The Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl Champions.
The Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl Champions.
The Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl Champions.
Nope, it doesn't get old.
If you follow on any social media - and if you do, I appreciate it - you may have been surprised that while I talked some noise prior to the game, i was relatively quiet during it. I've mentioned in the past that the lines are blurred between 80 Minutes of Regulation and friendly, mild-mannered Curtis, and frankly, Curtis was far to engrossed in this game to give "content". Simply put, this was the game - and subsequently the outcome - that has meant the most of me in all of sport.
There have been scant few times when I've gotten to see "my" team win a championship. There have been some misses - Super Bowl XXXIX and the 2001 NBA Finals come to mind - but rarely have I seen a team I claim hoist the ultimate prize, and never has it been a team I care about as much as the Eagles. To name a few, in no particular order:
-2004 Boston Red Sox. To the degree that I care about baseball - not much - I'm a Red Sox fan. 2004 was about a point in time in history and the shattering of an 86 year curse that it made me feel in a way that I can't claim with the 2007 or 2013 titles. Still, baseball's not my thing, so happy as I was, I deflected the joy to my Boston area friends who were living this in a way I could not yet fathom.
-2008 Philadelphia Phillies. As noted above, I'm not a Phillies fan, but this one wasn't for the team, it was for the city, finally tunneling out of a 25 year, 100 season drought in the four major sports.
-2013 Carolina Crown. Crown finally made it to the mountaintop after some near misses in the previous seasons. I actually experienced the 2013 awards ceremony from a hotel in Virginia while traveling.
-2002 Maryland Terrapins men's basketball. Though admittedly, the Final Four loss the year prior, which I experienced from College Park, probably had more of an impact on me.
-1999/2011 Baltimore Ravens. I experienced the 2000 Super Bowl from the game room at UMBC. The Ravens weren't my team, I was only a semester into my Baltimore identity formation, and I wasn't nearly the sports fan then that I am now, but there was something about that city literally and figuratively lighting up purple. By the 2012 Super Bowl, I was all in, having done an entire undergraduate career and marrying into a Ravens family by that point.
-2003 Delaware Blue Hens football. I didn't go to UD, but the jerseys said Delaware.
Honorable mention: 2008 Phantom Regiment (I'm not typically a phan, but I was that year), 2017 North Carolina A&T Aggies football (Aggie Adjacent Pride!)
While I had some ownership of each of those, Sunday night was truly mine.
