KITTY Fassel is standing defiantly by her man. The wife of the embattled Giants coach offers a plea today to whom she believes is the silent majority who do not chant “Fire Fassel!”
“Let’s hear the 50,000 other fans; let’s listen to that other voice, too,” Kitty told The Post in a telephone interview. “It would be wonderful if they would start a chant ‘Keep Fassel.’ How about that? ‘Keep Fassel.’ So I hear what is not being said.”
Kitty has been married to Jim for 32 years, been on the coaching carousel with him from California to Hawaii to New Orleans to Denver to Arizona to here and now. She was at the Atlanta game when the “Fire Fassel!” chorus sang; now the 4-7 Giants return home to play the Bills following season-ruining losses to the Eagles and Bucs on the road. More fuel for “Fire Fassel!”
Kitty Fassel won’t go down without a fight. She refuses to believe it’s a foregone conclusion this will be the final season of the Jim Fassel Era.
“I would say, ‘Never count him out,’ ” Kitty said. “I would say ‘Keep Fassel,’ which I wish I could scream over the loudspeaker.
“What are they waiting for?”
They’ve been waiting for this team to stop underachieving. For the special teams to stop killing the Giants. For Tiki Barber to stop fumbling. For Amani Toomer to become a Pro Bowl receiver. For Kerry Collins to stop throwing interceptions. For the defense to live up to its proud tradition. For the offensive line to stop wearing Huggies. For the penalties to end.
“Say in corporate life, the only measure of your worth is you stay in the black,” Kitty said, “Well what if you have seven years, as we have in [Giants] football, you really have made great profits, and then you have a slump year, and you go, ‘My God, that CEO is [garbage]! He hasn’t stayed in the black.’ Well, you know what? If that’s the measure, then every single person who works for a living needs to look at themselves and say, ‘Is this how my world operates?’ “
That’s how the what-have-you-done-for-us-lately sports world operates. Kitty said she thinks the low point came in Week 2 against the Bill Parcells Cowboys. It left her husband squib-kicking himself, and a media target. “He’s not like a bionic guy,” Kitty said. “It hurt him a lot.”
There is a perception that her husband is too nice. “People don’t always see the hard-nosed guy that he is,” Kitty said.
Jim helped baste the turkey on the barbecue and carved it on Thanksgiving Day. Three of their five children were home. “I don’t think the subject of contemplating our future was even brought up,” Kitty said.
The opposite end of the present spectrum came the day the Giants destroyed the Vikings 41-0 and Giants Stadium celebrated another Super Bowl berth. “The look on Wellington and Ann [Mara’s] face; that was priceless,” Kitty said. “You have that euphoria once in a great while. You just want to get back there again.”
Kitty has noticed a calm about her husband. It is not resignation. “There’s a conviction of sorts, that if there’s a rabbit to be pulled out of the hat, he’ll find it,” she said.
Sometimes she’ll break any gloom with humor. “I’ll say to him, ‘I’m with you honey, win or tie,’ ” Kitty said.
He loves this job. “They haven’t been in Jim’s shoes,” Kitty said. “Nobody’s been in my shoes. My sacrifice is enormous, too. I give up my husband to a passion that he just absorbs himself in, and for what? It greatly disappoints me he is so greatly disappointed.
“Who more than my husband wants to put a better product out there?”
