The Q-View

It was nice while it lasted–the right of Eagles fans to call themselves DEFENDING WORLD CHAMPIONS. Technically, we still are, except for the Defending part because we can’t do that anymore.

If you are an Eagles follower, I don’t have to recap the slow start to the season. There are a lot of theories about the reasons for that. Personally, I think it boiled down to injuries.

The drive to make the playoffs was remarkable, however. Almost as good as the playoff run last year. The painful loss to the Saints was cushioned by the compassionate reaction to Alshon Jeffrey’s season-ending non-catch. That didn’t lose the game per se. Brandon Graham could have fallen on the fumble instead of trying to scoop. The Eagles could have stopped the fake punt. They could have gotten off the field on fourth down a couple of times. Holding could have been called on a long Saints run. And Nick Foles. How can you not root for Nick Foles?

Now I can ignore the rest of the playoffs, especially since there is no threat of the Cowboys getting to, or winning, the Super Bowl. I love the Eagles but hate the NFL. They are nothing more than a blood-sucking corporation more concerned about PR and perception than genuine feelings for players and fans. Fortunately, I feel Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie is an exception to that depiction and is a genuinely good and compassionate man.

The NFL with its pseudo-patriotism, paid for in the past by the military; its shunning of an activist, better than half the quarterbacks in the league, and the distortion of his real message; its Byzantine rules; its promulgation of the biggest ripoff in sports: paying regular season prices for pre-season games; its low-quality, garish uniform wearing, injury risking Thursday night football; its hypocritical exploitation of fan loyalty while allowing billionaire owners to uproot franchises to make even more money while holding local governments hostage to their desires to build obscene pleasure palaces.

I wonder how the people of St. Louis feel about the now-LA Rams. It was nauseating listening to Troy Aikman gush last weekend about the stadium being built for the Rams. It might even outdo Jerry Jones’ playpen in Dallas, he claimed. Big whoop. The LA fans are not nearly as loyal as the St. Louis fans were. People didn’t show up in St. Louis because the team sucked. If it wasn’t for visiting fans, like Eagles faithful, buying tickets and “owning” LA’s stadium, these Rams wouldn’t even sell out.

Those of us who are a certain age remember that, in the 1980s, the Eagles owner tried to move the franchise to Arizona with a backdoor deal–similar to what the Cleveland owner did when he moved his team to Baltimore, which had lost its franchise to Indianapolis. The kidnapping of the Eagles, to pay off gambling debts, would have undercut one of the most rabid and dedicated fan bases in the league. The Arizona Eagles. Instead, Arizona had to steal their franchise from St. Louis and settle for Cardinals.

I may have the playoff games on as background noise while I’m doing other things this weekend. I will root for Kansas City the rest of the way because Andy Reid deserves a Super Bowl win. I’ll be avoiding pre- and post-game shows and muting commercials and surfing channels and reading the newspaper or a book while the games are going on as my way of protesting the NFL product sell-a-thon. (Didn’t you just love those commercials where a thirty-something guy bought TWO cars for Christmas–just your typical NFL fan, I guess).

But I won’t be planning my weekend around the games, as I would be if the Eagles were still alive.

It would have been nice to be back-to-back champions, but it was a pleasure to watch a closely knit, spiritually driven, family-oriented, genuine team of Eagles which, in many ways, was the antithesis of NFL culture.