Fans sue Jets, Giants and make a good point

May 7, 2021; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson during rookie minicamp. Mandatory Credit: New York Jets/Handout Photo via USA TODAY Sports

Two NFL fans have amended the lawsuit that they filed against the New York Giants and New York Jets earlier this year, and the latest demand sounds a bit more reasonable. Realistic? Probably not, but reasonable.

As Rich Calder of the New York Post notes, NFL fans Abdiell Suero and Maggie Wilkins demanded back in January that the Giants and Jets be forced to move to the Big Apple. The two teams currently share MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Obviously there is no chance of the two franchises moving states, so the fans amended their lawsuit last month. They now just want the teams to change their names.

“New York City is the Big Apple, home of the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the stock market, Broadway musicals ticker-tape parades,” the amendment states. “MetLife Stadium is located in the swamps of East Rutherford, NJ, which has a population under 10,000, the 116th largest city in New Jersey. It’s not exactly an exciting and romantic destination[,] and the Giants, Jets and MetLife Stadium have absolutely no connection whatsoever with the city, county or state of New York.”

Suero and Wilkins say they were fooled into thinking the Giants and Jets played in New York by false advertising and other deceptive practices. Suero, who says he is an avid football fan, told the New York Post he was stunned when he bought tickets to a Giants game a few years ago and realized he had to travel to New Jersey for it. He said in his initial complaint in January that he “spent more time traveling to get to the game than the game actually lasted.”

The class-action lawsuit seeks to represent anyone who feels they have been misled by the Jets’ and Giants’ marketing practices since 2016. The suit also notes that the Meadowlands in New Jersey is the “site of one of the country’s biggest garbage dumps for decades before defendants’ stadiums were built on top of it.”

The NFL, Giants and Jets filed paperwork on April 25 seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. The response said the use of “New York” in the teams’ names is not misleading, especially since Manhattan is just seven miles from MetLife Stadium. NFL teams have rights to a 75-mile radius of territory.

It still seems highly unlikely that anything will come of the class-action suit. In the meantime, it has provided some nice entertainment.