Feature Article |
Why Do We Care So Much?
By Robert Huber
And we know the story of this city — from that last championship in 1960, when you’d still go downtown to shop at Woolworth’s, to the end of Buddy Ryan’s tenure here, when super-fan Ed Rendell marched in to save us from financial ruin. That’s what makes us different from, say, Tampa or San Diego or Kansas City. Take Chicago. The city of big shoulders has an idea about itself reflected in the Bears. But Chicago isn’t collectively desperate over the fate of its football team. Forbes recently tabbed the Eagles as having the highest brand value — $90 million — of 122 pro sports teams; sponsorships, naming rights, local media, tickets and merchandise were all part of the calculation. What it boils down to is fan passion. Monday morning after an Eagles win, the Daily News sells another 16,000 copies; even after a loss, circulation spikes up 4,000 or so.
Desperate isn’t a stretch. Stuart McMahon sees close similarities between Philadelphia and his native Glasgow. McMahon got a doctorate in sports administration at Temple, and now teaches at Salem College in Massachusetts, including a course titled “Sport in Culture.” Glasgow, nuts about soccer, once wielded central economic and political power that’s long since moved on to London. McMahon points to a similar void in Philly, with an attendant need to prove ourselves, to rise back up. In both cities, he also sees “a deep sense of wanting to be part of the larger family in their communities.” What he means is, we really need a way to be in this together. Everybody who studies why fans are fans hits that group dynamic. Eric Zillmer, a neuropsychologist and the director of athletics at Drexel, puts it this way: “When we come together as fans, we celebrate the myth of Philadelphia.”
The “myth of Philadelphia”? What is that? A myth of darkness and destruction, of rabid fans turning over the bus of opposing players, something out of a Terrence McNally vision of the city? No. Take a drive up 95, get off at the Bridge Street exit, pass under the GREATER NORTHEAST sign, pass the landmark green Eagles school bus, plopped on the roof of an auto-body warehouse. That’s where you’ll find the myth, as you scan the crammed streets off Frankford, where you can’t find a parking space or a tree, where the boys go off to a war the rest of us are trying to ignore. The myth rises, from the bottom up, like hip-hop to the ’burbs. That means if you want to join the football fever, if you want to join in on the collective idea of “Philadelphia,” you’ve got to be real, authentic — it means getting in on the way it’s done here, the raw buildup 16 weeks a year in the fall, heading into a metaphoric war with a certain attitude.
Desperate isn’t a stretch. Stuart McMahon sees close similarities between Philadelphia and his native Glasgow. McMahon got a doctorate in sports administration at Temple, and now teaches at Salem College in Massachusetts, including a course titled “Sport in Culture.” Glasgow, nuts about soccer, once wielded central economic and political power that’s long since moved on to London. McMahon points to a similar void in Philly, with an attendant need to prove ourselves, to rise back up. In both cities, he also sees “a deep sense of wanting to be part of the larger family in their communities.” What he means is, we really need a way to be in this together. Everybody who studies why fans are fans hits that group dynamic. Eric Zillmer, a neuropsychologist and the director of athletics at Drexel, puts it this way: “When we come together as fans, we celebrate the myth of Philadelphia.”
The “myth of Philadelphia”? What is that? A myth of darkness and destruction, of rabid fans turning over the bus of opposing players, something out of a Terrence McNally vision of the city? No. Take a drive up 95, get off at the Bridge Street exit, pass under the GREATER NORTHEAST sign, pass the landmark green Eagles school bus, plopped on the roof of an auto-body warehouse. That’s where you’ll find the myth, as you scan the crammed streets off Frankford, where you can’t find a parking space or a tree, where the boys go off to a war the rest of us are trying to ignore. The myth rises, from the bottom up, like hip-hop to the ’burbs. That means if you want to join the football fever, if you want to join in on the collective idea of “Philadelphia,” you’ve got to be real, authentic — it means getting in on the way it’s done here, the raw buildup 16 weeks a year in the fall, heading into a metaphoric war with a certain attitude.
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