Now that we know Jaxson Dart’s politics, let’s just focus on his football

Lord, I miss the days when Eli Manning was quarterbacking the New York Giants.

Manning won two Super Bowls and is one of the two best modern-era quarterbacks the Giants ever had. That, though, is not what I am talking about.

Manning, in the fish bowl of the New York-New Jersey market, where media members lurk around every corner waiting to joyously capitalize on every alleged misstep and try to shred reputations, gave those sharks nothing. He managed to stay out of the headlines for everything but his abilities as a football player during a 16-year career that deserves to be recognized with a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Giants, in fact, were the team for most of my adult life that made headlines only for what they did on the field, not for what they or their players were doing off the field. That stuff was for George Steinbrenner and the Yankees. Or, other NFL teams.

Since the advent of the ESPN age, the Internet and the 24-7-365 sports news cycle there have always been players and teams who couldn't stay out of the headlines for things that had nothing to do with what they accomplished, or failed to accomplish, on the field.

Of course, there were exceptions. Lawrence Taylor's well-documented drug problems. Plaxico Burress shooting down the Giants' 2008 Super Bowl aspirations by putting a bullet in his own leg while at a nightclub. For the most part, though, when the Giants were on the back pages of the New York tabloids it was because of something that happened on the field.

One thing you learn as you get older, though, is that things change. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not. But, they change nonetheless. And, things have absolutely changed when it comes to pro athletes, young men and women with fame, fortune and easy access to social platforms, and how they conduct their lives.

Manning was an athlete who stayed, purposely, in that lane throughout his career. He showed us the rest of his personality after his playing days, becoming a multi-faceted celebrity. He knew he couldn't do his job, playing football, to the best of his ability any other way.

Today's athletes, again because circumstance and opportunity have changed, often try to be athlete and celebrity simultaneously. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it does not.

Which brings us to Jaxson Dart.

Giants fans know the Dart-Donald Trump-Abdul Carter saga by now. Dart introduced the president last Friday during a rally at Rockland Community College in Suffer, New York for Rep. Mike Lawler. That set a bitterly politically divided fan base, just like the U.S. is a bitterly politically divided country, on fire. It drew an astonished reaction from Carter online.

Instant, juicy controversy! The stuff the Internet lives for. Everybody had an opinion, divided, of course, along political lines.

Quite honestly, I spent several days debating whether or not to write about this at all. And just as much time trying to formulate how I wanted to write about it. I finally decided that I had to write something. Honestly, it feels like one of the more important somethings" I have written in more than 19 years of running this site.

Comments, as you have no doubt already noticed, are closed for this post. I spent waaaaayyyy too much time over the holiday weekend deleting Feed' posts that had become nothing more than pointless political fights between people with differing views who were never going to budge off their opinions and just wanted to yell at people who disagreed with them.

This is not a political column. This is not a political space.

Here, Dart's politics don't matter.

Honestly, no one's politics matter in this space.

To come clean, I am a Democrat. I disagree with Dart's politics. I disagree with most everything Trump does and says. Here, that does not matter. It will never matter.

Those arguments, and the problems of the world, are for elsewhere.

I would have said Dart made a mistake puttng his politics front and center whether he was introducing Trump or Barack Obama. It's a divided world, and stepping into a space like that is opening yourself up to unnecessary slings and arrows.

Dart is from a different generation than Manning, one that wants to memorialize everything about their lives by posting it on Instagram. If they do it or think it, they post it. In my view, he could learn something from the career of the last great Giants quarterback. Stick to football and save the rest of it for later.

Anyway, I digress and risk straying too far from my point.

This is a football site. The New York Football Giants are - guess what? - a football team.

You root for them to win or lose games. You root for them to do well. You cheer good plays and players. You boo bad plays and bad players. You celebrate when they achieve greatness. You grouse when they stink.

That's fandom.

You don't root for the Republicans on the roster and hope the Democrats fall on their faces and all get cut. Or, vice versa. For the most part, you don't know or care which side of the political aisle any of them are on. Or, what kind of people they are.

If you are old enough, did you care that Lawrence Taylor, was a partier, drug user, and womanizer? Or, that he was the kind of person you wanted to keep your daughter away from? No. You cared that he is the best defensive player of all-time and helped the Giants win Super Bowls.

Did you care what Manning's politics were? Or Phil Simms? Or Harry Carson's? Or Justin Tuck's?

Did you care while watching him help the Giants win a Super Bowl that Dave Meggett had nine children from eight different women and was the kind of person who ended up in prison for burglary and criminal sexual misconduct? You cared about his punt returns.

If Cam Skattebo is running wild this season and helping the Giants win games, how much time are you going to spend thinking about his foolish comment that CTE is fake? Probably not a lot.

John Harbaugh is a conservative. If you are a Democrat, are you going to refuse to celebrate him if he leads the Giants to a bunch of playoff appearances and maybe to a Super Bowl title? I think not.

NFL teams are full of all kinds of people. There are Democrats and Republicans - liberals, conservatives, and moderates. There are terrific family men and wonderful people. There are people you wouldn't want to associate with, and in the case of media in the locker room wouldn't go near unless it was part of the job. There are people of varying religious beliefs.

There are all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds.

None of these players and coaches were brought to the Giants for those reasons. They were brought to the team to try and help them win games.

The job in the locker room is to put all of those differences aside and focus on that, and putting those differences aside to do the job is something pro sports teams have been doing for generations. It is something we all do in our daily lives to be as productive as we can in our own jobs. Not everyone who works together likes each other or believes the same things. That's life.

You are here as a fan of the New York Football Giants. Not the New York Conservative Giants. Or New York Liberal Giants.

Let's focus on the football.