October 4,
2006
Inside the
Philly Sports Fan: A Scary Place to Be
Years ago,
Michael Irvin, a receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, was injured during a
Philadelphia Eagles game. The game took place at Veterans Stadium, which
has since been demolished. As Irvin lay on the field, pain coursing
through his body, Eagles fans cheered, solidifying their legacy as the
most vindictive, heartless fans in the league.
Modern
Philadelphia sports fans are easy to explain. We claim the longest
championship drought for a city with four major sports in the country –
currently 23 years and counting. During these 23 years, we have watched
all four arrive at and lose the big game. We’ve had plenty of good teams
in town. Just no winners. The current psychological state of the
Philadelphia sports fan is actually quite simple. Jack Nicholson put it
best during his Oscar-winning performance in As Good As It Gets.
“It’s not that they had it bad. It’s just that they’re that pissed
someone else had it so good.”
Thus
describes the emotional state of a pessimist. Things become entirely
relative, because objectivity is too depressing. We have gone 92 sports
seasons without a championship. That’s worse than the Red Sox, so Matt
Damon and Ben Affleck can kiss my cheesecake-eating butt. If we took the
time to truly comprehend, to attempt to swallow the sheer desperation of
the situation, we might just lose our will as sports fans. Instead, we
eat, sleep and breathe bitterness, because it is the one emotion that
has proven itself able to find nourishment in reality.
In lieu of
recent events, specifically former Eagle Terrell Owens’ “accidental”
overdose on painkillers, I found myself – momentarily, mind you –
feeling something quite unfamiliar. I described it to my psychologist
and discovered that it is what humans refer to as “pity.” Immediately
summoning memories of a half-naked T.O. doing crunches on his driveway
in front of a sea of ravenous reporters, explaining how he expected on
Sunday to be back in the lineup of his new team, the Cowboys, I was able
to free myself from this terrifying new emotion. Now I can prepare
myself for the rest of the season, especially the games against Dallas.
It’s not
that I wish harm against T.O. It’s not that at all, really. But say,
theoretically, I did. Some pictures are hard to look at, so you may need
to look away for a moment. But imagine it’s Sunday, October 8, Eagles
vs. Cowboys. It’s around the middle of the fourth quarter, and the
Eagles are already ahead by about 50. At this point, any flutter of
positive activity from the Cowboys is virtually meaningless.
Philadelphia fans feel light and blissful, because we have dominated the
Cowboys. All emotional investment has been returned one hundredfold.
That is, until Terrell Owens approaches the line of scrimmage with that
thin, athletic-to-the-point-of-awkwardness, careless saunter only he
knows.
The guy
next to me is an Eagles fan. We met only hours ago at the bar and
already we feel like old college buddies. We’ve been jumping off our
barstools, high-fiving, shouting, incurring oblong glances from
ignoramuses throughout the course of the game, and we’re finally
beginning to feel relaxed about the lead.
For
whatever reason, though, the scoreboard seems irrelevant as soon as we
see Terrell Owens tearing down the field on a post pattern, with the
football flying on a course only he can intercept. My hands clench the
edge of the bar as Eagles fans around the country simultaneously forget
to inhale. As the ball catches T.O. in stride, dropping into his surest
of hands, the game suddenly loses its meaning. That is, until Brian
Dawkins (who is inexplicably still on the field despite the 50-point
lead), streaks in so fast the cameraman didn’t even notice him and puts
a shoulder into the enemy’s chest with so much horizontal force that the
two seem to soar through the air as one body over about 10 feet of turf.
The ball and T.O.’s helmet fly through the air, and a wily Jason Witten
picks it up and runs it into the end zone for a Cowboys touchdown. The
crowd goes wild. Everyone is on their feet. For a few moments, threaded
together by a beautiful sequence of events, both Eagles and Cowboys fans
seem oddly united. Eventually, the cameraman finds his way back to a
motionless receiver who is being tended to by none other than Brian
Dawkins – one moment a savage beast, the next, The Good Samaritan – and
half the fans stop cheering. A small portion of the ones still cheering
are, unsurprisingly,oblivious Cowboys fans who have yet to realize that
their star player has been nearly decapitated, but most of them are
Eagles fans who, for one part, really do hope T.O. will eventually get
up, but for the most part, are just happy to see him lying underneath
his assailant, Mr. Brian Dawkins. The question is: Would I be one of
them?
Actually,
no, that is not the question. The question is: How long would T.O. have
to go without moving in order for me to stop cheering so eagerly in a
bar full of alleged “sports fans”, overcome by what my psychiatrist just
told me was called “pity.”
These are
the moments a Philadelphia sports fan lives and dies for, because the
championship-winning moments are obviously reserved for others.
I actually
like Michael Irvin as a commentator. He’s still cocky, but who isn’t?
He’s funny and surprisingly astute. You see, everyone and everything
changes between the opening and closing whistles of a game. Afterwards,
athletes and fans alike return to something at least loosely resembling
normalcy.
But for
Philadelphians, year after year of disappointment between whistles has
resulted in the evolution of what some might call a different kind of
sports fan.
© 2006 North Star Writers
Group. May not be republished without permission.
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