Whither Philly: A Requiem

WHITHER PHILLY: A REQUIEM


A seque into the world of sports

by Ed Encho

Chip Noteboom made the play of the day in Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field shortly after halftime of a recent Sunday afternoon Eagles game, at the time it wasn’t known that it would be the highlight of the remainder of the 2005 season. The Doylestown, PA native made the return trip from his current home in Arizona and managed to elude stadium security forces for just long enough to sprint from the crowd and scatter a plastic baggie containing the ashes of his cremated mother who was a die hard Eagle fan onto the field much to the delight of the rabidly cheering throng in the stands. How apropos it was as a symbol for the four year run of NFC dominance that has reached its conclusion short of consummation. Phyrric 19-14 comeback victory against the pathetic and injury riddled Green Bay Packers aside, the Philadelphia Eagles reign of terror is over.

You can in fact chisel their epitaph in stone, ultimately they were shot in the back by the very hired gunslinger who was brought into town to finally win the big showdown and then turned on those who had welcomed him, kind of like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter and similarly Eagle fans being the disdainful, miscreant rabble that they truly are deserve their own fate as much as the residents of Lago did once the town had been painted red and renamed Hell and to speak quite candidly if I owned both Hell and Philadelphia I would choose to rent out Philly and live in Hell. Now all of the dreams of an ‘Iggles’ Super Bowl title have dissipated as quickly as a drunken beer belch into the bitter winter winds of the northeastern shithole city of Philadelphia.

Despite the culpability of a certain prima donna wide receiver of some notoriety (his initials are T.O.) in the team’s downfall the blame is not his alone. A good chunk also lies with the front office for the inability to acquire a consistent every down running back who could pummel opposing defenses and spin clock or a set of complimentary receivers who could catch anything besides a cold with any degree of regularity. The Philadelphia receivers have been among the worst bunch (outside of the former Steve Spurrier era Florida Gator stars who weren’t cut out for the big league) in the NFL, when the best that you can line up are the likes of Todd Pinkston, Freddie Mitchell and James Thrash you are never going to cause any opposing defensive coordinator lose any sleep. Ironically, that trio would actually be an improvement over the semi pro caliber garbage that remains on the roster now that T.O. has been run out of town on a rail. Not that anybody should shed any crocodile tears, it is Philly and their pathologically angry puke fans deserve everything that they get. I mean which other NFL team has fans that have actually reached such a lofty status of infamy? Even Raider fans who are admittedly a beastly and shameful lot aren’t so loathsome that they boo and scream curses at Santa Claus while pelting him with ice chunks, batteries and other assorted pieces of stadium debris. Such acts are just another day at the arena for Philly fans.

In a stark contrast to their regular season dominance, the mighty Iggles had known nothing but post season sorrow after blowing three consecutive NFC Championship games including one to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that had never won a playoff game in below forty degree temperatures and had a long history of playoff choking of their own. The Eagles absolutely owned the Bucs, ousting them from the playoffs the two previous years in a manner so easily that QB Donovan McNabb was shown laughing repeatedly throughout both games at their ineptitude. Then former offensive coordinator Jon Gruden took over the reigns of Tony Dungy’s team, rode into town and shocked the haughty Eagles in an ugly 27-10 bitch slapping of a game that had local suicide hotlines jammed for weeks in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ (a moniker that I personally observed as being more hype than reality when I witnessed a six or seven year old child selling homemade t shirts outside the airport that read ‘Dallas Fukkin Sux’ on one of my visits there) and the fans so stunned that the record number of riot police were sent home early and bored from the unprecedented lack of action at the stadium. That was the loss that closed the vile pit of iniquity known as Veterans Stadium once and for all. What had been billed as a celebration turned into a funeral and when Buc cornerback Ronde Barber took that late fourth quarter interception to the house to drive a stake through the heart of the local team and punch Tampa Bay's ticket to San Diego the old joint that had been so raucous only seconds earlier became so quiet that you could hear a rat fart.

