The New York Giants have never been featured on the famed HBO sports docuseries “Hard Knocks,” and that’s perfectly fine with co-owner John Mara, who once said the franchise would appear on the show only over his dead body.
“That announcement will come,” Mara told the New York Daily News in 2010, “when I’m next to my father in Gates of Heaven cemetery.”
Mara, of course, is still very much alive, and once again, the Giants are among the few remaining teams who qualify for the show. In fact, there are only four others: the Dallas Cowboys, Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos and Arizona Cardinals.
As a reminder, here are the league’s criteria for eligibility:
- The team does not have a first-year head coach.
- The team has not made the playoffs in either of the previous two years.
- The team has not appeared on “Hard Knocks” over the previous 10 seasons.
The Giants easily fit those criteria, and thanks in large part to head coach Joe Judge, are among the more interesting options for the show from a viewership perspective. However, like Mara, Judge isn’t a man who would seem too keen on having every waking moment of their lives and practices filmed and then released to the public.
But it may be out of the Giants’ hands in the end.
The NFL has a “forced inclusion” clause it could use in the event no one volunteers. We known darn well the Giants are not stepping up to the plate for that, so unless one of the remaining teams seeks the reality show treatment, the decision may ultimately be the NFL’s to make.
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