North Star Writers Group

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.

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