Why Do We Care So Much?

A new generation of fans got stoked, including a kid named Sean, Margaret Gardner’s future husband, then an eighth-grader in Paulsboro, South Jersey. He remembers the Super Bowl in 1980 like it was yesterday. Took a walk to a convenience store at halftime, to get some chips and soda. He was sure the Eagles were coming back. Didn’t happen, of course. But we still had Vermeil, we still had hope, he’d get us back there. Thirteen-year-old Sean was more than stoked — he was hooked.

But Dick couldn’t hold on. One morning, he couldn’t get out of his car at the Vet. Another day, couldn’t get up from his desk to go to practice. He’d gone over the top; he was trying too hard. Which told us, in a new way, how much he cared, how much he needed this — that while he may not have had our demons, he had something going on. He was as desperate as we were. But Vermeil had to quit.

The team got awful again. Meanwhile, the mayor bombed a neighborhood. The city leaked more jobs. Downtown was empty at night.

Then Buddy Ryan came, another guy we could get behind. Oh, Buddy we figured out immediately, a short, fat guy who said whatever and acted like he owned the joint. Cagey, that Buddy. First radio show he does, in 1986, there’s a staffer wearing a t-shirt that says I’VE CHEERED FOR TWO TEAMS. THE EAGLES AND WHOEVER PLAYS DALLAS. “Of course,” Buddy says now, “that meant I put the emphasis on Dallas.” Like the way he once placed a bounty on the Dallas kicker, challenging his team to knock him out of the game.

If Dick Vermeil was famous for his tough practices, Buddy got our attention with the sheer violence of his. First day of his first practice in Philadelphia, Ryan presided over six fights; 10 guys were sent to the hospital for dehydration. All set up by Buddy: He’d tell the offensive guys to block the defensive guys low, at the knees. Then he’d tell the defensive guys what the offensive guys were doing, back off, watch the spectacle as he twirled his whistle. Bad-ass Buddy. He famously dismissed his boss, owner Norman Braman, as “that guy in France.” He dismissed team president Harry Gamble, also his boss, as Braman’s “illegitimate son.” He dismissed the scabs who dared call themselves Eagles when his players went on strike. This was our guy. High risk, high reward.

Small problem: That guy in France, it was his football team. And before Buddy got us there, to the Promised Land, Norman Braman got rid of Buddy.

We tanked again. Which was worse than ever, because now we were really hooked.


PRO FOOTBALL HAD BECOME BIGGER, from the 1960s onward, partly through increased TV exposure, partly through the building, for 16 weeks every fall, of a violent drama that mirrored where the country seemed headed.

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