Cortland

[Just Jack]

As a native and current resident of Syracuse I don't know why we're talking about Ithaca and Cortland. I have spoken with a lot of Bills fans here in the 'Cuse who talk about/attend the Bills training camp. I haven't heard anyone here talk about/attend the Jets training camp.

And meanwhile, the Post Standard every day since Jets Camp opened, has had a large color picture and full article. Meanwhile Bills Camp is lucky if they get 2" of space every other day.

[PearlHowardman]

Local board syracuse.com has sports stories on the NY Jets and nobody bothers to post messages because no one is interested. Then syracuse.com has sports stories on SU quarterback Greg Paulus and major discussion follows.

 

We in Syracuse have our priorities straight.

[duey]

So I went to the morning session of Jet's camp yesterday. Was up in Ithaca with the wife in kids and ended up staying at a hotel right across the street from SUNY Cortland.

 

Now, I've never had the good fortune of going to Bills camp, so I don't know what that's like first hand, but from what I read the crowds are lively and enthusiastic. I could not believe how lame the crowd was at Jet's camp. There were probably between 200 to 300 people in the stands for the practice session. A lot of them were wearing Jets attire, but the shocking thing to me was how quiet the crowd was. You could hear the snap counts, coaches yelling at players, players yelling at each other and even players laughing and joking around. The crowd largely sat quietly during all the drills. If a particularly good play was made, a few people ooh'd and aah'd and clapped, but that was it. There was absolutely no life to the crowd...they could have been watching a tennis match is was so quiet. And I overheard a lot of people saying how they had made the trip from downstate, so it wasn't because people were locals and didn't know how to react.

 

After the training session was over, a line of "VIP fans" was allowed to approach the field and a few of the Jets "stars" signed autographs. I saw Mark Sanchez, Kellen Clemens, Dustin Keller and Jerricho Cotchery signing for these fans. Once the VIP fans signings were done, these guys trotted off the field without evening waving at the fans in the stands who were yelling their names. The ordinary fans got so-to-be Turk victims WRs Paul Raymond, Marcus Henry and Huey Whittaker (yes...THAT Huey Whittaker). These guys were friendly and very accomodating, but the fans were pretty bummed that "no one big" came by. Again, this sounds like it's in stark contast to how things usually go at Bills camp.

 

And as an aside...Clemens totally outplayed Sanchez. Sanchez looked a bit lost, over-throwing many recievers and tossing one bad pick that was run back for six. One play was whistled dead because Sanchez was "sacked" and he started yelling at the ref and coaches that it wasn't a sack. Yes...it was so quiet that I could hear it all...including a number of F bombs. LOL

 

So that's my report, for what it's worth.

[May Day 10]

FWIW, when I went to school in Cortland, we got the Empire Sports Network with cable.

 

Also, Ive been in the Timmy Ho's there and the promotion was for the Sabres.

[Just Jack]

... but the shocking thing to me was how quiet the crowd was. You could hear the snap counts, coaches yelling at players, players yelling at each other and even players laughing and joking around. The crowd largely sat quietly during all the drills. If a particularly good play was made, a few people ooh'd and aah'd and clapped, but that was it. There was absolutely no life to the crowd...they could have been watching a tennis match is was so quiet.

Bills camp had times when it could be like that, before TO. I'd go sometimes during the daytime in the middle of the week, and you would hear some fans yelling, but mostly it was on the quiet side.