These Eagles Are A Sure Thing On the Field, And An Incredibly Popular Wager Off Of It.
Two years ago, while traveling for work I boarded a busy Philadelphia downtown train during the midst of the Eagles run to Super Bowl LVII. As it’s been since the days of the Reading Railroad in Philly since the 1830s — train is the way to travel around the city as well as it’s important ingress from all points of the Delaware Valley region.
This week, a gambler in Kentucky placed a $3.1 million wager with the -700 odds for Philadelphia to beat the Carolina Panthers. The payout — should the Eagles win — would be $442,800.00. It is the largest wager that Circa Sports has ever taken.
Also as a Philly tradition, this downtown train was packed. I took the only seat available across from an elderly gentleman whom I hardly paid attention to. After a little time, he looked up from his newspaper and noticed the case on my phone with a withered iconic kelly green backdrop and the bald Eagle clutching a leather pigskin in it’s talons. His eyes narrowed as his asked the question, “what do you think about the Eagles this year? Their chances I mean?”
Before I could even begin to formulate an answer, he launched into a twenty-minute monologue not only about his love for the Eagles — but how since Andy Reid had resurrected the team from the depths of mediocrity in the early 2000s — the Eagles were an almost sure-fire bet in the world of NFL wagering.
Sitting upright and leaning against his weathered and worn topcoat, he took me through a detailed description of his wagering strategies in advance of a Birds game, even attributing his winnings to his leather-worn pair loafers that he proudly showed off in the aisle.
You may have noticed over the last two weeks of Philadelphia Eagles road games in Los Angeles and Baltimore — that the stands in Sofi and M&T Bank Stadium — has been filled with seas of green at game time. The Eagles are not only a Super Bowl contender, but one of the most popular NFL Teams with nearly 15 million social media followers.
During his diatribe, I couldn’t help but think about the Kenny Rogers song and subsequent TV Movie released forty-five years ago, The Gambler, about an elderly roller of the dice who befriends a man on a train and trades him whiskey for advice on poker. On this day, I had no internal antifreeze to offer. After a half-hour more, I reached my stop and stepped from the train wishing both he and the Eagles the best of luck.
I cannot help but wonder if that bold gambler with a sure-fire system of success-wagering on the Eagles could have placed a midwest wager on the Eagles, planning a lifetime of retirement from the payout that he knew was coming. One thing is for sure, win or lose — in the cold hours of post-game Sunday — the gambler will definitely not break even.
Not on this wager.
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