SNY.tv has you totally covered on The Great Rex Ryan Middle Finger Incident of 2010, and I’d be remiss if I covered a full day of middle-finger related items without linking to Mike Salfino’s excellent take on the matter:

You suffer with your fans and customers when you conduct yourself privately in a way that is opposite of your public persona. Think Tiger Woods. Rex’s public persona, though, is exactly that of a guy who will give it back to you if you get in his grill and hurl obscenities at him. He’s not selling himself as some moral disciplinarian. If Tom Coughlin did this, there would be hell to pay for him and the Giants. Plus, the Giants are selling class and pedigree — blue blood as much as Big Blue.

Mike determines — accurately, I think — that Rex is basically a Jets fan like the rest of us. A big, brash, New Jersey guy (a transplant, granted, but clearly with a New Jersey-guy attitude) that everyone expects and wants to flip the bird to Dolphins fans that taunt him.

Good.

So in conclusion, Rex Ryan is still awesome and flipping people off is still funny, and I’m not really sure why anybody would get broken up about it. Blah, blah, blah, he’s a public figure, he needs to concern himself with his appearance. Whatever. If he were concerned with his appearance, he probably wouldn’t eat 7000 calories a day. Rex Ryan’s got your public appearance right here, buddy.