NEW YORK — Mark Sanchez "loves the green and white," is "having a blast," "loves this city," worked out Monday at Columbia and toured Citi Field, finding the facilities "unbelievable."

He even took his first subway ride.

"Met some nice people there," Sanchez wrote to me and 8,000-plus other close friends as he tweeted his way through his first 48 hours as the Jets' biggest quarterback acquisition in nearly nine months.

That was only right for Gang Green's first Twitter-era star, whose selection Saturday was shared with communication-savvy fans before the commissioner got around to announcing it.

It also was an illustration of a key difference between this moment of Jets euphoria and the last one — when Brett Favre arrived to win games and sell personal seat licenses last summer.

Favre was 38 then, and even in a best case, was just passing through, a relic of the 20th century.

Assuming he can play, Sanchez, 22, will stay for a while, and the Jets can only hope he will make the kind of impact Eli Manning has since the Giants traded for him.

How do four consecutive playoff berths and a Super Bowl victory sound, Jets fans?

Sanchez is winless so far, but the buzz around the organization since Saturday has been deafening. One measure: jersey sales. His replica uniform was the best selling of the weekend on NFLShop.com.

A more important measure will take shape as the Jets try to sell PSLs and tickets to the stadium they plan to open with the Giants next year.

Later this week, the Jets will move to the second phase of that process, opening all seats not in pricy club sections to existing season subscribers, in order of seniority.

Those seats figure to sell more briskly than the ones in the most expensive areas, a phenomenon with which the Yankees, Mets and Giants already are familiar.

I asked Matt Higgins, the team's executive VP of business operations, to what extent he could share how sales have gone for the club PSLs. "No extent," he said. Oh. It was worth a try.

Higgins did say this is "a climate that requires you to be mindful of the financial challenges everyone is facing ... At the same time, there is a lot of interest. We are still very confident the building will be sold before we open."

(By the way, the Jets and Giants still haven't announced a naming rights sponsor. Good luck with that. The Cowboys don't have one, and their new mega-stadium opens this year.)

Higgins agreed a bombshell such as Saturday's is good for business, but as with Favre, he adamantly denied a direct connection between Sanchez and PSLs. "People have a hard time believing it, but one really has nothing to do with the other," he said. "The business doesn't influence the decisions. Winning will take care of the rest."

For now, the big, bad New York media is cautiously optimistic about the new guy — an eager, personable franchise quarterback to go along with an eager, personable coach.

Happiest of all might be SNY, whose newly extended deal with the team includes more access than under Eric Mangini.

Sanchez seems prepared to handle New York, both in personality and because of his time at Southern Cal, the closest thing to a pro media environment in college football.

And he is a natural for marketing work, with added appeal as a potential Latino star in a league with few players of that heritage.

Higgins said the Jets would be careful in how and whether to use Sanchez's ethnicity for marketing. "It's too early to say, but if it does (help), it's got to be organic," he said. "It can't be contrived."

Sanchez's whirlwind continued last night, as he threw the ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field and appeared in the TV booth with Gary Cohen and Ron Darling.

But as Jets fans know, the team has won many offseasons, only to see what looked good on paper crumple on the field.

Eventually, those Twitter tweets will be replaced by the tweet of a referee's whistle, and Sanchez will have to do more than smile to keep his friends on the subway happy.