I wrote a joke for The Nooner last week about how the Jets’ path to the playoffs would be made easier by the fact that the Bengals had nothing to play for on Sunday, but made more difficult by the fact that they are the Jets and are perpetually doomed to finish 8-8.

I didn’t think it was all that funny, but I thought about it later that day when I read a column by Mike Vaccaro in the Post detailing the intersection between fans of the Jets and Mets and how it always seems to end poorly for those fans.

And I am, of course, one of those fans.

The problem is, I don’t believe there’s any sort of ingrained or inherent problem in either club that can’t be explained away by some bad luck and some bad management. Because while I know teams can be crappy, I don’t know teams can be cursed.

So I wanted to write a column in response, something redeeming about free will and my whole spiel about how no professional athlete could ever really be a loser, and about how I could remember a time when the Red Sox — the big, bad, well-run, two World Series in the last six years Red Sox — were the perpetual suckers.

It was going to say how the aughts were just a bad decade for Mets and Jets fans like me, but that there was no reason at all, save further mismanagement, the teens couldn’t be a great one. I was going to write how any talk of a hex was just mumbo jumbo — all in our heads.

But when I sat down to write it, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to jinx the Jets.

I guess that’s the whole thing about being a fan. No matter how rationally you try to think things out, no matter how sensibly you attempt to approach a sport, there’s always going to some part of you operating completely devoid of logic.

There almost has to be; otherwise, it’d be impossible to care so passionately about some group of men you don’t know getting paid tons of money to compete against some other group of men you don’t know.

I want to believe that I don’t believe in jinxes and curses and cultures of losing. But somewhere deep down, I have no idea what I really think. Maybe I’m afraid to admit I’m not as rational as I hope I am, or maybe I’m just profoundly confused.

I know I feel as confident in this Jets team as I have in any in recent memory, but I also know that if someone asked me to put down money on the Jets’ chances of beating the Bengals for a second straight week, I’d hem and haw and balk and eventually walk away.

So what’s the grand conclusion? I’ve got none.

I’m rooting for the Jets and hoping they’ll win on Saturday. Having watched a whole lot of the NFL this season, I know they can. And I don’t actually think there’s any culture around the team — or any team — that should prevent it from happening; I only fear, in some tiny corner of my soul, that there could be.