At the new football stadium in the Meadowlands, the tinted signs that delineate seating areas have been wired to glow green when the Jets play and blue when the Giants do.
The locker rooms are identical in size—down to the square inch. The ushers and concessions sales staff will wear different uniforms depending on which team is playing and the 82,500 seats in the stadium's bowl are fashioned in a neutral gray.
As New York's NFL franchises prepare to open their new $1.7 billion stadium this fall, there's no such thing as a picayune detail. After several years of trying to get a divorce, the Giants and Jets have been forced back into an old partnership that has become as tense and uncomfortable as it is unique to the NFL. The Jets, who were co-tenants at the old Giants Stadium since 1984, spent five years and tens of millions starting in 2000 trying to build their own digs on Manhattan's West Side—but the effort failed in 2005, forcing them to cast their lot with the Giants in the Meadowlands.
While an aura of polite respect carries the day in public, behind the scenes the Jets, with their modern outlook, and the conservative Giants, who bear the weight of 85 years of history, have squabbled over everything from modern architecture to who should hire the ticket-takers. Sometimes the feud erupts in small—some would say petty—acts of pique. A few seasons ago, after the Giants refused to help pay for portable toilets for tailgaters, the Jets began locking them up so Giants fans couldn't use them.
The feud reached a peak this winter over the issue of which team would be granted the first home game in the new stadium. John Mara, whose family co-owns the Giants with the family of Steve Tisch, says he told NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that his team's unwavering commitment to the Meadowlands made them a more worthy choice than the Jets, who had only entered the partnership by default.
Meanwhile, Jets owner Woody Johnson made his case by describing the Giants as yesterday's news—Mr. Johnson says he reminded Mr. Goodell that the Jets had become the toast of New York during last season's surprising run to the AFC Championship game. (Mr. Goodell pronounced the Giants the winner after a private coin flip at league headquarters.)
"These teams have dramatically different personalities," said Mark Lamping, the chief executive of the New Meadowlands Stadium, who has served as a neutral arbiter on the project for two years. "We do everything we can to be Switzerland."
The relationship began on friendly terms. John Mara's father, the late Wellington Mara, and former Jets owner Leon Hess, were close friends who spent afternoons at the racetrack together. During an exhibition game against the Giants at the Meadowlands in 1981, Mr. Hess asked Robert Mulcahy, then the chief executive of the Meadowlands, if moving in could be an option. Thirty months later, after easily gaining Wellington Mara's approval, they drafted the framework of a deal over a lunch in a back room at La Caravelle. "It wasn't cutthroat," Mr. Mulcahy said. "If anything came up, they were just little nips. We always figured it out."
After Mr. Hess died and Mr. Johnson bought the Jets from his estate in 2000 for $635 million, things began to change. Mr. Johnson began a push for the Jets to build their own stadium in Manhattan. He also began pressing for more equal treatment at the Meadowlands—forcing the Giants to play defense.
In 2002, after New Jersey's sports authority spent thousands upgrading the Giants offices at the stadium, Mr. Johnson demanded the agency spend an equal amount upgrading the Jets locker room. The next year, the Jets asked if they could keep a massive green banner hanging on the side of the stadium between back-to-back home games. The Giants declined.
When the Giants demanded access to the high-end portable toilets the Jets had brought in for tailgaters, the Jets demanded they help cover the costs. The Giants responded, as the leaseholder, by ordering the Jets to remove the toilets immediately. Ultimately, state officials had to intervene.
