Welcome to the first edition of the TOJ mailbag! I’ve been getting asked some pretty crazy and hilarious questions lately, whether from my friends, readers of this site, or on Twitter, and I figured why not put them all in one place and give some detailed answers to the questions that REALLY matter. So here it is, the TOJ-bag, volume 1. If you have a question you want answered, be sure to ask on Twitter with the hashtag #TOJBag, or even throw one into the comment section here and I’ll try to get it answered in the next mailbag. Also, I didn’t include anybody’s twitter handles because I don’t know if anybody wants that. So if you do want a question answered and want your twitter name or whatever listed, just let me know and we’ll hook that up. Enjoy!

What Jet would you most want to hang out with? – Ryan, Long Branch, NJ

The answer to this question depends what you are looking for in a hang out. If you just want to have a manly man’s day, eat meat with your hands, drink 37 Bud Heavies (or Miller High Life if you prefer), and drop f-bombs at your leisure without a care in the world, then the answer is obviously Rex Ryan. That guy knows how to party and he doesn’t give a damn what you think, which I love. (Bonus points go here if you also get to hang out with Rob at the same time as part of like a family BBQ or something.)

The image in my head of my Day O’ Fun with Rex is quite vivid as I’ve imagined it many times. In addition to the Bud heavies and eating london broil and pork chops with our bare hands in his backyard, we’d also talk freely and bond man-to-man, especially as the empty beer can count piled up. Among the topics we’d discuss would obviously be football, beer, fights we’ve been in, fights we’ve watched, how much we hate Tom Brady, how much we hate Mark Sanchez, how much we hate Gary Myers, things to do in Oklahoma, and how much we love movies, specifically Terminator, Terminator II, and Under Siege. At the end of the day, we’d shotgun 2 more beers –each– and head our separate ways. I love Rex Ryan.

On the other hand, if you want to gel up your hair and hit up some upscale bars to meet ladies, then the answer is Mark Sanchez. The guy is rich, good-looking, and he has girls throwing themselves at him everywhere he goes, no matter how many interceptions he throws. Some might be tempted to say Antonio Cromartie here, but not me. At this point in his life, he’s married and has his act together, so I don’t think he’d be all that fun to party with, despite how much I love him as a player. If you wanna say Cro from “back-in-the-day”, then I still say no. Back In The Day Cro seems like the kind of guy that would ask you to hit up the bars with him just so he can get someone to drive him and then he’d ditch you after five minutes because he saw a girl in a skirt and couldn’t control himself. So yeah, my answer is either Rex or Mark Sanchez, depending what you are looking for in your man date.

Who would be the worst Jet to party with? – Joe, New York

Tebow. That must be excruciating.

Who is your most hated Jet? – Chris D., Old Bridge, NJ

Of all-time it would probably be Doug Brien, because seriously screw that guy. Second place is Brett Favre, but that was because I hated him for years prior to him coming here. I started to warm up to him halfway through 2008, but then he crushed my hopes and dreams and was somehow able to make me hate him more than ever with the way he closed out that season. I hate Brett Favre to this day. Other players in contention for this honor are Drew Coleman, Justin McCareins, David Barrett, Rick Mirer, Vernon Gholston, Calvin Pace, and Bubby Brister. There’s still time for you to join the list, Vlad Ducasse, don’t you worry!

What Jets players do you think have used Performance Enhancing Drugs? – Dan, Manhattan

You mean besides Calvin Pace, who was caught using them and still managed to suck? Ok, well I’m going to leave off any current Jets players here, so if Laron Landry signs with the Bills or something in a few weeks, we can re-visit this question. But for now I’ll just go over some recent former Jets I suspect of being dirty: Vernon Gholston, Wayne Hunter, Vernon Gholston, Justin McCareins, Vernon Gholston, Thomas Jones, Victor Hobson, and Vernon Gholston. I just wish they had the same effect on ol’ Vern as they did on Lattimer from. Maybe then he would have gotten a “place at the table” on the starting defense instead of just becoming a punchline for a thousand jokes.

