I’m not a Jets fan, but Rex Ryan has everyone in this city so inspired and pumped up, even I’d run through a wall for him. In fact, I tried to do just that. Unfortunately, I slipped on a bag of Funyuns and flew through the plate-glass window in my living room. Now I have cuts and bruises all over my face and body, one of my ears was sliced off, my wife is furious at me and it’s really, really cold in our living room. Ryan’s infectious motivating style is being packaged into a new self-help, confidence-building program, with books and DVDS – The Rex Ryan Method: Swaggering, Boasting and Eating Your Way to a Newer, More Confident You. Here are his three top keys to turning yourself into a more successful person:

       1. Declare yourself the favorite in any situation; and then make yourself a nice, big sandwich.

       2. Declare that you will be invited to the White House and meet the President; he will …

Confidence. The Jets have it. In fact, the Jets are so confident after whooping Cincinnati’s butt on Saturday, that Rex Ryan feels his team should not only be the favorite in the Super Bowl but also in the NBA playoffs. The first-year coach has his players believing that they can accomplish anything. He’s dispatched Dustin Keller to solve the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien conundrum. The offensive line is drafting a health-care bill that will make everyone happy. And Bart Scott will be stepping in to replace Simon Cowell on American Idol. To paraphrase Yogi Berra: Sports are 90% mental, the other half is physical. And the Jets are not having any problems with the mental aspect of the game right now (nor the physical side either). Some feel there may be a little too much braggadocio in Jet land, but so far it’s working. Sitting at the other end of the confidence meter is the Nets. They do nothing but lose, and can’t even sniff a victory. Do …

We’re only one week into 2010 and I’m already dropping the ball on my resolutions. In the past I’ve been more successful, such as the year I resolved to quit smoking cigarettes. I used one of those quit-smoking programs, with the patches and the gum and the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, the side effects included nausea, dizziness, vomiting, disorientation, hallucinations, agitation, hostility, amnesia, blindness, a hacking cough, lung cancer, throat cancer, the sudden loss of one’s extremities, and addiction to cigarettes, chewing tobacco and cigars. Sure, now I can’t see, I’m always falling down, I have no idea who I am, I have a hole in my throat and I’m constantly having hallucinations that Art Howe is standing beside me trying to sell me a time-share, but at least I don’t smoke anymore. This year I decided to stop being so humble, demur and shy and to play up my strengths, which means wearing more tank top shirts to show off my impressive shoulder and back hair and to stop hiding my disgustingly smelly feet, …

“First of all, we played our worst game of the season Sunday as a team,”-Colts President Bill Polian said after the Jets 29-15 victory. The loss marked the first time the Colts have lost in the regular season since Oct. 27, 2008 (NFL record 23 straight wins).

‘‘There’s very little credit that our football team’s given and that’s unfortunate,’’. ‘‘It bothers me a little bit. You have to earn everything you get in this league. Whether you’re playing against a starter or backup, whatever.- Jets Head coach Rex Ryan

Mike Francesa on his radio show was downplaying the Jets big victory and upset with the Ryan quote.

Francesa said:

“No way the Jets sniff victory if the Colts leave their starters in”

“Peyton Manning would’ve put up 30 pts on that Jets defense in the second half”

“Your defense is pretty good, but your offense is the worst in the league”

While all of these points are valid he is forgetting that the Jets were projected to win 5-7 games this year by most experts. Most people expected the Jets to start …

Christmas is all about comebacks and overcoming adversity against all odds. Ok, it’s really nothing about comebacks and overcoming adversity against all odds but is about love, peace on earth, goodwill toward men, opening presents, then drinking all day long and passing out underneath the tree as an ornament falls and pierces one of your eyeballs, sending you screaming down the street bloody, naked and in horrifying pain. Ah, Christmas. One of the brightest, heartwarming stories of the week, though, is Jonathan Bender’s return to the world of basketball after not playing a game in four years. And on top of it all, he’s been productive. The Knicks, too, are on the comeback trail after starting out at 1-9. Bender’s return after a long absence brings to mind other great comebacks. So, without further ado, here’s a random list of notable returns over the decades (and even centuries).

Gordie Howe retired after the 1971 season, then came back in 1973-’74 to play with his sons, Mark and Marty, lasting …

On Saturday night I was flipping between another Rangers loss and the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Of course you can’t help but wonder, “What if George Bailey’s situation happened to me?” What if I were able to see the consequences of never being born? That thought lasted about a minute and a half, because everybody’s life would surely be better. My wife would have been able to marry a more successful, rich, interesting, well-rounded man instead of someone who has nothing but a monkey shooting a slap shot, a couple of empty beer cans and some old Rusty Staub highlights filling up his head. My daughter would have a normal father, one who doesn’t constantly quiz her on the proper French Canadian–accented way of saying the names Guy Lafleur and Gilbert Perrault. And nobody else’s life would be affected one way or the other.

