Giants, Jets fans must foot bill

First it was the Super Bowl champion Giants who stuck it to their loyal fans. Now it's the Jets' turn.

New York's two NFL franchises are partnering on a new stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands, and the Jets announced Tuesday their plans for personal seat licenses. For their long-suffering fans, the news was pretty good.

Unlike the Giants, who are socking it to all their season-ticket holders with PSLs ranging from $1,000 to as much as $20,000 per seat, the Jets are sparing their fans who sit in the upper deck of the current Giants Stadium. Approximately 27,000 seats will be PSL-free. The remainder of the seats will range from $4,000 to $25,000.

Jets owner Woody Johnson said the 82,500-seat stadium, which will open for the 2010 season and is costing $1.6 billion to construct, didn't want many of the team's loyal fans to be stuck with hefty bills.

"We had to have seats that had no PSLs," he said.

However, the Jets will jack up their ticket prices by approximately 20 percent in the new stadium, and that includes the upper deck. Fans sitting there can expect to pay between $95 and $125 per seat per game.

Hey, someone's got to pay Brett Favre's $12 million salary.

• KICKED TO CURB -- In Kansas City, the Chiefs are having a heck of a time trying to find a reliable placekicker. Not convinced that Nick Novak or Connor Barth are the answer, coach Herm Edwards brought in veteran Jay Feeley on Monday.

Feeley lasted one day with the Chiefs as he struggled in practice and was released.

• SHORT FUSE -- The U.S. Open is under way at Flushing Meadows, and it didn't take long for the fireworks to begin, courtesy of the temperamental Marat Safin.

The Russian veteran, who won the Open in 2000, blasted chair umpire Carlos Bernardies and tournament referee Brian Earley after a linesman called him for a foot fault on the second serve during the fourth set of his opening-round match with Vince Spadea on Tuesday.

In a profanity-laced tirade, Safin berated the call, saying he had not committed the violation and that the decision was made from a person a considerable distance away.

"How you can see on the side, 35 meters away, a foot fault like that?" Safin wanted to know. "It's an unwritten rule, anybody who plays tennis in their life, in a career, it's difficult, almost impossible to make a foot fault on a second serve."

Safin overcame the call and his anger to defeat Spadea in five sets. Imagine how he would have reacted had he lost.

• REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY -- Virginia's Al Groh isn't the first football coach to simulate crowd noise while his team practices. But back in the spring, the Cavaliers coach didn't have crowd noise piped in while his team practiced. No, he had the Southern California fight song blaring from the speakers.

That would be fine except Saturday's game is being played in Charlottesville, Va., not Los Angeles. Yes, the Trojan band will be there. But maybe Groh played the song so much that his guys would get sick of hearing it and take it out on the USC players when they meet on Saturday.

COMPILED BY STEVE CARP REVIEW-JOURNAL