hat I see, just me being here in this short amount of time. I’m just looking forward to growing our relationship.”Bellamy is one of the few Jets players who already had some familiarity with Gase, who was the receiver’s offensive coordinator in Chicago in 2015. Gase was also one of the main reasons Be

ATLANTA (AP) — Oh sure Greg Little Jersey , there’s plenty of evidence to support the soothsayers who are predicting the slow, inevitable death of live television.And there’s plenty of proof to bolster theories about the NFL’s slipping popularity.But when it comes to clicking away from Super Bowl Sunday — forget about it.Whether streaming it digitally, firing up the cable box or heading to a friend’s house for chips, dip and commercials, it’s a good bet that cord cutters, antenna owners and everyone in between can be found right where they always are on this day — gathered in front of the TV set in massive numbers.Exactly as they were 40 years ago.Exactly as they were 20 years ago.Almost certainly as they’ll be 10 years from now.Fact is, despite today’s rapidly fragmenting modern-day viewing audience, most people want to watch their sports live. The Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year. As such, it is, by almost any measure, the last bastion of nationwide communal TV-watching we partake in anymore.Of the 10 highest-rated television programs in U.S. history, nine were Super Bowls and one was the finale of “M.A.S.H.”“It’s an outlier because, unlike pretty much everything else, it’s not an event we think of as being disrupted by streaming,” said Vince Gennaro, who studies America’s viewing habits as a dean at the NYU Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport.Or disrupted by anything else.And so, just as the increased choice brought about by cable couldn’t do anything to deter Super Bowl viewing, neither, it seems, will streaming, cord cutting or the Roku-ization of the American public — not even among the younger audience. A survey last week of 2,800 football fans by PCMag and Sports Illustrated found that 33 percent of respondents in the 18-to-24 age group said they would stream the Super Bowl this year. Most, however, planned to stream it straight to their television sets.The survey found some concern among streamers who experience delays in their stream as compared to the live broadcast. But for the most part, their experience will be the same as watching it on cable — commercials and all.That’s not to say the digitized nature of the 21st century won’t change some things.“The idea of a Super Bowl party, with everyone sitting on their phone tweeting Will Grier Jersey , is going to change the way we experience that Super Bowl party,” said Robert Thompson, the Syracuse pop-culture professor who will watch the game with pen and paper in hand, ready to take notes. “But it certainly doesn’t threaten it.”What could threaten it?Well, only two years ago, many Super Bowl stories (including this one by The Associated Press) warned of the potential beginning of the end of the NFL. The league was besieged by a concussion crisis, its own mishandling of domestic abuse cases, the still-fresh controversy over Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem, along with a steady stream of lackluster games that played as big a part as any in explaining the league’s diminishing ratings.All the off-field issues still exist , with the added specter of a potential labor dispute two years down the road.But the games were better this season, the ratings were up, and the season’s most high-profile mishap wasn’t related to player health or politics. Rather, it came on the field: the terrible no-call in the NFC title game .Former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson was among the few who predicted ratings would rebound.“The NFL had dramatically improved the schedule for Thursday and Monday nights,” Pilson said. “Plus, I thought the issues about the players were not going to be as big this year, and that turned out to be the case.”Which is how we ended up with 18 of the top 30 most watched programs in 2018 as NFL games — much the same as the year before, and the year before that.Maybe more telling: Last year’s Super Bowl between the Patriots and Eagles pulled in an average of more than 104 million viewers for a rating that was 250 percent higher than the No. 2 show on the list — the NFC title game from two weeks previous.The Olympics bring people together, but they last more than two weeks and were held last year in a time zone half a world away. The opening ceremony was the 13th-most-watched program in 2018.The Oscars used to command a massive audience, but last year, they tied for ninth and had their worst showing ever in the ratings.