Wake Me When the Dream's Over

Somehow, my senses were cruelly deceived yesterday. I could swear that I witnessed the Philadelphia Eagles -- yes, the IGGLES! -- gain an easy birth in the Super Bowl. Clearly, such a preposterous notion simply can't be accurate. Philly sports teams don't play in championships. Lucky breaks don't happen to our teams. Generations of boys aren't supposed to come of age with a winning team in town. In Philly, we are trained from birth to expect the most from our sports franchises. We bleed Iggles green and can conduct educated discourse for hours on any football related subject. We drink beer at 6:00 AM in 17 degree weather. We're a tough city. We have working class roots, blue collar jobs, and our women love the team too. We play smashmouth, hard-nose football. We HATE the Dallas Cowboys. Our fans are more astute when it comes to football nuance than any other city in the world. We throw snowballs at Santa Clause. We breeze through the regular season year after year, only to suffer excruciating heartbreak in the post season. Randall Cunningham tears his knee in the early 90s. McNabb fractures a fibula in '03. Brian Westbrook separates a shoulder in '04. T.O. goes down with a broken ankle in '05. Three consecutive NFC championship losses. No championship in the 4 major sports in the past 23 years. The longest championship draught in any city to field teams in the 4 major sports. Not a single title in MY LIFETIME. This is the agony that is Philadelphia. We are one team, one city, one dream. The Super Bowl.

I am so fucking excited! This is one of the defining moments of my lifetime, nay, GENERATION to date. I saved copies of the New York Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Philadelphia Inquirer today so I can add to my newspaper collection, which includes RFK's assassination, Princess Di's death, and 9/11. I love this game, I love this town, and I love this team. It's time to bring home a championship and start the ticker-tape parade down Broad Street. These players will go down as gods in the annals of Philadelphia sports history. Can you feel it?

Music of the Moment: "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC