Back to Riker's

2005 has been typical for New York Jets fanatics-the team has lost its starting and backup quarterbacks, and the season has become a bust. It's just another sad chapter in the history of the franchise that started life as the New York Titans in 1959.

Their early years were rough; the team had to file for bankruptcy in 1962. There was some money to pay players, coaches and others, but laying hands on the cash was an adventure. Offensive lineman Alex Kroll got used to what became a normal routine, the mad Friday afternoon dash to the bank.

"It got to the point where the Irving Trust, which was the bank of the New York Titans, would only allow one branch office to cash checks and only one teller," he once recalled to me. "When the lady gave you money for your check she'd scratch off that amount of money from the total amount the Titans had. If you were a lineman like I, and got there after the quarterbacks and the flankers, you were likely to get nothing."

One Friday, the Titans coaches left practice and left the players on the field when someone figured out something was up. No coaches, just players were going through practice.

"I remember it vividly," Koll told me. "It was a sunny clear day at the Polo Grounds. We were running plays and at a certain point we felt this strange collective feeling, because the coaches had disappeared from the field. We were alone. There was no one directing practice, and it suddenly occurred to someone that the paychecks were in the locker room and that the coaches had deserted us to get their checks and probably had a two or three subway stop head start on the way down to 39th Street and Madison Avenue." [This was where the Irving Trust branch was located.]

"So we went out of there pretty fast, some people showered and some people didn't bother with those amenities and threw a raincoat over their sweat suit and headed for the subway. This is probably not reproducible in the era of modern professional football.

"Eventually we got all the money and it had a happy ending. Sonny Werblin was a good friend of mine, we both went to Rutgers. He was then the head of MCA and actually helped me negotiate my contract with [then-owner Harry] Wismer. Because of the dismal financial situation and bankruptcy of the team, it allowed him to come in and take over."

On March 28, 1963, Werblin and four others, including Leon Hess, purchased the bankrupted New York Titans for $1 million. Werblin, who had been Elizabeth Taylor's press agent, was a proponent of the star system and would quickly look for star quality.

The newly renamed New York Jets played in brand new Shea Stadium starting in 1964, but their lease would not allow them to play or practice at Shea until the Mets' season was finished, leaving the Jets with no practice field until October throughout the 1960s.

The Jets would eventually build a training complex at Hofstra University in Hempstead but that only came in the mid-1970s. For a long while before that, the team held its practices at Riker's Island.

"We hated it because we had to leave Shea Stadium," Joe Namath once told me. "Here we were, a group of men here playing a kids game, and we didn't like the routine being thrown out of whack. We had to dress in the stadium, get on buses, take a ride on the Grand Central Parkway even though buses weren't allowed. But we had a tricky bus driver.

"You'd get to the compound and count all the guys, and you go in there. It started getting good once you got there because the prison band was usually there in the end zone and they would be playing football fight songs, all inspiring, it was a gas."

But the Jets practiced in a prison and that called for some unusual precautions.

"I remember, too, no one would chase the footballs that went out of bounds, because the prisoners were hanging out there and anytime a ball went out of bounds it either stayed there or was thrown back. You didn't see any Jets chase errant footballs.

"But Rikers Island and practicing there as a Jet is one of my most favorable memories," said Broadway Joe. "I know they counted everyone when we left, and they even went under the bus and opened the luggage compartments. I remember one time we were practicing and I threw a pass that was an errant pass, and one of the Riker's guys was yelling, 'Hey, Broadway Joe-you keep throwing passes like that and they'll be calling you 11th Avenue Joe.'"

Before the Jets were able to secure Rikers Island Prison as a practice facility, Ralph Baker, who was a starting linebacker in the 1960s, remembers the team driving around Queens just looking for an empty field and practicing there. Baker also recalled picking up garbage and glass on fields so the team could practice.

The Jets became a much better football team during the time the club practiced at Rikers Island, and won the Super Bowl on January 12, 1969. Some of the best times in the Titans-Jets history took place on prison grounds.

Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV and New Jersey officials are looking for property for a Jets training facility somewhere in the Garden State as part of the agreement to build the Giants-Jets new football stadium in the Meadowlands. Johnson and state officials should look at land near Rahway State Prison. It may change the Jets' rotten karma.