I'm not going to b*tch about the football because I know it's a Big Thing, and I also know that as an American disliking football the way that I do, I am in the minority.
Having grown up watching rugby, I find that I am simply unable to take football seriously. They seem like rather similar sports, except that in football they stop the game every 8 seconds, and they have the players padded up to their eyeballs presumably so they do not get injured.
. . .
Rugby players do not wear padding.
But regardless of all that, I am still a Yank and so I will proclaim my allegiance to a football team if pressed to do so. I will support the Eagles, and I get a lot of sh*t from a lot of different people here in the NY/NJ area because of that. So now I shall explain myself.
I flat out refuse to support either of our "local" teams--the NY Giants or the NY Jets. Why? Here's their stadium:
Why oh why does New York get TWO teams and New Jersey gets NONE, despite the fact that both teams call New Jersey home?!? I find this preposterous and refuse to support such a grievous insult.
Even after explaining this to people, I still get "but WHY the Eagles?!??!"
I used to live in Philadelphia. Specifically, I lived in Philadelphia in 2005 when the Eagles played against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Eagles lost.
I have never seen such madness. CHAOS IN THE STREETS. It was like something out of an apocalyptic movie. The citizens of Philadelphia all LOST THEIR MINDS the minute that game ended, and took their insanity out on their own city.
That night, I was hanging out at a friend's apartment. He lived on the 3rd floor of his building, and across the street from The Irish Pub on Walnut Street. The Pub was packed, and in the apartments above it, people were having Super Bowl parties, so between the partiers and the pub-goers, we stayed up to date on the game without actually having to watch it (by shouting "what's the score?" out the window every so often). We watched a marathon of all the Alien movies instead, which both Chris and I found much more interesting than football.
We could generally tell how the game was going by watching the people at the party in the apartment directly across from us, and the people hanging out outside the Pub. It didn't seem to be going all that well.
When the game ended and we inquired as to the score from the people outside, we did not receive any answers; because it was at that point that everyone had lost their minds.
From our spot three floors up, Chris and I had an excellent view of the ensuing mayhem. People knocked over street signs and traffic light posts and street lights. They hurled dustbins and newspaper vending machines into the streets. They hurled them at cars. A couple dudes started throwing footballs around, which quickly escalated into a bunch of dudes attempting to bludgeon each other to death with footballs. People were screaming and yelling and swearing and sobbing.
AND THEN
two complete idiots (or perhaps they were just a bit touched in the head? I mean seriously, every sane person living on the East Coast knows that people in Philly are craycray about their sports) come out of a bar down the street
wearing Patriots jerseys.
It was like watching one of those nature documentaries, when the lions spot a couple stray hyenas in their territory.
The two Patriots fans got jumped by nine HUGE dudes. They didn't even get a warning. No foreplay of hostile words were exchanged, as would have been customary under the normal circumstances of drunken sports-related fights. No shouts or jeers from the Eagles fans as a preliminary show of hostility. Nope. The nine guys who attacked were actually that furious. And as far as Chris and I could tell, those nine dudes didn't even know each other.
Two cops saw the whole thing and attempted to break it up, with nightsticks.
They gave up after a couple seconds, and one of them radioed for back-up while the other watched the fight and tried to hide his proud smile for his fellow Philadelphians.
I stayed on Chris' couch that night, as we both agreed that it would probably not be safe for me to walk the 16 blocks back to my apartment alone. The next day, wandering around the city, I saw that it wasn't just the people near Chris' place that had gone mad with grief when the Eagles lost the Super Bowl--every part of the city that I saw was left in chaos. Cars destroyed, windows broken, whole city blocks T.P.'ed, traffic lights and sign posts and street lights laying in the street.... It was nuts. No one from New England was safe in Philadelphia for the next several months.
And that is why I support the Eagles. I'm not supporting the football team itself really; I support the Eagles' fans.
