Mike Greenberg, whose destiny as a Jets fan pre-dated his conception, has never been happier to have a statement blow up in his face than what happened with Zach Wilson last week.
Greenberg, the host of ESPN’s “Get Up” morning program, has been zealously touting his Jets fandom on the air for years — and ratcheted it up big-time in 2023 amid all the hubbub around Aaron Rodgers and later Wilson.
The Post spoke to Greenberg earlier this week and asked him about how he examines the balance between having passion as a fan of the team and doing commentary on TV.
At the start of his career, when national sportscasters were expected to maintain neutrality, Greenberg kept his Jets fandom close to the vest.
It wasn’t until a number of years into his time at ESPN — and a year or two after “Mike & Mike” launched in ESPN Radio morning drive in 1999 — that he had an epiphany.
“Why am I sitting here if it’s not because I’m a sports fan?” Greenberg asked himself.
“I didn’t get here like Mike [Golic] did — Mike played nine years in the NFL. I’m not here because I went to journalism school. I’m here because I’m a sports fan, like everyone else listening, and so I started going in that direction.
“I got a ton of criticism for it, for just acknowledging I was rooting for the Jets, but for every person who didn’t like it, there were 10 who did. They related to it. Why the hell are you listening to my show if you’re not a fan of your team? I think that made me more relatable, and so I never stopped.”
While Greenberg has now been an open Jets fan on-air for more than two decades, the Jets became a daily national focus once their pursuit of Rodgers began in earnest earlier this year.
And that meant much more Jets content from Greenberg.
He got so excited about the possibility of the Jets acquiring Rodgers that he vowed to go on a darkness retreat if it happened (he still hasn’t gone on it, saying he has been unable to book the requisite week in Oregon yet, but plans to fulfill his promise).
Greenberg’s giddiness continued to bubble over as the acquisition was consummated and the Jets developed championship aspirations. But it came crashing down after the star quarterback suffered a likely season-ending Achilles injury four snaps into the season opener against the Bills and Wilson was thrust into action.
Last week, Greenberg wanted Wilson banished to Siberia after the third-year quarterback was worse than dreadful in a loss to the Patriots.
He dared Wilson to prove him wrong, and has acknowledged that actually happened in Wilson’s surprising performance as the Jets narrowly lost to the defending champion Chiefs on Sunday night.
As Greenberg explained, his parents were Jets season ticket-holders dating back to before he was even born in 1967, and he says there were only a “small handful” of home games he missed attending in the 1970s, when the team was mostly woeful.
“We were bad, but my dad always said, ‘A real fan goes to the games and stays until the end no matter what,’” Greenberg said.
This could mean suffering not just the on-field results, but also a frigid climate.
“We had a scratchy brown wool blanket that was kept in the trunk of the car solely for this purpose,” Greenberg recalls.
“If it was December, my mom would wrap me up in literally every piece of clothing I owned, and my dad and I would sit there under this blanket and we’d watch the Jets play. It didn’t matter if we were losing 32-6 to Oakland, and the Jets were 3-9 — we were staying until the end of the game anyway.”
He has “vivid” memories of being galvanized the first time the Jets made the playoffs in his lifetime, in 1981, with the famous New York Sack Exchange of Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam.
As the team’s relative good fortune continued into the next season, the Greenberg family dined at Pete’s Tavern in Manhattan the night before the Jets defeated the Bengals, 44-17, in the first round of the playoffs.
“My father decreed that we had to eat there every night as long as the Jets kept winning and order the same thing,” Greenberg said, remembering he ordered spaghetti and sausage at the establishment every night until the Jets lost the AFC championship game to the Dolphins.
When Greenberg broke into broadcasting, he concealed that he was a diehard Jets fan.
In the 1990s, you didn’t know which teams any of the sportscasters rooted for. Now you know who almost everyone is cheering for or against: Skip Bayless lives and dies with the Cowboys, Stephen A. Smith cheers for the Knicks and for whomever is playing the Cowboys, while Nick Wright and Shannon Sharpe fervently support LeBron James.
