Buddy Ryan, head coach, Philadelphia Eagles, 1986-1990:
We are punished for the sins of the father…
In part 1 of this article, we looked at three reasons why we Eagles fans are hated so much, especially by fans in Dallas, New York and Washington. So far, we’ve identified:
—People think we’re all alike in Philadelphia: nasty, provincial and obnoxious; they don’t know the better half of us who respect and honor the legacies of other NFL teams;
—People think all Eagles fans are just like “Paulie” in Rocky, and some people simply hate Italian-Americans, which they figure is what we all are;
—People think Chuck Bednarik was gloating over a fallen Frank Gifford in 1960, they think we all loved it, and they don’t know the true inside story behind the photograph of the event.
Now in Part 2, it gets more personal: we get into areas of real emotion and true confession…
Buddy Ryan’s personal hatred of Tom Landry and the Dallas organization turned a whole nation of Cowboys’ fans against us— Buddy Ryan was an obnoxious, loudmouthed and cocky head coach who would deliberately avoid end-of-game handshakes with opposing coaches. He made no bones about his dislike of Tom Landry, and when coach Landry ran up the score on Ryan’s replacement-player Eagles during the 1987 strike year, Ryan called out all Cowboys fans as cowards and vowed revenge on Landry.
CBS fueled the fires of Dallas fans’ newfound hatred of Philly fans by promoting the Bounty Bowls— Once it was revealed that Buddy Ryan had put out a $200 “bounty” on the heads of kicker Luis Zendejas and quarterback Troy Aikman during the 1989 season, CBS Sports shamelessly jumped on the controversy and promoted the Eagles-Cowboys game of November 23, 1989, at Texas Stadium, as “Bounty Bowl I”, and then the December 10 game at the Vet as “Bounty Bowl II”. CBS even had their graphics department make up “Wanted” posters of bounty victims and perpetrators to hype the games for TV ratings. At the December 10 game at the Vet, snowballs, ice, beer and all manner of junk items were flying from the stands and aimed at the Cowboys and the refs. By the way, Philly won both those games, and Dallas was in the middle of a horrible season…which only made Dallas fans hate Eagles fans worse than ever.
Philly fans cheered Michael Irvin’s career-ending spinal cord injury at the Vet—In the 5th game of 1999, all-Pro receiver Michael Irvin’s Dallas Cowboy career ended as he was carried off the field on a stretcher. I wasn’t there, but saw it on TV, as I’d estimate half the crowd at the Vet stood up and mocked the fallen Irvin with derisive cheering. Personally, the crowd reaction sickened me; I knew it was the culmination of the hatred fostered in the Buddy Ryan era. To be accurate, the crowd at the Vet did not know the finality of the injury—they thought Irvin was just knocked out. And remember, Michael Irvin in those days was kind of a “gangsta” cartoon character to most folks, with his years of multiple arrests, assaults, and possession charges, and of course my favorite memory of him, when he showed up to a court hearing wearing a full-length mink coat. However, with the cheering of his injury, Eagles fans would never be forgiven by Cowboys fans, and there would be no turning back.
A series of flawed Owners turned Eagles fans into cynics and whiners—We had a bad run of ownership in the ’60’s, ’70’s and ’80’s, an unusually long duration of incompetence even by NFL standards. These owners, including Jerry Wolman (1963-68), Leonard Tose (1969-84) and Norman Braman (1985-94) had made fortunes in construction, trucking and auto dealerships, respectively, but none were very proficient in running a football team, and each had many personal distractions outside football. The result: a lot of Eagles fans became harsh, cynical critics and gained a national reputation for whining about their team and its owners. Other fans around the league picked up on it and labeled us a bunch of moaning losers…and it was another reason to hate us.
The whole Santa Claus thing was hyped over the moon by New York media— At the end of a 2-12 season in December of 1968, owner Jerry Wolman’s Washington-based construction empire was collapsing. His final “gift” to the fans at Franklin Field was a Christmas halftime pageant. Unfortunately, the profesional Santa Claus whom Wolman had hired could not make it to the game because of heavy snow. So Wolman picked a skinny 20-year-old in a Santa suit out of the crowd. The kid’s name was (and still is) Frank Olivio. Wolman had the 50-piece brass band start up and paraded Olivio out with fifty Eaglettes dressed as Elves. 54,535 fans in the stands booed—they’d been promised a real Santa Claus, not this skinny kid who appeared nervous and out of place, and began pelting Olivio with snowballs. The moment came and went. It would have remained a forgotten in-house parochial event, except Howard Cosell got hold of the footage in his New York studio and decided to beam it around the country on his national TV sports show. Thus an urban tale was blown up into massive Philly-fan hatred by Cosell and the New York media. Many in the media condemned Eagles fans for desecrating the spirit of Christmas, and some even said it was “like spitting on Miss America”…Man, it was just a passing moment of disgust with Wolman, a crummy pageant and a bad Eagles football team that year. Thanks a lot, Howard…
People think we booed McNabb on his Draft Day—Again with the urban tale gone wrong…What really happened was WIP Radio sent 30 knuckleheads up to New York on Draft Day in 1999 with orders to boo the Eagles’ first draft pick if it turned out to be “anybody but Ricky Williams”…. These boneheads had no idea if McNabb would be #1 or not…they were just following WIP’s command to attract attention to the radio station’s big Ricky Williams promotion. Of course, the New York media pounced on the angle of how obnoxious and mean Eagles fans are when the 30 goons started booing, and the media demanded an apology from the Eagles organization on behalf of McNabb, who was clearly befuddled and somewhat distressed by the weird reception. But do New York fans blame WIP Radio for that embarrassing moment caused to their kid from Syracuse? No, they blame you and me….
And that concludes today’s lesson of why we Eagles fans are so hated, and why being a Philadelphia Eagles fan can often be described as a “Miserable Joy”…
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