Mike Greenberg has been at this for 34 years. From the first time he blessed the radio airwaves in 1990 to his current gigs hosting the television shows Get Up and Sunday NFL Countdown, he’s become a major figure in the sports media landscape.
He’s still doing ESPN Radio on a regular basis too, where his show #Greeny covers everything in the sports solar system. Whether you first encountered him on the radio during the legendary Mike & Mike days, or start your day by welcoming him onto your TV—you’ve certainly heard him complain about his dear New York Jets across every platform—Mike Greenberg is one of his generation’s most prolific sports media personalities. In a recent conversation with GQ, he reflected on a career that’s endured many changes—but as sports media transitioned from traditional journalism to endless screaming, one thing that’s remained constant is Greeny.
GQ: Can we start with your beloved Jets? How are you feeling about them?
Mike Greenberg: It’s such a week-to-week league that [before losing 10-9 to the Broncos] I would’ve told you, “I think the Jets look great. I think Rodgers looks even better than I probably realistically hoped coming off the injury at his age and that they seem to have turned a little bit of a corner and I really believe we’re headed in the right direction.” Then of course, [Sunday] was a major step back. What I would say that is evergreen is that the Jets are trying to do something that is almost impossible to do, which is to genuinely do the football equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle. Not that it’s never happened, but this is most certainly an outlier in sports when these things work. So they’re already, I think, starting from a place of weakness. They went out and got Aaron Rodgers because of the utter ineptitude of the franchise, this total inability to draft and develop a quarterback.
So, they had to turn their entire franchise over to what is now a 40-year-old quarterback who is overwhelmingly the best thing about the organization. He’s the only leader they have. I remain hopeful but not optimistic. That’s probably the best way I would describe my emotions. It would take something approaching a miracle for this to work, which look, miracles happen, but most people don’t get rich betting on them.
Well, the other funny part about the situation is they kind of already tried this with Brett Favre years ago, and that famously did not work either. I guess it depends on how you grade that, and if there’s a Jets-related curve. But do you feel like you’re kind of having deja vu right now?
I think that season is largely misremembered. That was a really good team that, when Favre was healthy, was on the verge of doing some really special stuff. They had back-to-back weeks where they beat New England on a Thursday night and then beat Tennessee, which at that time was the best team in the league. You talk to some of the guys who were on that team, like Damien Woody and a few others, they would tell you they felt like they were the best team in the NFL. And then Favre got hurt and because of his ironman streak, he wasn’t going to come out, but his arm was hanging by a thread.
They wound up missing out on the playoffs on the final day of the season to, of all people, Chad Pennington and the Miami Dolphins. Eric Mangini got fired. But that led to them hiring Rex Ryan. That team was so good that the next two years they were in the AFC Championship game. So that was a really good team. I think that season with Favre is largely misremembered because it ended badly. Rodgers right now, well, I was about to say I think he has more left than Favre did then, but I guess I really can’t say that. There is of course a similarity between the two circumstances. But that was a veteran team. This is a very young team. The vet team had good coaching. This team has bad coaching.
So do you place most of the blame for this current state of the Jets on the coaching? Or is it the front office? How do you slice it up?
I think there’s only one thread of commonality that dates back to the beginning of this century and this run of futility. The Jets, as you are aware, have the longest active streak in any of the four major sports of missing the playoffs. The only person who’s been there for every single day of that is the owner. When a team is bad, you can blame the coach, you can blame the players. But when an organization is bad, then you have to look above. That, I think, is the answer here.
I’ve been a fan and an observer of football long enough that I don’t, like many fans who have been around a long time, really need anyone to tell me they might be good or not. You can usually see these things coming to some degree. Historically with the Jets, I think it is true that many of the times you forecast the best things for them is when things go completely wrong.
You’d had 34 years of sports media experience at this point. With all of that experience, how have you felt your approach as a fan evolve?
Almost everything I do now, I view through the prism of how I handle things on the air. I can tell you that when I first got to ESPN, you could have paid me whatever you wanted to, and I would never have acknowledged what teams I rooted for because I was convinced that that was inappropriate. I think that was sort of a generally accepted way of doing things then. When we launched Mike & Mike, I tried to stick to that. I acknowledged that I was a fan of the Jets and some of the other teams, but I didn’t talk much about it. And then when I started to think about it, I realized, why are people listening?
If you are listening to Mike & Mike in the morning at that time, or you’re watching Get Up now or whatever else the case may be, you’re doing so most likely because you were a fan. You have a passion for this stuff, and we have that in common. So why would I be hiding that from you? What purpose is really being served? As long as I can appropriately analyze the things that are happening, there’s no reason I need to keep my fandom a secret. I was heavily criticized for it at the beginning. A lot of people wrote that you can’t do that, that this is unprofessional and whatnot.
