The Worst American Sports Writing: Greg Bishop

On top of everything else Jets fans have to live with, they get a New York Times beat writer who seems to be trying to write scripts for NFL Films.

They sprinted through the tunnel toward the victorious visitors' locker room. Quarterback Brett Favre and cornerback Ty Law, two of the oldest players on the Jets, bounded up the ramp like children in a footrace instead of golden oldies with 32 years of combined N.F.L. experience.

That was when they beat the Titans. Here's when they lost to the Niners:

These are the same Jets who sauntered into Tennessee last month and dropped the Titans from the ranks of the unbeaten, the same Jets who vanquished the ghosts of Patriots past the week before with a victory in Foxborough, Mass.

But those Jets - the ones who elicited talk of an all-New York Super Bowl with the Giants - have looked like the same old Jets in recent losses to Denver and San Francisco, the same old Jets of 40 years of tortured history since their last Super Bowl victory.

Every Greg Bishop game story is a bronze-plated rendering of Football History. It's the Jets, for crapsake! Less opera, more soap opera. "The people who read his stories are the Jets fans who have been students of this team long before he came around," a Jets fan wrote me after the San Francisco story went up. "I don't need the beat reporter to tell me any of this—I want news, I want insight that I couldn't get from CBS."

Another Jets-loving friend calls him "a fancy-pants version of Randy Cross...He might as well be writing about the Seahawks. He certainly gives the impression of someone who's doing time on the beat because the Giants slot is taken."