Yankee fans–the majority of them, anyway–learn fairly early on to believe that anything is possible; that there is no decent reason why their team can’t win night after night and year after year.

Jets fans…well, not so much.

I realize this may be hard for a number of Yankee fans to comprehend (hell, I can’t), but here goes:  before this January, the Jets had won a total of six playoff games between the 1969 Super Bowl and 2009.  They had not won two playoff games in the same season since 1982–(look away if you’re older than me)–a full four years before I was born.

The Yankees, of course, have had no such issue–missing the playoffs only once between 1995 and 2009, and having won seven titles since the Jets won their lone Super Bowl.

So now that the Jets sit one game away from the Super Bowl, what’s a Yankee/Jets fan to do?

First of all, there’s what I say when someone walked in last Sunday as the Jets had a lead with 3.55 left to go in San Diego:

“The Jets have no business winning this game”.

Forget that, the Jets had no business playing that game (or so we thought).  The nine-and-seven Jets had only made the playoffs because a bunch of teams all lost on the same day, the Colts decided to rest their starters and the Bengals had nothing to play for, right?

Okay, so maybe you could give the Jets the Wild Card game because they’d just played the Bengals and they matched up well and because Chad Ochocinco is a little whack, but San Diego would set things right, right?

The hottest team in the league could not have been gifted an easier opponent, right?

Then the words of another ring in my ear:

“Hey, you never know,” and it’s followed by a couple missed field goals and interceptions and what do you know, the Jets, who weren’t supposed to be the better team in their own city, are playing for a conference title.

The Jets, of course, are certainly not supposed to beat the Colts, who have to go and prove that resting their starters still wasn’t a mistake–but then you remember that the Jets are out there to show that their beating the Colts had nothing to do with the Colts playing poorly as it did the Jets playing well, and you begin to think that, hey, anything is possible.

The Yankee fan in you begins to creep out, long hidden in the depths of winter, it’s hungry for some action, and right now it has the perfect opportunity.

If the Jets have gotten this far, halfway home, you say, why can’t they go just that little bit further?

Even as recently as a week ago, few not named Rex Ryan would have believed it, and most who did were those who where green and white and shoulder pads to work.

Now, though, it’s different.  It’s not just a nice story about a team that caught a few breaks.  It’s about a team that earned its right to play on Sunday, earned every little bit of that right.

No one ever questions the Yankees’ right to be in the postseason, or their right to be in the World Series.  If they make it that far, it’s because they’re that good, not that the other team is that bad.  We accept this as fact and don’t blink even when we win a World Series on the strength of 87 regular-season wins in 2000.

Why should the Jets be any different?

If you make it this far, there is every reason to think that you can go further, still.

At some point, the Jets stopped being lucky and started being good.

Believe.