Jets handle rejection like a spurned teenage snob

Is it wrong for me to take great pleasure in the fact that Keith Fitzhugh, a free-agent safety who has played in the NFL as recently as last year, turned down the New York Jets offer to join the team in order to keep his job as a train conductor? Fitzhugh said that with the precarious state of the economy and his financial responsibility to his disabled parents, he opted for the job security that his current position offered rather than the uncertainty of an NFL roster spot.

It makes sense, and you have to admire the guy for placing his family before his pigskin dreams, but there is something poetic in the fact that he turned down the Jets, a team that I despise.

Making the story even better was the Jets denial that a contract offer had been made to Fitzhugh, even though The Associated Press, The Newark Star-Ledger, ESPN and Fitzhugh himself reported otherwise.

Is the New York Jets organization too proud to admit to being rejected by a Virginia train conductor?

Are they too high and mighty to acknowledge that someone would choose the Norfolk Southern Transit Corporation over them?

This strikes me as similar to Kim Jong-Il’s claim that he scored eleven hole-in-ones the first time he played golf.

Both are too proud to admit that they are not infallible.

As my friend, Shep, points out, the Jets should have countered Fitzhugh’s rejection with the offer of a permanent position in their public relations department when and if he was cut from the team, thus spinning this into a feel-good story for the organization and giving Fitzhugh another shot at the game he loves.

Instead, the Jets end up looking like a bunch of holier-than-thou jackasses and liars, which is what I would have expected from an organization that places someone like Rex Ryan in charge.