No Place In America Is Suited To Football Like Philly.
It’s not that we don’t love our Sixers, Flyers, and Phillies. We do.
The Phillies are the oldest, continuous professional sports franchise in America. No one has lost more games than the Phillies at 11,278. Make that 11,279. (Hey — you’ve got to be oldest to achieve that milestone.)
Philadelphia — this City was built for football.
Hard work, dedication, and resilience were a bedrock of this City long before Mayor Frank Rizzo declared Philly a blue-collar town, we were obsessed with the NFL. And long before anyone cared about the NFL, we obsessed with football.
It’s too late for therapy. We are too committed. No pun intended.
The obsession began with games at Franklin Field as far back as 1895 to see those Penn Quakers. They began during football’s infancy in America and would win championships seven total championships in (1894, 1895, 1897, 1904, 1907, 1908, 1924.)
After the 14–1–2 Yellow Jackets won the championship in 1926, football became even more popular in Philadelphia. When Frankford Stadium burned in 1931 and 1933, professional football nearly left Philly forever.
In 1933 — the Eagles turned out to be exactly what we needed.
For nearly a decade — when it looked as if the Eagles were making no progress at all amid poor attendance, season after season of losing, and a star quarterback who wished to take an FBI Field Agent Job for $3,500.00 per year rather than to play for the Eagles — Philadelphia grew more and more in love with its Eagles.
We loved them when the Ray Rhodes and Andy Reid Era’s came crashing to an end. We loved them when Chip Kelly alienated almost the entire Novacare Complex, and when the NFL decided to stop his fast-tempo offense by keeping the Eagles defense on the field continuously.
We loved them when they went from a World Championship at Franklin Field in 1960 to an abysmal end to 1968 that included pelting Santa with snowballs and booing him from afar.
We were appalled when Norman Braman tried to quietly move the team to Arizona in 1984. It felt like a betrayal.
And we even loved them unconditionally when a Super Bowl victory against Kansas City that seemed an almost certain victory up ten points in the second half and against an injured Patrick Mahomes did not turn out that way.
In just over a month, when these Eagles report to Training Camp as the late summer sun rises on the promise of a new season, the expectations couldn’t be highly.
They not nearly as high as the love for our Eagles.
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