The rodent infested house of steel and concrete hell known simply as ‘The Vet’ was best known for the actual jail that was present in the bowels of the stadium and on game days was open for business as a judge conducted business on whatever member of the inebriated and ill mannered herd happened to be swept up by police who roamed the stands seeking to set examples to quell disorder. The Vet was a dank, stinking old cookie cutter structure where the defective plumbing pipes leaked beer and urine on the heads of passers by and where only the most evil of rodent vermin lurked like street gangstas defending their turf against that were the mortal enemy stray cats who also called the stadium home with the same vigor that possessed gangs of rowdy, drunken Philly Phanatics who prowled the 700 level during blowouts looking for hapless Cowboy, Giant and Redskin fans to mercilessly bludgeon or mirthfully sodomize just for the sheer fun of it.

In kind of a perverse way it was sad to see The Vet go, it was a time honored local tradition seeing pick up teams of rowdy, uncouth drunks playing ‘hockey’ on a rink of ice and frozen urine by using their feet as sticks to kick a frozen egg mcmuffin that someone had found in the trunk of their car along as a puck at 7:15 on the Sunday morning before a late winter Iggles game. Cheap thrills for the masses that went by the wayside after most of the contestants were forced out due to the increased costs of a new state of the art stadium, where seat licenses are peddled like Bolivian flake cocaine to those who can afford it. For the others, there was the cheap crack high of continuing to gather sans tickets in order to watch the home team’s contests on mini TVs in the parking lots and still participating in their tailgate parties on a frozen blacktop tundra where their unique little tribe cedes more of it’s former territory as the price of football goes up, being continually pushed farther and farther out towards the outskirts of the RV parking lots. But always they are loyalists and always faithful to their chronically underachieving but beloved Iggles.

Philadelphia sports fans are of an entirely different breed and there is no better example of this than The Wing Bowl. One night while channel surfing through the tsunami of cable television bullshit that is routinely foisted off as filler to the public, I happened to stumble upon a show on some third rate network such as Food TV and was transfixed by the utterly unbelievable festival that was unfolding on the screen of my 27 inch Zenith. The show contained footage from something called the Philly Wing Bowl that was a surreal melding of arena football, heavy metal rock and roll, pop culture, sleazy sexuality and good ole all American gluttony. The purely primal competition that was on display was an exhibition of endurance and sexual bravado that was utterly oozing with raw prehistoric male machismo unseen since the days of Neanderthal fertility rituals or at least since the unstoppable duo of Flintstone and Rubble were throwing the rock around. It was an astounding thing to behold. I was of course mesmerized by this glimpse into the strange netherworld of Philly fan distilled down to his purest form and unleashed in the circus maximus setting of a drunken mob of hooligans, misfits, losers, semi-retards and plain outright degenerates. This hoodlum swarm had gathered en masse at the First Union Center for a freak festival extraordinaire that had been sponsored by a local sports radio station and were likely strict adherents to the normal pattern of binge drinking that occurs prior to any Eagles home game.

The bacchanalia featured horrifying scenes of intense, pagan festivity that should never be seen by women or children or any other member of a civilized society:

A man who was wearing a studded black leather jacket and an actual pig’s head that was hollowed out to fit his face like a mask strutted his stuff. Another contestant was wheeled in strapped to an upright gurney wearing a straitjacket and mask ala Hannibal Lecter. It is a searing indictment of the declining quality of American culture as well as symptomatic of an incurably sick society when a diabolical serial killer who also happens to a cannibal is glorified and elevated to heroic status but this is a topic for another time. The pre contest ‘entertainment’ featured an amazing individual whose apparent greatest talent in life was bashing cans of beer open against his bloody forehead and then spraying the contents into the roaring crowd. Nice but this type of etiquette is fairly commonplace at Eagles tailgate parties. His demonstration was accompanied by 80’s hair metal band Quiet Riot’s teen angst anthem Bang Your Head over the arena loud speakers and which was met by thunderous applause.

If I personally was horrified after only ten minutes or so of such graphic imagery on Food TV it is damned near impossible to conceive of the outrage of actually having to attend this pagan ritual of gluttony in person or to imagine the stench. The air had to have been thick with the musky aroma of testosterone, stale tobacco, rotgut alcohol, congealed grease, rancid sweat and the spicy vinegar based red pepper sauce that the chicken wings had been dipped in prior to being laid out (in plates of 20) upon the altar of gluttony that was the bunting and banner draped banquet table row in front of the chosen fearless gladiators who would be vying for the dubious honor of being named KING WING!

