NYJNew York Jets

Franchise history

The franchise traces to August 14, 1959, when broadcaster and promoter Harry Wismer was awarded a charter franchise in the new American Football League for New York. Wismer named his team the Titans of New York, and the club began play in 1960 at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, competing for local attention with the established NFL Giants. The Titans struggled financially under Wismer, and the AFL had to take over the franchise before a new ownership group led by Sonny Werblin bought the team in 1963. Werblin rebranded the club the Jets, a name chosen to evoke the jet aircraft flying near the team's Shea Stadium home by LaGuardia Airport and to rhyme, deliberately, with baseball's Mets; the color scheme changed from the Titans' navy and gold to kelly green and white.

The Jets moved into Shea Stadium in 1964 and, behind the swaggering play of quarterback Joe Namath, delivered the franchise's signature moment: a guaranteed, and delivered, upset of the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in January 1969, a win widely credited with forcing the NFL to take the AFL seriously ahead of the 1970 merger.

Since that title, the Jets have never returned to a Super Bowl, enduring the longest active championship drought of any original AFL/NFL franchise and, more recently, one of the league's longest playoff droughts, last making the postseason after the 2010 season under coach Rex Ryan, who led back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances. The team relocated to Giants Stadium in New Jersey in 1984 and to MetLife Stadium in 2010. Leon Hess owned the club for decades until his 1999 death; Woody Johnson purchased the Jets in 2000 and has owned them since.

Sources

• Pro Football Reference
• Wikipedia - New York Jets
• New York Jets Official Site - The New York Titans: How It All Began

Super Bowl Champions won (1)

• Super Bowl III - 1968