The Super Bowl is days away. Philadelphia is still in the thrall of an all-Eagles news cycle that will continue until the middle of next week, if the city is lucky. A lot has gone on in the week and a half since the Eagles won the NFC title game—according to the local news.
Fans have gotten Eagles haircuts. People have gotten Eagles casts. A fan held up an Eagles sign at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Someone also held up an Eagles flag in a fighter jet. And obviously there was an African grey parrot who knows the “E-A-G-L-E-S!” chant.
Betsy Ross has been flying an Eagles flag all week. Ross and Paul Revere even made a bet on the game, and some trash talking ensued: “Those Bostonians, I sometimes think that they have puffed themselves up so much, just like a proverbial Boston cream pie. They should remember that pride goeth before a fall. And those Patriots will fall to our Eagles!” Burn!
To celebrate the team reaching the Super Bowl, the Medical Examiner’s Office is auctioning off Eagles pendants that were found on dead people. More good news for the living: The Eagles’ run to the Super Bowl means more people are giving to food banks and other charities.
Ex-players have gotten into Eagles fever as well. Fred Gloden, who played for the Eagles in 1941, lives at an assisted-living facility in Northeast Philly and is still a huge fan of the team. The 99-year-old’s seen almost every Eagles game ever played!
Not everything is positive, though. A video game predicted the Patriots will beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl. It gets worse. April the Giraffe picked the Patriots, too. “FOX 29, after a long working relationship with April the Giraffe, regrets the unfortunate circumstances,” the station reported.
The week hasn’t been free of controversy, either. Some are upset that the Eagles picked a Meek Mill song as their unofficial anthem.
Eagles fever is spreading outside of the city, too. The mayor of Bangor, Pennsylvania (pronounced “banger”) went on TV in a bootleg Eagles shirt to talk about her bet with the mayor of Bangor, Maine (pronounced “bang-OR”). “This is a great way to highlight the town I’m the mayor of,” she told WFMZ-TV. “I love living here. I love my borough.”
And what about the Coal Region? You better believe they’re psyched for the Eagles, too. Here’s a Schuylkill County home lit up in green for the Birds. Lancaster’s excited about Lancaster Lebanon League alum Frank Reich, the Eagles offensive coordinator.
Obviously fans are going wild in New Jersey, too. The mayor of Collingswood declared it against the law to fly a Patriots flag. The borough will shut off the water of anyone refusing to take down a Pats flag. (He was joking, probably.) Delaware is also excited: An auto repair shop put a sign up reading “We fix cars better than the Patriots fix games.”
Some people are just itching to get into the news. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro tweeted about an “investigation” he did into the Patriots, then tagged virtually every media outlet imaginable to let them know about it. Professional! And silly, because the local news will cover anything about the Eagles this week.
Really. Here’s a new story about an Eagles-themed light display. Here’s the owner of a local bar chain telling NBC 10 that “sex is better” when the Eagles win. And we’re well into the second week of the “Who does Alexa think will win the Super Bowl?” story. Will Smith even wrote an Eagles poem.
Keep in mind I haven’t even gotten into the dozens of stories about businesses selling Eagles-themed food, t-shirts or whatever else they can slap an Eagles logo on.
It’s been all Eagles, all the time in Philadelphia. But there is some good news if you’re not a fan of football. NBC 10 will still air This Is Us, even if the Eagles win.