Earlier this spring, Jets defensive coordinator Mike Pettine spent more than an hour on the phone with Villanova coach Andy Talley. But they weren't talking about football.

Instead, Pettine needed advice on a cause that Talley has championed in Philadelphia: bone marrow donation.

The topic hit close to home for Pettine last month, when he learned through a close friend about Michael Manganiello, a long-time Jets fan from Wayside who was diagnosed with acute myelofibrosis Easter weekend.

The rare condition -- which causes the bone marrow to progressively scar and become unable to produce blood cells -- is aggressively advancing in Manganiello's body, and his survival depends on quickly finding a matching bone marrow donor.

"It was a no-brainer to step in and help," Pettine said last night. "We dont get a lot of opportunities to do something like this, when you have a chance to have such a great impact on a life."

Pettine served as a co-host for the "Match for Michael" event held last night in Eatontown, which raised funds for the Manganiello family and the National Marrow Donor Program, but more importantly added more than 400 new people to the national bone marrow registry. Registering is as easy as taking a cheek swab, and bone marrow donation is now a less invasive procedure, the majority of the time being done via a non-surgical peripheral blood stem cell donation. Donors can usually resume normal activities within two to seven days.

Talley, who founded a non-profit organization two years ago to add donors to the national registry, gave Pettine advice on running such an event. Jets coach Rex Ryan and players Mark Sanchez, Sione Pouha and Aaron Maybin lent their support by attending the event last night, signing autographs and posing for pictures with the newly registered donors.

Manganiello, whose wife described him as the No. 1 Jets fan, was at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, where he is currently undergoing chemotherapy, but the Jets coaches and players were trying to reach him in his hospital room by phone.

"He's very selfless -- he would be embarrassed to know we are all here for him, he'd probably feel funny," Margo Manganiello, Michael's wife, said. "I just know were going to get through this together as a family, and I just feel like this must have happened for a reason, for us to give back to other families that are in similar situations, to help them find a cure. Because I'm very optimistic that were going to get there."

In a matter of weeks, the Manganiello family's life has been turned upside down. The 44-year-old father of three had been experiencing fatigue while running and an irregular heartbeat earlier this spring, so his wife forced him to go to the emergency room the day before Easter. It was there that blood tests confirmed the scary diagnosis.

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Jets support one fan's quest for a life-saving bone-marrow transplant