to many that the Jets’ digs at Hofstra were becoming outdated.

“I thought it was, um, efficient,” Tannenbaum, who first came to the Jets under Parcells in 1997, said somewhat euphemistically of his first impressions of the setup. “It kind of had everything we needed. It wasn't known for its opulence or beauty.”

Compared to some others around the league, though, it was terrific.

“Coming from Cincinnati, it was Shangri-La,” Esiason told Newsday of his impressions after he was traded to the Jets before the 1993 season.

He said the Bengals’ practice field was wedged between a sewer treatment plant, a galvanizing plant, a mattress manufacturing plant and what almost certainly was a toxic waterway. The weight room included actual anvils for lifting. The lockers were separated by chain link fencing.

“I thought it was an animal shelter,” Esiason said of the Bengals’ locker room. “Hofstra was actually a pro facility.”

The Jets certainly tried to keep their facilities as modern as possible. They also helped Hofstra do the same for their athletic spaces. The Jets built a small stadium with lights and stands that they used for their training camp practices, which became the school’s current soccer stadium. Every time they upgraded their equipment, whether it was blocking sleds, washing machines or office furniture, they passed the hand-me-downs to Hofstra.

Much of it is still around. The taping table that trainers used to help the Hofstra men’s basketball team reach the 2026 NCAA Tournament has been re-vinyled, but it originally was used to get Jets players ready for their practices two decades earlier.

Colon recalled that when he was a freshman at Hofstra, the school didn’t have practice pants or cleats to fit him. They called over to the Jets, who sent over size 17 shoes and a proper uniform. On a team dressed in blue and gold, he was the only one wearing green and black, but it didn’t matter. It was all part of the football ecosystem.

“They were very gracious to us,” Artinian said. “They were a great partner on campus.” 

Eventually, though, the partnership ended. Not only was professional football outgrowing the space at Hofstra, but the Jets joined the Giants in building what was to become MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The idea of having to drive over two bridges just to get to “home” games was arduous when the Jets were playing at Giants Stadium, but at least there was always the potential of them getting their own stadium either in New York City or on Long Island. Once they were investors in MetLife Stadium, that commute became untenable.

“In some ways you wish you could have built a facility there at Hofstra like the one in Florham Park,” said Tannenbaum, who was the Jets' general manager at the time of the move. “If the stadium was at, say, Nassau Coliseum, then obviously you would want to renovate it, sure. But once the long-term agreement was made to MetLife, it just made sense to move the facility to New Jersey.”

Hofstra certainly understood. While the Jets were a big part of its identity, the university also wanted to pursue other avenues that included the school of medicine and hosting presidential debates (the first of three of those was in October 2008; it would not have been possible had the Jets not moved out two months earlier).

“It was the right time for everybody,” Artinian said. “Plus they were going from probably the worst training facility in the league at that time to one of the best. If you want to compete in that league, they couldn't be where they were.”

No longer cozy confines

The Jets moved into the Atlantic Health Training Center in Florham Park, New Jersey, in early September 2008. It was and remains a state-of-the-art complex and is still growing with construction underway to house new departments this summer. No one could blame the Jets for choosing it over what had become a bit of a rinky-dink home in Hempstead.

For most of those familiar with both locations, though, something was left behind when the Jets left. The new building and fields are in the middle of a corporate park with other tech and medical businesses around them and fountains throwing water in the air. The Jets may want to see it as a factory for football wins, but their facility could easily pass for a pharmaceutical company’s headquarters or an investment firm.

It is cold and isolated where Hofstra was cozy and welcoming . . . even with the Parcells Perimeter. Hofstra had charm. It felt more like an old ballpark, the way Fenway or Wrigley were nestled in among pre-existing neighborhoods. Pete Carroll used to have pickup basketball games. Herm Edwards would stroll around campus. Those days are long gone.

“It’s a beautiful building, beautiful practice facility, beautiful practice fields,” Esiason said of Florham Park. “I’m obviously jealous we didn’t have anything like that. But some of that substance part of it is probably missing. It’s a little bit upscale. I think that’s probably missing more than anything.”

Added Colon after a recent visit to the Jets: “Woody Johnson isn’t afraid to write a check. They had stuff in there that I’ve never seen before and didn’t even know existed. But with that said, I think most people who are die-hard Jets fans wouldn’t mind seeing the Jets go back to Hofstra.”

There are always rumors and rumblings of that happening, but given the investments in New Jersey, it is difficult to imagine it in the foreseeable future. The Jets did promise to maintain a foothold on Long Island, and for several years after they departed, they would come back for events and practices, but those stopped around 2014. It became far too cumbersome to move the whole operation to and from Hofstra for a single workout.

Still, every once in a while, Artinian said his phone will ring and one of the many contacts he still has with the Jets will be on the other end. They’ll catch up on old times, get each other up to date on their lives and often do a little subtle feeling-out about a potential reunion of some kind. One such call took place this summer. Nothing came from it, but the conversations do take place.

“If they do come back, I think we would be the only place they would come back to on the Island,” Artinian said. “The lines of communication are open.”

And, just as importantly, the scoreboard is still there.