Where Do Philadelphia Eagles Fans Come From? Part Two of Five

I had no idea how quickly this answer would come to me. Part one consisted of boyish dreams, newfound identity, a new group of heroes, and immediate success with a football team.

Part two would be a rude awakening.

It doesn't take much for a "fan" to suffer through great success. In fact, here in Vegas, we have a name for people that always bet the favorites: frontrunners. Most young fans start out this way, and I was no different.

However, the rite of passage into ANY fanbase would have to be the endurance of defeat and undying support in the face of failure.

At 14 years of age, I would find myself completing this rite, right away.
The 1981 season had a few upsides. My new team would go 6-0 right out of the gate and although the "dynasty" tag was not really thrown around in those days, there were a lot of Eagles believers back then.

Wilbert Montgomery would have one of the best seasons of his career, rushing for 1,400 yards and receiving another 500+ yards. We also boasted the No. 1 defense, led by third-year linebacker Jerry Robinson.

Jerry Sisemore was the lone representative of the offense that year in the Pro Bowl. Defensively, Jerry Robinson, Frank Lemaster, Charlie Johnson, and Roynell young would all make trips to the Pro Bowl. However, long before the season ended, my Eagles' season ended.

It all started to come unraveled around mid-season. The Eagles would lose six of their last 10 games to finish 10-6, only to be eliminated in the playoffs by the dreaded and all-evil Giants (with a defense led by a rookie kid named Lawrence Taylor).

It was a deflating end. The offense was snubbed in the Pro Bowl, despite having the fourth best rusher (and fourth best offense) in the league.

My old Raiders buddy, who was wallowing in the joy of a Super Bowl victory over my team, was now bitterly enduring a 7-9 season. The team name-calling began. Just about any derogatory reference for homosexual was retrofitted to the name Philadelphia.

Normally, I suppose I would have caved and safely move on to a team that was winning at the time. Cincinnati? San Francisco? I couldn't do it. For some reason, the childhood attacks galvanized my support for the team. I survived the onslaught and would utter those five magical words for the first time (of many times): "Just wait till next year."

Now, as a fledgling NFL fan, I didn't know much about draft prospects or anything even close to that. But I knew that our pick, No. 20, was not the best position to be picking from, and the guy we got was named "Mike Quick" and repeatedly, I heard announcers say, "His name is Quick, but he is anything but quick."

Little would I know that this first-round pick would be my only light in the dark cave of the seasons that would immediately follow.

They started the 1982 season with one loss and one win, and then they ended the 1982 season. The strike would shorten that year to nine games. My beloved Eagles, whom I SWORE would be back in 1982, came back from the strike to go 2-5, end up with a 3-6 record, and find themselves eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in four years.

What went wrong? It's hard to say. The coaching staff would claim, correctly, that the Eagles never really played good football from the middle of the 1981 season.

Dick Vermeil, my new hero, would quit and utter a phrase that would become a mainstream idiom; he claimed that he was "burned out."

Out came the detractors, more childhood name calling, and for me, I just learned to ignore it. I blamed it on the weird strike and guaranteed this team would be back next year! (There I go again.)

By this time, I was nearly 15 and had abandoned my childish plastic-helmet collection. Gone was the paper route. Now I had moved up to mowing lawns, digging ditches, and caring for plants at a plant store. Yep, I was big time, making a grand total of $3 an hour six hours a week!

It was around this time that I began to invest myself in the Eagles even more. I began to collect football cards like a insane little teenager. My family was poor during those years, and I wish I could say that I saved every penny and then hurriedly scampered to the 7-11 to buy some Topps football cards, but unfortunately, my youth was not quite Brady Bunch material.

In reality, I bought as many as I could honestly, the rest I "borrowed" with all the integrity of a Las Vegas teenager. Not the brightest moment of my childhood. But within a short time, I would go fully legit.

In those days, we didn't have the Internet with databasefootball.com or nfl.com to get our info. Most kids kept informed from the backs of these chipboard cheapie football cards. I was no different. I had fully immersed myself in the stats, records, and trivia that comprised the Philadelphia Eagles.

The time for my team was dark and only getting darker, but strangely, I had developed a trait that Eagles fans have come to know well: resolve.

Where do Eagles fans come from? They arise during times of plenty, but ultimately are strengthened during times of want.

Part Three will cover the plunge to rock bottom and strange hope that a cantankerous defensive coordinator and second-round draft pick would bring to the City of Brotherly Love.