Woody Johnson is a big Mitt Romney supporter. He is also the owner of an NFL franchise that hasn’t won a championship since Super Bowl 3 in 1969, so he is currently not the most popular person among Jets fans. He will likely be even less popular after admitting during a recent interview with Bloomberg TV that Romney winning the upcoming presidential election is more important than Rex Ryan and company enjoying a successful season.
“Well, I think you always have to put country first,” Johnson said when asked which is more important. “So I think it’s very, very important — not only for us but in particular our kids and grandkids — that this election come off with Mitt Romney and (vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan) as president and vice president.”
While there will be countless Jets fans who blast Johnson for not caring about the team because of this, that was an extremely difficult question to answer. First of all, he was having a political discussion. His audience at the time clearly wasn’t football fans. Secondly, if he answered by saying the Jets are more important people would be blasting him for being out of touch with reality and caring more about a game than our country.
Johnson has said some questionable things about his team in the past, but this shouldn’t be considered one of them. The answer he gave was appropriate for the forum.