[gmany3k]

http://www.nydailyne...r_pressure.html

[gmany3k]

Another great read.

A High-Tech Showplace Fulfills a Vision for the Jets

By GREG BISHOP

Published: September 4, 2010
Woody Johnson said planning for things like the Jets’ Touchdown Club, right, was years in the making.

From the air, New Meadowlands Stadium resembled a giant gray spaceship. For Johnson, the Jets’ owner, it represented a culmination, the key to the team’s transformation, a proper residence some 10 years in the making and the site of the 2014 Super Bowl, although the Jets loudly proclaim that they expect to win a championship this season.

The night before, the Jets hosted the Giants in the first professional football game in the stadium both call home. This was a landmark event in Johnson’s life. For the first time, his Jets played in a building that glowed gloriously green.

“I don’t know how long you can have butterflies, or chills, for,” he said. “But I had them for five hours last night.”

Long before kickoff on Aug. 16, Johnson walked the parking lot. He kept moving, farther and farther and farther, yet he could still see that sign inside the main entrance, his sign, with those letters, J-E-T-S, standing some 50 feet tall.

In a quiet moment, Johnson sat in the empty stands with two of the team’s executive vice presidents, Matt Higgins and Thad Sheely. They said little until Johnson broke the silence.

“We’re finally here,” he said, by Sheely’s recollection.

Johnson traced this quest back 10 years, before he even purchased the Jets. On his first day as the owner, he listed two principal goals: win a Super Bowl championship and construct a new stadium. Johnson restocked the Jets’ roster after reaching the A.F.C. championship game last season. And on a recent half-day tour by helicopter and on foot, he called the stadium goal “kind of the reason I bought the team.”

His tenure is largely defined by stadiums, by the stadium he failed to build on the West Side of Manhattan; by Giants Stadium, where his Jets played home games in a building named for another team; and by this stadium, his stadium, at least half of it.

“Whether you want to call it the maturation, the evolution, or the coming out of Woody Johnson as an owner, it’s all come together,” Sheely said. “It’s obvious now, when it wasn’t necessarily in the past, what Woody is all about.”

For 26 years, when the Jets played at Giants Stadium, they compensated the best they could. They wrapped the building in green and white. They decorated it with signs. As much as they tried to make it feel like home, the seats were still red and blue, the name was still Giants. Like putting lipstick on a pig, Higgins said.

With games to win, players never let the stadium situation bother them, the retired Jets running back Curtis Martin said. But it never truly felt like home. Martin compared it to playing pool on his home table: nothing like it, nothing close.

At times, John Mara, the Giants’ co-owner, could not bring himself to watch the old building come down. He held too many memories, of games won and history made and the long walks he took with his father around the concourse. The old building had a soul, Mara said. But that soul was mostly blue, not green.

Martin said: “That was our stadium, but it wasn’t something that we necessarily took pride in, beyond the fact that someone was coming to New York to play the Jets. We weren’t defending our stadium. Now, there’s a sense of pride.”

Now, the Jets and their new stadium have gone green. Every home game feels like St. Patrick’s Day. Johnson gestured excitedly at the Jets logo painted outside the locker room. Sheely spoke from the Green Room, the Jets’ upscale lounge with hardwood floors and leather booths. And the band Green Day will perform when the Jets open their season on Sept. 13 against Baltimore.

After the Giants game, when only half of the green lights worked, Johnson said: “Yesterday was greenish. We’re going to take the ‘ish’ off that thing. I want to be able to see that green from Mars.”

To arrive here, the Jets and the Giants scoured the world, visiting stadiums and arenas, studying books on architecture. Johnson drew influence from the Roman Colosseum, among his favorite buildings, with its sense of history and power.

Sheely took trips across the United States and Europe. At Wembley Stadium in London, he saw how a construction fiasco could undermine a project. In Berlin, Olympic Stadium took his breath away. In Munich, he marveled at the spectacular architecture of Allianz Arena, home to two professional soccer clubs and the blueprint for sharing space.

In a twist, the most important development was no development at all. Looking back, Mara said, this stadium would have been “very, very difficult financially” for the Giants to build alone. Meanwhile, Johnson wondered if construction on the West Side stadium would have even started by now.

The teams, despite their disagreements, needed each other, and Mara called their relatively smooth stadium interactions a “pleasant surprise.” The result is New Meadowlands Stadium, the great transforming building. It operates like a mood ring, blue one day, green the next.

The task of neutrality fell to Mark Lamping, the chief executive of the new stadium. His staff put in thousands of hours, and they wear pedometers to gauge how far they walk. One preseason game, Lamping’s registered 14 miles.

Among the highlights: four massive high-quality video boards in each corner of the stadium, more than 2,000 television monitors, spacious locker rooms and a Coaches Club with seating behind the home team bench. On the tour, Johnson described the food, in particular the meatballs, made from a recipe passed to the executive chef, Eric Borgia, from his grandmother. The Jets even released a Zagat-style guide, which hailed their “Home Food Advantage.”

Next, Johnson talked about the entryway, with its more than 20-foot-tall video boards that give a Las Vegas feel. The goal was to connect the stadium to the parking lot, and this area houses “railgating,” where fans who take the train can rent grill space.

Then there is Johnson’s suite, which Martin compared to a Manhattan penthouse. The two-level suite includes 16 televisions. It also comes with a touch-screen command center, where Johnson can access information, including how many cars are parked an hour before the game, how the Jets last played under similar weather conditions, and whether jersey sales have increased based on performance.

For the Giants game, Johnson filled the suite with more than 100 friends and family. They dined on hot dogs (Johnson ate two), chicken, pasta and fruit, but could have chosen foie gras and lamb.

“It’s the best stadium in the N.F.L.,” Martin said. “You wonder if it’s the best stadium in the world right now.”

Regardless, it remains a work in progress. Higgins said he was confident the Jets would sell out by the opener. The team cut prices on personal seat licenses by as much as half in June. Lamping said his crew would continue to make changes. Even the smallest details are scrutinized. For example, the Jets offered tuna fish sandwiches in their premium seating area against the Giants. The next game, they switched to shrimp *beep*tail.

Back in the helicopter, the pilot steered between Johnson’s landmarks. Over Florham Park, N.J., Johnson noted the solar panels the team recently installed on the roof of its practice facility. (Talk about going green.) Over the stadium, the pilot circled.

“Remember, we’re on the home field now,” Johnson said. “We were never on the home field before.”

Before leaving the stadium, Johnson bumped into Phil Simms, the CBS analyst and former Giants quarterback. They discussed the holdout of cornerback Darrelle Revis, the passion of Coach Rex Ryan, the growth of quarterback Mark Sanchez. But when Johnson complained about the Jets’ issues at left guard, Simms laughed.

“You can’t have everything,” he said.

The room exploded into laughter, Johnson included, as he resumed the tour of the one thing he wanted most: the giant, transforming spaceship that glows green. He did not call this structure Jets Stadium, or Giants Stadium, or even New Meadowlands Stadium. He called it home.