Speaking of Lattimer, I wish more sports movies were as open about steroid abuse as The Program was, so that they were more realistic. I tweeted about this recently, but was there a bigger steroid abuser around than Willie Mays Hayes of Major League fame? We should have known roids were a major problem in baseball back in ’93 when he showed up with 20 lbs. of extra muscle and went from a weak groundball hitter into a big time power hitter over the course of one offseason. Same goes for Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn, who went off the roids after his rookie year, lost 10-12 mph on his fastball, then magically regained his heater during the playoffs. Nothing suspicious there, Rick! Even Ray Lewis did a better job of hiding it the past few years.

Just for the hell of it, here are my Top 11 Sports Movie Performance Enhancing Drug Users:

Steve Lattimer, The Program Willie Mays Hayes, Major League 2 Spike Hammersmith, Little Giants Rocky Balboa, Rocky IV Ivan Drago, Rocky IV Rick Vaughn, Major League 1 and 2 Henry Rowengartner, Rookie of the Year Marla Hooch, A League of Their Own Fulton Reed, Might Ducks 1 and 2 The Bad Guy in Bloodsport J.D. McCoy, Friday Night Lights (TV)

If Mark Sanchez had a mailbag day on Twitter, how many death threats would he get? – NyJetPrime



The answer is more than there should be of course, because even if there’s one, that’s about five too many. If you find yourself in a position where you’re threatening to kill a professional athlete on Twitter, you shouldn’t be allowed to be a member of society. You should be put on a raft and sent out to sea, but that’s beside the point. In all honesty, I don’t think there’d be all that many death threats, probably just a few. There’d be far more people just going on stupid rants and asking questions that they think are hilarious like “How bad do you suck at football?!” and “Rex must love your feet right? lolz”. In other words, it would look just like the comments section on ProFootballTalk.

Who would win in a bar brawl between John Idzik and Woody Johnson? – Steve, Boston, England

Woody Johnson definitely seems like the kind of guy that would get drunk off one and a half appletinis and grow some massive beer muscles in a bar. I can totally picture him sitting on his stool in a drunken stupor with his little Jets hat watching NFL Live or whatever on the bar TV and getting all pissed off when he hears someone say something negative about the Jets.

John Idzik, on the other hand, seems like the kind of guy who would do whatever it took to avoid a confrontation, but if you pushed him hard enough he would snap and do some kind of crazy pressure point hold that would have you pass out in 0.4 seconds, while simultaneously wetting your pants. I guess the answer to this question comes down to whether or not Woody is allowed to cheat and call in his security guards for reinforcements. If he’s not, then I’d have to go Idzik all the way.

How many sexual partners do you think Mark Sanchez has had? – Anonymous

The asker of this question asked to be anonymous because it’s a pretty creepy question, but one that needs to be answered! Let’s break this down logically. Mark Sanchez is 26 years and 3 months old, give or take a few weeks. He’s been a professional athlete for four years now, made many, many, many millions of dollars, and has been a celebrity in New York, the greatest city in the world. Prior to that, he spent four years as a quarterback and highly-touted recruit at USC and lived in sunny California, where he was also a celebrity and probably had girls throwing themselves at him pretty much every day. And let’s not pretend like he wasn’t the coolest, most awesome guy at his high school either. That’s 10+ years of being “the man” for a good looking star athlete that has had millions of dollars for the past four of those years. Actually he probably made his first million at USC with Pete Carroll, but that’s neither here nor there.

On the flip side, a lot of that time was spent practicing and focusing on football, so it wasn’t all fun and games. He also knows he has to be extremely careful, because as a celebrity, the smallest slip up can ruin his entire reputation. It’s a fine line a guy like Sanchez has to walk. I feel so bad for him. Anyway, I’m gonna guess 85.

if you could put Scott Pioli and Mike Tannenbaum in any position on a team, what would it be and why? – Hans

If you mean on the field, I think they’d make an extremely hilarious field goal kicker/holder combo. I don’t even care which of them would be which.

Off the field, I think Tannenbaum would make a great addition to the front office as special assistant to the GM. If I were the GM I’d totally want someone like him around so I can bounce ideas off him. Any time he felt adamantly about a signing or draft pick, I’d know I should do the exact opposite and I’d be doing something great. As for Pioli, that guy sucks. I’d hire him to be around at all times just so I can slap him in the face every time I get mad.