Sluttishly attired hoochie mamas called Wingettes strutted their stuff, parading around in G-strings, their shaved pubic areas and silicone enhanced breasts attracted and aroused the males in their immediate vicinity like pieces of raw meat thrown down in front of a horde of starving wild animals. The very presence of these women and their imitators only served to further crank up the testosterone level among the miscreant hordes that at best were a parade of utterly abominable, knuckle dragging, hairy fatsos who looked like they had collectively crawled out of the sensory deprivation tank in Altered States. They were mankind reduced to it’s knuckle dragging primal basest instincts, carnivores seeking to feed on the prized meat and then return to the cave to slobber over subservient female flesh in the aftermath of the hunt. A morbidly obese bare chested, bearded man wearing an Eagles baseball cap backwards and who had bigger tits than Pamela Anderson only much hairier grasped his set of gobdobblers and squeezed them together to further enhance their enormity…then he wiggled that hot sauce spattered pair of pink nosed puppies directly into the camera eye and straight into the living rooms of America!

You could practically hear the sound of hot rendered deep fryer fat sluicing through arteries as the arena horn sounded and the contestants dived into their plates discarding drummette bones as they ravenously pillaged. When the plates were clear of all but bits of coating swimming in hot sauce a Wingette would shake her booty to the fore in order to replace it with another platter. The gallantry and gluttony were as unrelenting they were intense and the ten minutes or so of actual competition was heated indeed, ambulances circled the arena hoping to cash in on chokers or heart attack victims. By the time that the champion was crowned the floors were slick with vomited remnants of undigested, half chewed bits of fowl meat, grease, fried coating and hot sauce, it resembled an abattoir or the scene of some bloody atrocity. The real atrocity however is the fact that most of these losers were proud of themselves, they actually enjoy being grimy, inebriated, belligerent, miscreants who couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison if they had a pocketful of pardons. The definition of a hot date for the majority of them consists of a twelve pack of cheap swill and a copy of the latest issue of Penthouse.

In the aftermath of the carnage, the triumphant victor was borne forth on a wheeled cart pulled by four scantily clad ‘Wingettes’ to the lusty, full throated cheers of the crowd who paid homage to their victorious gladiator, the winner of this great contest of olympic proportions threw his head back and loosed a horrifying belch that not only rose above the din but rattled the plexi-glass boards that encircled the ice on which the mighty hometown Flyers soundly defeated their hated rivals the New York Rangers only two nights prior. The decibel level of that great discharge of pent up gastric fumes was so loud that it was as if King Kong himself had roared in primal, chest thumping rage. The champion was 'El Wingador' whose triumphant and epic display of gluttony for the ages was immortalized by his ravenous consumption of 154 wings! 77 chickens paid the ultimate price so that this fat, drooling, slob could be anointed with the deified title of KING WING. The runners up, men with the nicknames of Kid Meatball, Winga the Hut, Kid Diesel, Doughboy, Lord of the Wings, Sir Wingalot, The Inhaleionator, Kid Knish, Massive Mike and yes, even Jesus himself were left to seek refuge from their disappointment in gallons of beer and then to slowly gather it back together for another run at the hallowed title next year.

But I digress….

The opening of the new state of the art Lincoln Financial Field was supposed to be the harbinger of great things but the end result was the same and perhaps the stinker of a 17-0 nationally televised Monday night loss to the Super Bowl Champion Tampa Buccaneers in their triumphant return to Philly was an omen. After yet another dominant regular season during which the Eagles rolled through the NFC to the championship game while overcoming adversity and distractions such as the hot air blowing, thrice divorced, Vicodin addict Rush Limbaugh’s racist cant during his extremely short ESPN career on McNabb being an overrated black quarterback who the damned liberal media was promoting the Iggles marched on.

