I am not going to sleep. Not for a few days. I am afraid that when I wake up, it will all have been a dream.

That is from a Jan. 18, 2010, blog post on a site called Jets Nation, late at night, after the Jets had just beaten the San Diego Chargers to advance to the AFC Championship Game. They were one win away from the Super Bowl. Their victory, unexpected, sent the entire area into a furor. It was the first time the Jets had made it this far since 1998, and only the third time they’d done it since 1969 — the last time they made the Super Bowl.

Rex Ryan rode the wave. He not-so-secretly pre-planned a Jets Super Bowl parade through the streets of New York City, convinced their momentum would not be halted. It was, of course, in a 30-17 loss to the Colts less than a week later. But for a few days, Jets fans were in heaven. This was the start of something. It had to be. And when they returned to the AFC title game a year later, it was. The start of something special.

They fell one win short of the Super Bowl again, this time in a 24-19 loss to the Steelers. Nobody really knew then how fleeting this feeling would be, the high of unexpected success, a sense that this was the cusp of a transformation — not Ryan, and certainly not Jets fans. But that second AFC title game loss did mark the start of something, just not what anyone expected at the time. The Jets haven’t been back to the playoffs since.

On Monday night, pandemonium overtook Manhattan, a worthy celebration after the city’s beloved New York Knicks finally made it back to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. They, the long-suffering Knicks fans, deserve this moment after enduring more than two decades of losses and organizational dysfunction, bad ownership and questionable coaching, misguided roster decisions and often just plain bad basketball. The celebration befit the suffering that came before.

All I’ve been able to think about since Monday night is what it will look like when (or if) the Jets finally experience their own breakthrough.

On Tuesday, I asked a couple of notable Jets fans what it would be like to see the Jets get their moment.

Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, the CEO of Vayner Media and, famously, a diehard Jets and Knicks fan who has publicly stated his dream is to one day own the Jets.

“Obviously, I’m 50, so (as a Knicks fan) I’ve been to the NBA Finals twice, in 1994 and 1999, and last night after 27 years of not having one of my favorite teams in a championship — it was surreal. I was numb. I didn’t know how to act,” Vaynerchuk said in a video he sent to The Athletic. “If the Jets, who I’ve never seen go to the Super Bowl, go —”

He paused for a moment, pondering.

“I genuinely think I would faint. I would be unconscious, I’d wake back up and I’d think it was a dream and then — no, it’s not.”

And then, rapper Hoodie Allen.

“This might be a selfish opinion, but the Knicks winning feels like a win for the whole city,” Allen said. “The energy everywhere feels so collective and ecstatic, but if the Jets were to finally have their Knicks moment, it would feel like a personal win. It would feel like they were doing it for me and all the years I’ve watched them through every era of (laughs) Zach Wilson to Brooks Bollinger to Neil O’Donnell to Rich Kotite. Every year of the last 30 years, they’d be finally doing it for me and I would just feel —”

Allen paused, too.

“It would feel unreal. I actually can’t even imagine it. I always could imagine the Knicks turning it around — I haven’t gotten to that point with the Jets.”

Vaynerchuk and Allen understand the difference, but not all Knicks fans are also Jets fans. They’d be forgiven for not grasping that they really don’t have it as bad as the Jets do. Sure, from 2001-02 to 2021-22, the Knicks missed the playoffs in 15 of 20 seasons and only advanced past the first round once (in 2012-13, behind Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemeire). Things changed once Jalen Brunson, the prince who was promised, arrived in 2022. The Knicks haven’t missed the playoffs since.

Since the Jets’ last playoff appearance, the Knicks have made it eight times. Now the Knicks are back in the NBA Finals. The Jets haven’t found themselves in a title game in 57 years. In between, every single notable New York (or New Jersey) pro sports franchise has made it that far more than once. Here’s the list:

Yankees: 11 championship appearances, seven titles
Knicks: six appearances, two titles
Giants: five appearances, four titles
Islanders: five appearances, four titles
Devils: five appearances, three titles
Liberty: four appearances, one title
Rangers: four appearances, one title
Mets: five appearances, two titles
Nets: two appearances, zero titles

The Jets currently own the longest playoff drought (15 years) in professional sports. Since the Knicks last made the finals in 1999, the Jets have had 10 seasons with five or fewer wins. They’ve shuffled through nine head coaches and one interim head coach. They’ve started 28 different quarterbacks.

In the intervening 26 years, the Jets have been roundly mocked and ridiculed — and, sure, it has often been deserved. But not always. There’s not a team in professional sports that gets made fun of in pop culture more regularly than the Jets, often portrayed as a synonym for failure.

Every Jets fan, or Jets reporter, or Jets employee, has experienced some version of this interaction:

“I’m a Jets fan / I’m a Jets reporter / I work for the Jets.”

First, there’s laughter, or a deep breath. Then the response: “Sorry to hear it.”

Jets fans are frustrated all the time, and it’s hard to blame them.

The Knicks felt some of that for a stretch, particularly in the second half of the 2010s. Owner James Dolan was often blamed for the misery. Then he hired Leon Rose to run things. And then they got Jalen Brunson. And then, brick by brick, Rose built the Knicks into a championship-caliber team through shrewd trades and free agency moves. He made difficult decisions, like firing Tom Thibodeau after making it to the Eastern Conference finals last year. It all paid off. All of those struggles only made the taste on Monday night even sweeter.

Jets owner Woody Johnson is seeking the same thing that Dolan found. The blame always falls on his shoulders. It’s hard to argue considering the track record since he bought the Jets in 2000 (one year after the Knicks last finals appearance).

So maybe Darren Mougey can be his Leon Rose. Maybe someone on the roster now, or coming in the next year or two, can be his Jalen Brunson. And when (or if) the day arrives that it all comes together and the Jets finally make it back to the promised land, it will be a sight to see. All the mockery, all the ridicule, all the losing — maybe it will all have been worth it.

Until then, it is just a dream.

“Look at me smiling,” Vaynerchuk said. “I can’t even comprehend what the feeling would be like.”