The Best Thing This Week: Whatever Happens in the Super Bowl

Fans wait in line to view the Lombardi trophy at the NFL Experience for the NFL Super Bowl 52 in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

So many great, funny, clever ideas have been springing up in our town: rebranding Boston Market!  Green beer at McGillin’s for the first time ever! Underdog bone pretzels! Battles of the Brews! Skulduggery at the Patriots Gallery at the AmRev Museum! Foles-gers coffee! Chris Long’s tattoo wager!  More national news coverage than anybody had time to read! After so many decades of dire sports frustration, Philly at last seems on the brink of something new and different: winning! But in these past two weeks of burgeoning buildup, we found ourselves thinking the unthinkable: What if after all this, we lose? What if despite the city’s pride and fervor and camaraderie and good-natured jesting, those goddamn Patriots pull it off again?

This plunged us into an all-too-familiar black pit of despair … for the space of five minutes. Then we cheered right back up. And that, green-shirted, green-haired, green-faced, green wedding-caked friends, is the surest sign yet that this city has changed. This won’t be our last shot. Not by a long shot. (Remember that Carson Wentz dude?) Win or lose in this game, we’ll be standing right here again, soon. And that should make every Philadelphian feel—dare we say it? — all warm and fuzzy.