Tomorrow night’s tilt with the Bengals marks the final regular season game in Gang Green’s history as tenants at the Meadowlands. but rather than recall Richard Todd or Bubby Brister’s finest moments with the J-E-T-S, let’s instead take a peak at the When Saturday Comes archives. In March of 2000, the Fall’s Mark E. Smith —author of such soccer themed compositions as “Kicker Conspiracy” and “Theme From Sparta F.C.” — was quizzed about topics including, but not limited to, his one and only visit to Exit 14W.

Have you kept in touch with football when you™ve been abroad?
Going to Germany in the early 1980s got me back into football when I was going off it a bit. In places like Hamburg there was an avant garde rock scene among fans at some clubs, something that wasn™t there in Britain. And you get big pints of beer at German matches for, like, 25p, and a nice clean sausage. I saw Germany v Bulgaria at the 1994 World Cup. What a day out that was. The German players were limbering up like an hour before the game, doing leap-frogging and gymnastics. Then they showed an interview with someone from the Bulgarian staff on these massive screens around the ground and he said, œI™m just glad we™ve all turned up. We only had nine men half an hour ago. In the stadium they were trying to be nice to everyone and they brought in these guys with red caps all dressed like Michael Jackson as extra security. We were in the German end and in the middle of the game this South American film crew come and sit in front of us, and I™m asking them to move. This red cap comes up and asks me what™s wrong, then a policeman comes over and he brings over this guy from the US soccer federation who looks like Ronald Reagan with white hair and he™s saying things like œIs your seat not comfortable sir? And I™m saying no, it™s fine, it™s just this film crew. Then he says œAh. You™re not German are you sir? I think they had this idea that football was like some germ from Europe that might infect them.