But on that subject, what if, more importantly, James Dolan had never been born? The Isiah Thomas era would never have happened. …

Here are some of the highlights, lowlights, scandals, trades and car accidents of the past week in the New York sports world.

Nate-Gate: The surging Knicks have won three games in a row, they’re spreading the ball around on offense and playing solid team defense – yes, defense (somewhere Dave DeBusschere is smiling). They’re moving up in the standings, but Nate-Gate is in full bloom, with chants of “We want Nate” raining down from the Garden faithful while Nate Robinson is tethered to the bench. Whenever he doesn’t play, the Knicks win, so the erratic guard may never see action again. Shooting at the wrong basket, too much goofing around and breezily fraternizing with the enemy have done him in. After realizing that he’s getting paid $4 million to watch NBA games a few times a week and is getting front row seats to boot, he’s not complaining, and is settling into his role as the Knicks’ Little Bit o’ Luck guy. He’s starting to make …

Daniel Day-Lewis has a new movie coming out that’s a sequel of sorts to There Will Be Blood. It’s based on my experiences as a parent, and is called There Will Be Yelling. In honor of that soon-to-be-released film, we’ll look back at the New York week in sports with an Oscar-like Best Performance slant. This week we saw a record being broken, a coach getting fired, upsets, disappointments, a baseball manager coaching a football player, hot stove rumors galore, a middle linebacker put on season-ending IR, a Yankee legend dying, two Jet wins, no Giants game, a kaleidoscopic, injured quarterback and Meredith Baxter announcing to the world that she’s a lesbian, which pretty much changes my whole world view. I’m going to have to reevaluate everything that’s happened in my life to date. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Record-Breaking Performance of the Week: The Nets – It’s official, they’ve broken the record for worst start in NBA history. Who knew clearing …

Thanksgiving is the best of all holidays. There’s football all day long, eating all day long and drinking all day long (actually that sounds like most Sundays during football season). I think there’s something in there about Pilgrims and Indians, too, but I can’t remember what it is. A Chiefs-Patriots game maybe? Did they have muskets and kill turkeys in the old AFL? Or was it Redskins-Cowboys? The Knicks won a game this week, but it was against the Nets so I’m not sure if that really counts (those teams are a combined 3-27 so far this season), the hockey teams all won some and lost some, the Jets were trounced by the hated Patriots, the Giants went 1-1, and the Mets and Yankees started looking at possible free agents and trades, but they all have something to be thankful for during the holiday season. So here we go:

The Knicks are thankful that the Nets are worse than they are.

The Knicks are also thankful for 1970 and 1973 because that may be it for another 30 years or …

The Knicks won a game this week! And The Answer may be coming to New York (so the question must be: Will a desperate team do anything to keep their fans interested?). But with last Friday’s loss, the Knicks established the worst 10-game start in franchise history. Things could be a lot worse, though; here are some other bad starts throughout history that may help them feel better about themselves: The Hindenburg blew up over New Jersey on the first of its 10 scheduled round-trips between Europe and the United States, killing 36 people; the Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk four days into its maiden voyage; William Henry Harrison died of a cold one month into his presidency in 1841; Wally Backman lasted four days as manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks before he was unceremoniously shown the door; Gilligan’s three-hour tour got off to an inauspicious start, getting stranded on a deserted island for 15 years, until the castaways were miraculously rescued, followed by them buying …

All anybody’s talking about in the New York area is the Islanders’ first regulation win over the Rangers (though Jimmy Rollins predicted it on Monday). You can’t walk down the street without somebody stopping you and asking all about the hockey team from Long Island. Will they get on a roll? Is John Tavares the real deal? Islanders, Islanders, Islanders! Everybody’s forgetting all about the bad start of the two local basketball teams, and does anybody even know that the Yankees are in the World Series this year? All the Islanders-all-the-time talk is really taking the pressure off the other local teams.

Here at Hot Stove, we know that the Yankees are in the World Series again, as you can’t get anything by us. The Bronx Bombers paid their $200 million entry fee into the Series, setting up a rematch of the 1950 Fall Classic. And with so many off-days, it seems like there are about 59 years between games in this postseason. In the Series we’ve already seen Cliff Lee nonchalantly put the Bombers’ bats to sleep, …

It was a brutal week for the New York football teams, as the Giants got killed and the Jets fell to lowly Buffalo and lost Kris Jenkins for the rest of the season. Even the hockey teams mixed in some debacles with a few wins. And something bad probably happened to the Mets even though their season is long over.

But even after last night’s loss, the Yankees are sitting pretty, with a 3-2 lead in the series and heading back home. With a budget as high as our country’s deficit, the Yanks had two options this offseason: Use their money to cure the U.S. economy or buy a whole bunch of free agents. They chose the latter, and it’s working out just fine (well, for them). Unfortunately, the one aspect of the playoffs that has stood out the most is the atrocious umpiring. The horrible umpiring in this year’s postseason is unprecedented, but there are things out there that are actually worse, if you can believe it. …