Jets Business Personnel Receive 2-Week Unpaid Vacation

On my way to the train station this morning I was listening to Boomer and Carton on the FAN, as usual, and Craig began discussing a very interesting story about the Jets.

According to Carton, the Jets front office gave some bad news to it's business-side personnel yesterday afternoon. Business-side meaning the finance, public relations, media, and marketing departments. Either the employees could be released of their job today, or they could choose to take a 2-week unpaid vacation this summer.

The football staff, including Mike Tannenbaum and Rex Ryan, were obviously spared of this ultimatum.

Carton followed by expressing how deeply disappointed he was that the billion-dollar Jets, run by multi-billionaire Woody Johnson, would stoop to this level with the people who work so hard behind the scenes and receive little recognition for it. At the time I couldn't agree more.

When I got into the office a little while ago I did some research and found the article, written by Leo Standora, on the NY Daily News website.

Business-side workers in marketing, media relations, finance and other operations got the unhappy word they must take two weeks of unpaid leave this summer.

Matt Higgins, the team's executive vice president of business operations, said owner Woody Johnson chose the off-season furlough rather than cut jobs.

After reading the article, I noticed Standora mentioned nothing of the "quit or else" ultimatum. So if it is the case that no such choice was offered to employees, and that they will all lose 2-weeks pay this summer, I have to say it's the lesser of two evils. I don't fully agree with it, especially after the team signed big contracts in free agency, but the situation could be much worse.

While the NFL, and several franchises within it have chosen to cut their staff numbers and reduce employee's pay, at least Jets personnel get to keep their jobs. With the economy leaning closer and closer to a full-blown depression, we need to focus on the bright(er) side of this story.

Although very unfortunate, and still very questionable based on the amount of money dished out to new players in the last couple of weeks, the reality is that this is the way it works in sports.