GIANT NOTES
His return, he acknowledges, “is a little bit awkward right now.”
Jim Fassel, the former coach of the Giants, comes back to the scene of some of his greatest triumphs for the first time tonight when Baltimore arrives at Giants Stadium for both teams’ preseason finale.
Fassel, fired after last year’s 4-12 season, was hired by his buddy, Brian Billick, as a senior consultant for the Ravens.
“I remember when I first talked to Brian about doing this thing with him. The schedule was out and I said ‘I think I’ll skip that one,’ ” Fassel told The Post yesterday. “He said ‘No, you’re going with me.’ It’s fine. The people here have always been good to me.
“There’s two things on my mind – everything passes in time and it used to be I didn’t even want to drive by the stadium; now I drive by and it doesn’t matter.”
Fassel will spend the first half on the sideline, working with quarterback Kyle Boller and helping Billick evaluate Baltimore’s sideline operation. In the second half, he’ll move up to the booth to study the Ravens assistant coaches at work.
During the season, Fassel will be in Baltimore on Mondays and Tuesdays helping prepare for the upcoming game, then return to his New Jersey home for the remainder of the week.
Before tonight’s game, expect plenty of warm embraces from Fassel’s former players.
“I hadn’t even thought about it. It will be weird, it will be different, but I think we all understand this business,” said running back Tiki Barber, who arrived as a rookie in 1997 in Fassel’s first year. “Coach does, I do. He’s a good friend, that’s all he is now, and an opponent in some regards. I’ll definitely go up to him.”
With a personal approach that is vastly different from that of new Giants coach Tom Coughlin, Fassel is looking forward to catching up with old acquaintances.
“Hey, listen, in this business, if you talk to most people it’s about building relationships with guys who will work their butt off for you,” Fassel said. “I was with those guys for so long, I got a lot of strong feelings for ’em and I think the feeling from them is the same.”
The Giants fired Fassel with one year remaining on his contract. He’s getting paid $2.5 million by the Giants for this season and $200,000 by the Ravens.
