Pete Kendall Demands Somebody At Least Listen To Him

NEW YORK--Earlier this summer, Jets guard Pete Kendall declared that he was dissatisfied with his contract and wished to be traded or released if the team was unwilling to give him a $1 million raise. So far, Kendall’s demands have fallen on deaf ears, so on Tuesday he issued another, more reasonable demand: that somebody in the front office at least listen to him.

“Will somebody please listen to me?” Kendall said to reporters after practice. “Hello? Offensive guard here looking for a new deal. Angry. Fed up. Insulting the team. Can you people at least acknowledge my existence? No? Okay, well, I’ll tell you what: I’m scaling down my demands. Instead of a trade or a raise, I would just like somebody to acknowledge what I’m saying. Pretend it’s a big deal. If not, then I’m going to demand a trade again, and then…nothing will happen, apparently.”

Kendall is in the second year of a four-year deal that pays him a base salary of $1.7 million annually. Despite signing the contract voluntarily last year, Kendall now insists that it’s “not enough.”

“I’m not getting enough money. This contract stinks,” Kendall said. “All I’m asking for is another million. Does that seem like a lot? There’s probably a million dollars between the seat cushions of Woody Johnson’s Land Rover. All of this nonsense could be alleviated if they would just say ‘We hear you, Pete. Here is the relatively tiny amount of money you demanded. Thank you for your years of dedicated service.’ But no, they have to pretend I don’t exist. I exist, dammit! If I didn’t, there would be a big open space between the tackle and the center.”

So far, the Jets front office has not given in to Kendall’s demand that they at least listen to him. In fact, head coach Eric Mangini has indicated that the team plans to do the exact opposite.

“We don’t respond to demands of any sort by any particular player,” Mangini told the New York Post. “We fully expect everyone on the roster to show up to practice and work out with the team. If there is a dispute as far as contracts or compensation, we would deal with that in-house by laughing at it or completely ignoring it.”

When a reporter mentioned Kendall’s request to be listened to, Mangini had this to say:

“Pete Kendall? Doesn’t ring a bell. What is he, a tight end? Offensive lineman? No, sorry, I can’t say that I’ve heard of him. What we try to do here is evaluate every player within the system we’ve created in terms of where he fits in or how we can maximize his skills to work within the confines of the type of things we do here. And as far as answering questions about a particular player or players, we just try to address that in such a way that we use a lot of words but don’t really say anything. I think, thus far, when you consider the issue here and the response that I’ve given, it’s safe to say that I’ve used enough words at this point and we can just move on to the next question.”

On Thursday, the Newark Star Ledger reported that the Jets have no plans to trade Kendall, despite his insistence on being moved. The report came as a surprise to Kendall, who believed his vocal dissatisfaction was forcing the team’s hand.

“Wow, I can’t believe they’re planning to keep me,” Kendall said. “I thought that I was forcing their hand with my hardball tactics. Damn. That sucks. Okay, I have one more demand, and it’s a small one: please suspend me, just for a week or two, to indicate that you’re angry or bothered or the slightest bit rankled by my posturing. Please?”

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