After seven years working in Chicago sports media out of Northwestern, Greenberg got hired by ESPN as an ESPNEWS anchor in 1996 and started hosting “Mike & Mike” with Mike Golic on ESPN Radio in 1999.
He remembers the first time his Jets allegiance was revealed to the audience.
Greenberg was hosting “SportsCenter” with Robin Roberts in the morning, and he thought he was being discreet when he wore a green tie in anticipation of the Jets’ playoff game later that night.
“I didn’t say a word about it. Everybody in the building knew about why I was wearing it, but I didn’t say anything — but Robin called me out on the air,” he said.
As Greenberg recalls, they were reading a promo for the game when Roberts teased him, “Hey, Greeny, why are you wearing that green tie today? Is that because the Jets are playing?”
“I was honestly nervous that I would get in trouble from the people I work for because that seemed like openly rooting,” Greenberg said.
The landscape has changed dramatically, but Greenberg still thinks about striking the right balance.
He says he asks himself if he needs to “tone it down” and notes that he never mentions being a Jets fan when he hosts the NFL Draft because those viewers are not tuning in to see him.
“But on my own talk shows, where people are tuning in at least in part because they want to hear about what I have to say about something, I think it’s only appropriate that I talk to them as a fan,” Greenberg said. “So I say what I’m feeling.
“There have been times where Jets fans think I’m being to critical of the team, but frankly I’ve just been honest about my thoughts. I don’t purport to speak for anybody but myself. I don’t speak for all Jets fans. I don’t know how all Jets fans feel, but we’ve been through a lot of really bad teams and we’ve seen the team make a lot of really bad decisions in recent years. And I felt I needed to say it because I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.”
He came crashing down from the high of acquiring Rodgers when the quarterback got hurt against the Bills.
Though Wilson and the Jets were able to pull off the victory that night, they scored just 10 points in losses game against the Cowboys and Patriots. Wilson threw three interceptions against Dallas and mustered just 77 passing yards against New England.
Greenberg had seen enough.
“They have to get that kid off the field,” Greenberg said on “Get Up” the morning after the Patriots debacle, saying the players on the team knew Wilson gave them zero chance to win games.
“If [Robert Saleh’s] in that locker room telling those players, ‘Zach gives us the best chance’ … they know he’s lying.”
Greenberg was joined in throwing in the towel on Wilson by Jets legend Joe Namath, who went on ESPN New York and called for Wilson to be banished from the team, and retired WFAN broadcaster Joe Beningo, who was greatly agitated about Wilson’s apparent hopelessness in a spat with Tiki Barber.
After Wilson made a number of great throws and showed poise in a closer-than-expected loss to the Chiefs on Sunday night, Greenberg was willing to admit the quarterback had defied his beliefs.
“I’ve been up here screaming and yelling, and I don’t take any of it back,” Greenberg said this past Monday morning.
“But fair is fair: The kid was terrific last night. He gave them a chance to win. … He played the best game of his life with his career on the line. He gave his team a chance and he gave them hope going forward. So Zach Wilson, I can do nothing but praise the performance, the effort, the guts.”
He added that Rodgers being there for counsel seemed to help Wilson and said the performance against the Chiefs showed why the Jets have not given up on him.
“That was the first thing I said on television on Monday: Zach Wilson proved me wrong,” Greenberg told The Post.
“I didn’t think he had that game in him, and he did. I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong about anything in my life. I hope it’s the beginning of something for him, the team and for all the fans.”
Earlier this year, Greenberg had a health scare. He had to undergo surgery due to A-Fib, a heart beating at unorganized rhythm.
He emphasized that he did not have a heart attack or any sort of emergency, but rather had lived with the condition for years before scheduling a procedure — an ablation — at a time when it wouldn’t impact his assignments for the NFL Draft or NBA playoffs.
“The one part of it that made me feel good was just how nice people were about it,” he said. “I got unbelievably nice messages from all corners of the sports universe, and that made me feel good.”