On 12 January 2000, exactly 31 years after the New York Jets won their first Super Bowl, the front page of the New York Times carried the news that the team had been bought for $635m by Robert Wood Johnson IV, whose great-grandfather had founded Johnson & Johnson.
Woody Johnson was not well known then, and in a release provided by the team, he issued the kind of bland statement you’d expect from a first-time sports-team owner: “We want to emphasize that we are totally dedicated to bringing a winning and a championship team to this area.”