“I’ve never received a call from someone wanting to talk to me about Oscar ads,” Thompson said.The vast majority of Super Bowl ads don’t live up to the hype, even with a 30-second spot costing about $5.3 million.Doesn’t seem to matter. Nor does it matter that one of the biggest drivers of the NFL’s popularity of late — fantasy football — is essentially a non-event this week with only two teams playing. Straight-up gambling — legal or no, the Super Bowl is the most heavily wagered-upon event in sports — will more than make up for that.To sum it up, everything we thought about TV, viewing habits and even the NFL itself gets turned on its head for this one, magical day.No matter who’s playing or what the score Christian Miller Jersey , the Super Bowl makes us all get together and party like it’s 1979.“It’s hard to evaluate the Super Bowl as a football game on any level,” Gennaro said, “because it’s so much more than that.” NEW YORK (AP) — Adam Gase gathered his Jets players for their first team meeting last week and clearly stated their goal for this season.They’re aiming for the New England Patriots.“Pretty much, he’s going for that one team that’s been winning every single year in this division,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said during a conference call Wednesday. “He said that’s one of the main reasons he came here and we all believe that. And, the guys that are new additions to the team, we’re pretty much here for the same reason.”That, of course, has been the goal for the Jets — as well as the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills — for the better part of the last two decades. And, they’ve mostly been unsuccessful.The defending Super Bowl champion Patriots have won the AFC East 10 straight years, and 15 of the last 16 seasons. Since 2001, Bill Belichick’s bunch has finished atop the division for all but two seasons: in 2002, when the Jets won it; and 2008, when the Dolphins finished on top when Tom Brady missed almost the entire season with a knee injury.“We know what team has been on top for a long time,” said Mosley, who spent the last five seasons in Baltimore. “We feel we have the tools and the players and the game plan to get that done.”Gase understands what chasing the Patriots is about after leading the Dolphins the last three years. Miami was 2-4 against New England under him, including regular-season splits the last two years.The Jets weren’t nearly as successful under former coach Todd Bowles, dropping the last six meetings. But this is a different team with new leadership in Gase and lots of new faces on the field, including Mosley, running back Le’Veon Bell, wide receivers Jamison Crowder and Josh Bellamy, and left guard Kelechi Osemele.“His mindset is that he came here to win,” Mosley said of Gase. “At the end of the day, history shows who we have to beat to get to that top spot. Not overlooking anybody else in the division or anybody else on our schedule, but we know if we want to get where we want to be, we know what team we’ve got to knock off.”The Jets began their offseason program last Monday at the team’s facility in Florham Park Jordan Scarlett Jersey , New Jersey, and Gase was able to address his players as a group for the first time since he was hired as coach in January. They have held a handful of workouts since, and Gase has certainly made a positive first impression.“I would say he’s very energetic, you know, a pumped-up, hype type of coach,” said Crowder, who played in Washington his first four NFL seasons. “I like him from what I see, just me being here in this short amount of time. I’m just looking forward to growing our relationship.”Bellamy is one of the few Jets players who already had some familiarity with Gase, who was the receiver’s offensive coordinator in Chicago in 2015. Gase was also one of the main reasons Bellamy signed with the Jets as a free agent last month.“He’s a dog,” Bellamy said. “He has a dog mentality. He’s always attacking. He’s a winner and he wants to be a winner at all times in whatever he does. He’s highly competitive at everything he does. You want to play for a guy like that, a guy that wants to win, a guy that’s confident. That’s the kind of dude that I want to play for and everyone around here wants to play for.”Bellamy also has no doubts that Gase will be able to help turn around a franchise that hasn’t made it to the playoffs since the 2010 season.“He’s going to build a culture of just everybody being a dog, having that type of mentality, of being aggressive,” Bellamy said. “He’s ready to win and we all want to win.”While it’s not exactly Rex Ryan’s bold declaration in 2009 that he didn’t join the Jets to “kiss Belichick’s rings,” Gase is clearly confident he’ll be able to get the job done. That approach is reflected in his coaching staff, particularly defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, and can quickly trickle down to the players.“It just starts (from) a mental standpoint,” Mosley said. “You’ve got to know where you are. You’ve got to know where the team is with a new set of coaches on both sides. And, the intensity the coaches (have) themselves trying to get us in the right position, that kind of brings a mentality to the players. We feed off that energy. If they’re confident, then that makes us confident.“When we’re both confident together, especially knowing our game plan and know what we can and can’t do, that can make us a dangerous team.”