The team would finish the 2003 regular season 12-4 and then get a gift wrapped win against the Packers when clown coach Mike Sherman and former Vicodin addict Brett Favre along with a Green Bay defensive collapse on fourth and twenty six teamed up to allow Philadelphia to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and emerge as a ‘team of destiny’ determined to prove that the third time would be the charm in the conference championship game. Then reality set in and the hometown Eagles were mugged by the Cinderella Carolina Panthers for their third straight loss one game short of the Super Bowl. Philadelphia receivers were intimidated all afternoon long by the thuggish Panther defense, quitting on their routes and alligator arming the few and rare accurate passes that a constantly blitzed and running for his life McNabb was able to deliver in order to avoid getting hit by Ricky Manning and the other roughneck Carolina defensive backs. This game if nothing else laid the groundwork for bringing in the unstable mercenary T.O. as the final piece of the Super Bowl puzzle.

Despite his game breaking talent (he once had an NFL record 20 catches in a single game although it could arguably be affixed with an asterisk in the books seeing as how it was achieved versus the woeful Chicago Bears) Terrell Eldorado Owens came with a warning label that practically flashed CAVEAT EMPTOR in neon lights His reputation for rebellious and disrespectful antics during his career in San Francisco were well known to all and reviled by many. Owens was notorious for being a chronic showoff with an ego that knew no bounds and his ‘celebrations’ were completely over the top and designed for maximum impact and self-promotion as well as for the mockery of opponents. From instigating an on field brawl that resulted in a one game suspension by dancing on the midfield star in Texas Stadium, home of God’s football team to pulling a marker out of his sock after scoring on Monday Night Football to sign a ball which he then gave to his financial planner in the stands the man was the personification of arrogance.

In addition to the flamboyance of his on field antics, T.O. was also a raging cancer in the 49er locker room, often denigrating his quarterback the soft spoken Jeff Garcia. Owens even went to the extent to insinuate that Garcia was a homosexual in a much publicized interview in Playboy magazine where he was quoted as saying “Like my boy tells me; if it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, by golly, it is a rat.” He also constantly butted heads with 49er coach Steve Mariucci, eventually becoming such a liability to the organization that were only too happy to see him leave town after a fiasco over the voiding of his contract led to his trade to the Baltimore Ravens for a second round pick. Owens threw a hissy fit over the trade as he had planed to break the bank as a free agent and had been busy pimping himself to other teams, allegedly reaching a deal with the Eagles. After much legal and public relations wrangling an agreement was reached that allowed for him to land in Philly and the rest as they say is history.

As legend has it you must first invite a vampire into your house in order for it to wreak its havoc. Jeffrey Lurie welcomed the malevolence and instability of T.O. not only with open arms but with an open checkbook when he should have been adorned with a garlic necklace and waving a crucifix. However to the Philly faithful Terrell Owens was looked upon as the one who would bring them deliverance.

By the time that the Eagles took the field for their 2004 opener expectations were rocketing through the stratosphere and the winter green home jerseys that were adorned with number 81 were flying off of the shelves. A majority of the punditry had already booked a slot for Philadelphia in the Super Bowl and the hype machine that been humming along was kicked into overdrive after McNabb hooked up with Owens for three touchdowns in his debut, a 31-17 win over the hated New York Giants. Philadelphia roared to a 13-1 start despite losing Owens in week fifteen for what was supposed to be a season ending injury. Before going down Owens came up huge with 77 catches, 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns but now the Eagles would face the drive for the title without their star receiver who had remarkably managed to steer clear of any sort of trouble outside the ridiculous overreaction to his November Monday Night Football opening locker room promo skit where Desperate Housewives actress Nicollette Sheridan dropped spread open her towel and by implication ‘showed cat’ to T.O. Of course this was the most outrageous thing that the national morality police had seen since Janet Jackson’s display of an errant nipple during the halftime show of the previous year’s Super Bowl but for all intents and purposes Owens’ model behavior had been both unexpected as well as unprecedented.

