Why Do We Care So Much?

That’s why Dick and Buddy became so powerful for us, the leading figures in the ultimate us-against-them that football poses. Myths require heroes, and heroes have to have their own trials, have to overcome some big-time trouble. Vermeil’s ungodly fervor — that’s what got him past the California college-guy thing, in our view. In fact, Vermeil is more like us than we ever knew: His father worked day and night in his mechanic shop in their Napa backyard, and Dick joined him, full-time, the day he graduated from school — grammar school. There was no choice: “I was afraid of my father,” Vermeil remembers now. All we knew was that he was spending all those sleepless nights at the Vet and crying on Leonard Tose’s lapel, and we watched him crack up. That was good enough for us.

With Buddy, it’s easy to believe he came from shit-scrub Oklahoma, grew up without indoor plumbing, would spend his Sunday afternoons with his three brothers, throwing a rope around four cottonwoods, where the quartet would fight each other until Buddy, the oldest, would get whipped by his two-fisted roustabout father. Christ, that way of dealing was written all over Buddy. What’s surprising is the Buddy you meet now, out in Shelbyville, Kentucky, at the farm where he breeds Thoroughbreds. He’s still trying to find a winner.

One of his horses is named Fired for Winning — sweet! A stick-it-to-Norman-Braman name Buddy could prance about at the Kentucky Derby. How old is Fired for Winning? I wonder.

“Well, let’s see,” Buddy says. “What year did we get fired? Ninety? Ninety-one?”

Buddy goes around, stall to stall, with a hose, releasing a stream of water into a big bucket at each.

“Peaceful animals,” I offer.

“Aren’t they?” he says.

We stand there for a moment, Buddy crimping the hose as he admires a set of packed haunches. Oh, Lord. In search of Buddy Ryan, I’ve discovered Wilford Brimley — he could care less about Norman Braman. It will take me a while, but finally I’ll realize: That’s exactly right.

Because this side of Buddy — nuzzling mares with sloppy kisses — that’s him, too. Driving his players crazy was tough Buddy-love, and oh, could we feel that, the way his players responded with ferocious effort.

Vermeil and Ryan gave us so much — such vivid, large guys, and of course they had to be good — they pulled us further in. And we started playing it out — our idea of ourselves, our idea of “Philly,” in a deeper, needier, crazier way, the only bus-rockin’ way we knew how.

That rep we’ve got as sports fans, that craziness everybody has seen on TV. We know what it’s all about: It’s about love.


SO HERE WE ARE.

Margaret and Sean Gardner, two South Jersey kids, fell in love, got married, had two girls. Seven years ago, they joined a 12-person tailgating group. Tailgating starts at 6 a.m. on game days, including Monday night games. There’s drinking, a DJ, dancing, napping, drinking, beanbag horseshoes, and, of course, drinking. “Those are eight days out of my year that I live for,” says Margaret. The other tailgaters have become their best friends. Going down to Jacksonville in an RV with them to the Super Bowl, she says, was the best experience of her life.

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