If you’re from the New York/New Jersey area, you’re well aware that there are three different Penn Stations that reside in very different locations. However, if you’re not privy to that information, it can cause some travel nightmares.
Newly hired New York Giants head coach Joe Judge experienced that firsthand prior to his official interview with the team, very nearly missing his appointment due to a miscommunication.
Peter King of NBC Sports recently spoke to Judge about his interview with the Giants, and the first-time head coach admitted to ending up at the wrong Penn Station and very nearly arriving late in East Rutherford.
Providence: After a short night’s sleep, Judge boarded a 6:43 a.m. Amtrak Acela train for New Jersey, bound for his 11 a.m. interview with the Giants, a 20-minute ride from Newark’s Penn Station.
Manhattan: At 9:43 a.m., Judge disembarked at New York’s Penn Station. (Crazy thing about East Coast train stations. The city train stations in New York, Newark and Baltimore are all called “Penn Station.” Judge just heard “Penn Station” and got off the train. The Giants were sending a car for him, and Judge went to what he thought was the appointed spot. No car. Judge called his pick-up man. “Where are you?” The guy said, “I’m here. Where are you?” Judge looked around and told him 34th Street, and the Giants rep said, “You got off at the wrong Penn Station!” Judge pulled out his phone and got an Uber for East Rutherford. He was at Giants HQ by 10:45. All good. “I didn’t know there were two Penn Stations,” Judge said. There are not two. There are three. “No problem,” he said. “I got there just in time.”
Judge being the smooth operator that he is managed to make it on time and the rest, as they say, is history.
Beyond just the story of Judge and Penn Station, King also provided some clarity on the timeline of the Judge hire and how it intersected with the Carolina Panthers’ decision to hire Matt Rhule.
Previously, it was believed and reported that the Giants hired Judge only after the Panthers hired Rhule and even sped up that timeline because of pressure from Mississippi State.
As it turns out, neither of those things are entirely true. In fact, the Giants had already made the decision to hire Judge before receiving news on Rhule and only sped the process up because MSU had been pressuring Judge for a decision.
East Rutherford, N.J.: Judge felt good about his chances with the Giants. Mara did too. He wasn’t offering the job yet, but around 4 p.m., before Judge left for the correct Penn Station this time, Mara pulled Judge into his office and closed the door. “I told Joe how personal this was for me,” Mara told me. “I told him, ‘This has been our family business since 1925. We HAVE to get this turned around. We CAN’T be wrong on this hire.” Mara said Judge stridently assured him that, if chosen, he could do the job. As Mara said, “Joe’s very sure of himself, but not in an arrogant way. So we liked him a lot. And quite honestly, we had a bit of a deadline. Joe loves Mississippi State, and they were putting pressure on him to let them know.” As Judge boarded his train in Newark to go home, he knew the clock was ticking on his future. In the span of 24 hours, he’d gone from never interviewing for a head-coaching job in his life to being on the precipice of having his choice of offers in the SEC and NFL. Judge, in private, might have had a HOLY CRAP! moment that evening on the trip home. But he told me, “I don’t look at the process as anything extraordinary.” Well, the rest of the football world did. Before Judge was done with the Giants, he had one more early-morning assignment on Tuesday: meet with co-owner Steve Tisch, flying into Providence to do his due diligence with Judge. He’d have to sign off on the deal.
Tuesday, Jan. 7
Providence: Tisch met Judge at a Providence hotel, liked what he saw and heard, and called Mara. “Wow,” Tisch told Mara. “I was really impressed. Let’s get this done.”
After Tisch met with Judge, nothing else mattered. All future interviews were cancelled, Rhule was hired by Carolina and MSU was told to look elsewhere for their head coach because it wasn’t going to be Judge.
There are some other interesting tidbits in King’s piece on Judge, so be sure to give it a full read.
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