Just when it appeared that one of the craziest NFL seasons in NFL history could get no crazier, one of the craziest stories we can ever recall has emerged.
On Tuesday, I was rendered speechless (a rare occurrence for me) when I saw the Deadspin item about the eerie similarities between the wife of Jets coach Rex Ryan and someone who previously posted a series of foot-fetish videos on YouTube.
I decided to leave it alone at first, because it wasn’t clear that the woman in the videos was Michelle Ryan, even though the circumstantial evidence was, to say the least, compelling. But the Jets have responded to the story in a quote provided to the New York Daily News. And the response essentially confirms that, indeed, it’s Michelle Ryan.
“This is a personal matter and Rex will have no comment.”
If that’s not Michelle Ryan in the videos, then the response would have been “that’s not Michelle Ryan in the videos,” and the lawyers would have been released on the folks at Deadspin to demand immediate retractions and clarifications.
Technically, Mrs. Ryan’s hobby has no relevance to her husband’s profession. But the placement of the videos onto YouTube into 2009 suggests a horrendous absence of judgment, intelligence, and/or discretion on the part of the Ryans.
Or, more likely, an overabundance of arrogance.
One of the videos contains a male voice that sound as much like Rex as the Brett Favre voice message to Jenn Sterger sounds like Brett. And if these videos were being shot and uploaded when Ryan was trying to become an NFL head coach and/or had already landed the job in New York, how did he not realize that, eventually, someone would put two and two together?
If he didn’t care about it, the comment would be something other than “no comment.” It would be something along the lines of, “See, I told you I was married to a supermodel, too.” The more likely reality is that he simply assumed that no one would be smart enough to connect the dots, and that if anyone ever did he would just ignore it and move on.
Good luck with that, when holding a high-profile job in a high-profile industry in one of the highest-profile cities in the world.
The good news? Bears fans suddenly have plenty of fodder for the signs to be taken to Sunday’s game.