There are certain things that become synonymous with sports franchises all over the world. Something that ensures you know you’re home, even if that home is thousands of miles across the Atlantic ocean. For the Jets, that’s without doubt the J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS chant. 

Whether you’re taking in a game at MetLife or walking down N17 this weekend, that chant will ring out, and as soon as the hush descends before the J, you know it’s time for football. 

Today that chant is widely associated with Edwin M. Anzalone, better known as Fireman Ed due to the fact he spent 20 years in the NYFD, working in Harlem. Ed will often be hoisted onto shoulders, quiet the crowd with arms spread before firing up the fans, calling for volume, volume and more volume. 

Ed has been in control of the chant since the mid 1980’s and we’ve seen it around NFL stadiums but also here in London when the Jets played the Dolphins and Falcons.

But that chant goes back a lot further than Ed, who took up the reins of leading it in 1986, in an attempt to get the lower deck of the meadowlands going. It goes all the way back to the 1970s when the Jets called Shea Stadium home. Some people claim it was around as early as the late 1960s. 

Having started life at the famous Polo Grounds, the Jets moved to Shea Stadium in Queens in 1964 alongside the New York Mets, baseball’s newest expansion team. The Mets held exclusive rights to the stadium during their season which often meant the Jets would start their season away from home, but while Shea was designed as a baseball stadium, older Jets fans still insist that the atmosphere generated there was unparalleled. 

For many baseball fans Shea was and still is their spiritual home, for the Jets it was home to one of the best games in franchise history, the 1968 AFL Championship win over the Raiders which sent the Jets to the Super Bowl, and we all know how that ended. In total the Jets spent 20 years at Shea stadium and while we can’t pinpoint the exact moment of creation for the chant, it started and evolved in Queens. 

Following their move to the meadowlands in 1984, the franchise worked tirelessly to ensure that Jets fans felt at home in a stadium that was designed for their cross-town friends, hence the red and blue seating. But like with every stadium, it took a little bit of time before the atmosphere regained its volume. The J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS chant was a huge part of improving the experience for home fans. 

At Shea, Jets fans Larry Mack and Don Schaeffer started spelling out J-E-T-S on opposite sides of the field in the upper bowl and Fireman Ed wanted to bring that energy to the whole stadium, noticing that the lower bowl was struggling to generate any kind of atmosphere. So in essence the chant started as a friendly rivalry between two sets of Jets fans and has morphed into the rallying cry that it is today. 

This Sunday, the Jets will be as far from home as their schedule takes them this season. But with the J-E-T-S chant binding fans from all over the world together, you can be sure that the atmosphere inside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will still bring the energy as that first kickoff is sent into the sky. For those attending the game – make sure you are loud and proud so that the J-E-T-S can be heard all the way back in Queens where it first began.