After two season closing losses during which Andy Reid sat the regulars in order to avoid further injury, the Eagles managed to win both playoff games despite the absence of their cherished new receiver mainly by jumping on and riding the back of a voracious defense that rose to the occasion and clamped down on the opposing team. The fourth time indeed turned out to be the charm as the Eagles rolled the ridiculously over hyped Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons to the tune of 27-10. Eagle fans rejoiced, the theme to Rocky reverberated throughout The Linc and local liquor store owners and drug dealers reaped record profits. Some of them embraced in their penultimate moment of happiness, they were so giddy and fulfilled that there was hardly any fighting at all part of which could probably be attributed to the bone numbing temperature and bitter wind chill. It was the happiest day in Eagledom since Chuck ‘Concrete Charlie’ Bednarik had wrestled Green Bay’s Jim Taylor to the ground in the closing seconds of a close game and pinned him there until the clock ran out giving Philadelphia the NFL Championship. Many of the ruffians in the stands hadn’t even been born yet, it was the Eagles’ last title and 1960 is ancient history to the current legion of hooligans.

Miraculously, the Eagles had survived an injury to their prized acquisition to advance to Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, the Florida capital of strip mall evangelical churches and would play the reigning champion New England Patriots for the Vince Lombardi Trophy as well as bragging rights and endorsement dollars. Destiny’s darlings would quite improbably be getting Terrell Owens back after a miraculous recovery even though he would be playing against the advice of physicians. The week leading up to the game saw a building of ominous bad mojo for Philadelphia, WR Freddie Mitchell decided to pop off publicly in deriding the Patriots’ stellar safety Rodney Harrison igniting a media feeding frenzy, Owens proclaimed that God would heal his ankle by game time and Chuck Bednarik of all people publicly announced his disdain for the Eagles organization and said that he would be cheering for the Patriots.

Come kickoff time, after the nonsense of the two straight weeks of hype that is typical in the run up to the so called biggest game of the year, the Patriots who prided themselves on being prepared appeared to be sluggish and out of sync and the Eagle defense harassed QB Tom Brady into a number of uncharacteristic mistakes keeping the game closer than most had expected and actually giving the Eagles a chance to win behind the valiant performance of a resurgent T.O. who was ‘Mr. Clutch’ repeatedly bailing McNabb out with excellent catches. The game went into the half tied at 7 and at 14 after three quarters. The high water mark of the Andy Reid era was in the early fourth quarter where a game Eagles team, led by the valiant efforts of Owens who would finish with nine catches for 122 yards actually had a chance to banish their past indignities and once and forever shed the label of underachievers, they seemingly had the reigning champion Patriots on the ropes.

Then Donovan McNabb barfed…

Maybe he was sick, maybe he was tired, maybe the city of Jacksonville just happens to make him ill, after all McNabb experienced similar conditions during the Eagles 2002 regular season loss to the local NFL franchise when the often and for the most part unfairly maligned Eagle quarterback also hurled onto the turf at Alltel Stadium during a 28-25 loss to the Jaguars. The game ended in a flurry of poor clock management by Reid and with McNabb blowing chunks through his face guard and turning the ball over in the waning moments to eliminate any chance of a comeback. The final score was New England 24 Philadelphia 21. So close and yet so far away for Philly and due to subsequent events it is as close as they will ever get for at least the foreseeable future.

In the off season Owens signed the much maligned and widely detested Drew Rosenhaus as his agent, a man so arrogant that he boasted that the lead character in the movie Jerry Maguire played by Tom Cruise was actually based on him. It was a perfect match of two insatiable egotists and you could leave it to Rosenhaus to play on the fact that Owens who was already a legend in his own mind to use the Super Bowl performance in order to try to renegotiate his $48.97 million contract. The fires of resentment were lit and the seeds of discontent sown when T.O. in an ESPN interview seemingly blamed the New England loss on his quarterback when he said he, meaning Owens “wasn’t the guy who got tired in the Super Bowl”. The contract situation grew more acrimonious and the sniping continued. During training camp Owens got into a shouting match with Andy Reid and was sent packing…for a week. Now the Eagles were getting a look at the real T.O. and it was not a sight that would make him the apple of their eye. The fact that Owens was able to make it through his first season in Philly without melting down bordered on a divine miracle but seeing as how miracles are for suckers and fools the cautious bliss of that first year of marriage was bound to end in an ugly divorce. Once Owens officially became an Eagle he boldly proclaimed “All I can tell everybody is, I'm the same guy, just on a different team” In retrospect it was pure foolishness on the part of the Eagles organization to have ever expected any other end result.

The honeymoon was now over.

Despite the rapidly disintegrating relationship between Owens, McNabb and the rest of the organization the Eagles started strong in 2005, a year that most pundits predicted would end with Andy Reid hoisting aloft the long sought after holy grail of the Lombardi trophy in Detroit come February 2006. Despite a Monday night setback in a rematch against Atlanta in the opener the team overcame an increasingly hostile locker room, at one point LB Hugh Douglass threatened to go upside Owen’s head in an elevator and would later actually mix it up with the petulant receiver in the locker room, Philadelphia stood at 4 and 2 after six weeks and held a share of the NFC East lead. In week seven the Eagles fell behind 28-0 to the Denver Broncos on the road but behind the sterling play of T.O (who had 3 catches for 154 yards including the momentum turning 91 yard touchdown) roared back to cut the lead to 28-21 and had the ball, then McNabb threw a killer interception in the end zone and the Broncos ran roughshod over the bewildered Eagles winning 49-21. The ugly loss would be Owens’ last game as an Eagle.

Finally, the Eagles called Owens’ bluff and divested themselves of the team cancer that had raged through their locker room. An ESPN interview three days after the loss to the Broncos would be the final straw. Owens bitched that his “classless” team had dissed him by not recognizing this 100th touchdown catch in a manner that would sate his ego and then went on to again blast McNabb, this time stating that the Eagles would be better off with the aging Brett Favre at quarterback. Two days later he was suspended for four games by the team and when the suspension ended he would be inactivated like fellow motor mouth Keyshawn Johnson was in 2004 when Tampa Bay coach Gruden had finally grown tired of his act. Owens and Rosenhaus were shocked and immediately went into damage control mode, calling a press conference and issuing a public apology to his teammates and the organization but the damage already had been done and there was no way in hell that Owens would ever be welcomed back.

Owens of course sought to appeal his suspension and got an arbitrator to preside over a hearing but it was upheld and his Eagles career is over. The team will see if they can find any chumps who are willing to work out a trade in the off season but given their lack of leverage it is likely that they will end up simply releasing him. It is a certainty that some other team will be foolish enough to take a flyer on the damaged goods, it would be poetic justice to see the deranged Al Davis take a run at Owens to start opposite fellow problem child Randy Moss but the smoking wreckage of the Eagles franchise should serve as a warning for all.

The Eagles' dominance of the NFC was over although it wasn’t official until an ugly and embarrassing fourth quarter collapse against the arch rival Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football. With McNabb fighting through painful chest and groin injuries Philadelphia stuck with the running game and was leading 20-7 late in the fourth quarter when Andy Reid began to call passing plays and the team imploded. McNabb turnovers allowed the Cowboys to rally to a 21-20 win with the deciding points coming off an ill advised McNabb throw that was picked off by safety Roy Williams and returned for a touchdown, the fans in The Linc were so stunned that they could barely boo. McNabb was then placed in injured reserve, his as well as the team’s season was kaput and the Eagle era was as well. As they so fondly say in some parts of the country “Stick a fork in their asses, they’re done”.

Face the grim reality Eagle fans, it’s over. The fat man may not be singing yet but he’s warming up. It is going to be a long time before you ever get within spitting distance of another Super Bowl. The resounding thud that you just heard was of the window of opportunity slamming shut echoing through a half empty stadium in chill wind and swirling snows as the Iggles last remaining vestiges of dignity were cruelly ripped away by a notorious road choker, the NFC leading Seattle Seahawks delivered the knockout blow that finally punched the ticket that sent Andy Reid’s team to Palookaville in front of a national television audience The Linc was abandoned early on Monday Night Football as fans slinked out by the hundreds with each Seahawk score, it was 35-0 by halftime and not even Mother Noteboom’s funeral service would be able roust the demoralized on this coldest and saddest of nights in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’. By the third quarter only the rowdiest of the diehards remained and only to reign indignation down on their fallen heroes.

The chants of ….

“EAGLES SUCK…DROP THE PUCK…EAGLES SUCK…DROP THE PUCK”
…reverberated through the tomblike stadium, a requiem for the has beens, never weres and never will bes that are the once mighty Iggles.

Cheer up Philly, there’s always the Wing Bowl!
By Ed Encho