Just wondering: When did “LOL” become “HaHa” in texting/messaging lingo, and why didn’t I get the memo? I’m always the last to know these things.
Personally, I preferred LOL — and the related LMAO and LMFAO — better. More options (don’t tell me “hahahaha” is a viable option), and more masculine. Can we make “LOL” for males and “HaHa” for the fairer sex?
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — High on the list of people surprised by the success of Nick Foles this past season might be Nick Foles himself.
That’s not to say he has self-esteem issues. He wouldn’t be able to complete a pass, even for a 2-yard gain on a third-an-12, at the NFL level without some faith in his own abilities.
He just doesn’t seem to come across with enough “it factor” to win over enough of a fan base that should be able to read through the well-crafted “St. Nick” act.
Foles chooses his words carefully, which may make him a yawner in a compare-contrast with, say, Seattle motormouth Richard Sherman. That ability to think before talking about teammates and opponents, lest his words come back to haunt him, should be encouraging. And yet, it seems to have the opposite effect.
Kind of amazing, really.
Foles had to win his quarterback job – both in college and in the pros – by overcoming the “not athletic enough” tag, which one would think would play in blue-collar Philadelphia, where fans go apoplectic at the sights and sounds of a “Rocky” film clip on the stadium screen at Lincoln Financial Field.
Foles will be the first to tell you he is neither reading his press clippings nor resting on his laurels. He is surely working on nuances to make him better in 2014, his first full year as a starter in the same NFL system.
But one might be wise to suggest some other changes – if not to Foles, then to his agent.
Perhaps he could try consulting the “Sons of Anarchy” people for a makeover. He could definitely rock the Jax Teller look, right down to the tattoos and the rings that could be visible at press conferences. Maybe he could hang with actor Charlie Hunnam to learn some swagger.
Do this – and maybe a minor scrape or two with the law that could be handled with a fine (we don’t need him missing film time in jail) – and we might be onto something.
This is a joke – in more ways than one.
It shouldn’t come down to something so superficial.
Not when one considers his on-field achievements.
As a second-year quarterback in the first year of a new system, he took losing out on the opening-day-starter job in stride, staying quietly confident that taking care of his own world would yield results.
It doesn’t take much deductive reasoning to draw a conclusion that while Michael Vick was tabbed by Chip Kelly to start the season, if only to avoid an insurrection in a locker room that holds Vick in high regard, Kelly knew he would need Foles sooner or later.
It stood to reason that at least one of the three “I’s” – injury, interceptions or ineffectiveness – by the aging Vick would put Foles back in the saddle to finish up another season and, at the very least, audition for his new coach.
Foles never came out and said as much, but you knew it was in the back of his mind that he had to stay ready so that he could seize the inevitable moment.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
After helping the Eagles save face – throwing a garbage-time touchdown pass to that superstar, Jeff Maehl – in an otherwise dismal loss in Denver to the eventual AFC champion Broncos, Foles had his number called the following week when Vick was hurt against the rival Giants in the Meadowlands, and he delivered a comeback win that ended a three-game losing skid.
Next was a highly efficient victory in Tampa Bay, to be followed by an off-kilter performance at home against Dallas with a chance to move the Eagles to 4-3 and put them in front in the weak NFC East.
At the time, the Eagles had extended their home losing streak to more than a calendar year, and the punch-drunk lowest common denominator among Eagles Nation had immediately written Foles off as nothing more than another Bobby Hoying or Kevin Kolb who should be custom fitted for a baseball cap and clipboard.
And nothing – not the seven touchdown passes at Oakland, the league-best quarterback rating (buoyed by a 27:2 touchdown-to-interception ratio) or the numerous statistical achievements that put him in franchise and NFL record books – could sway many of the unwashed masses.
Even as Foles prepares to appear in Sunday’s Pro Bowl, after being named to the squad as first alternate, they remain tepid in their enthusiasm, calling talk radio about players they once saw singe an inferior opponent in a collegiate mismatch.
It is as if they can’t forgive Foles for that one misstep in Game 7. It’s as if they still see him as the concussed Grinch who stole a perfect fall day, even though the offensive line had its worst game – failing to create holes for LeSean McCoy and establish a comfortable fortress in the pocket – and several passes that could have gotten the offense into its required rhythm were flat-out dropped.
He missed the next game with the aforementioned concussion. Vick started, but the hamstring gave out. The Eagles were adrift, at 3-5, at the midway point.
Foles started the rest of the games, and the Birds won seven of eight to finish 10-6. Even quarterbacks who take two seasons to throw 27 touchdown passes and one game to throw two picks get one-season passes from the fans for that.
But not here; not when you don’t have “it” going for you.
Foles came back and beat Dallas, in Dallas, to give the Eagles the division title in what – for all intents and purposes – was the season’s Super Bowl, but his game was only seen as “OK.”
In his first career playoff start, he rallied the Eagles against the New Orleans, only to watch helplessly – like everyone else – as the special teams and defense let it end on a field goal to lift the Saints to victory as time expired.
Critics point to two major lapses in judgment – holding the ball too long and taking a sack back to the edge of field goal range and an ill-conceived intentional grounding penalty – against the Saints as automatic deductions on his final grade, which is fair.
Talk still stirs of a mystical “franchise quarterback” – an error-free superhuman athlete that really only exists on NFL Films cut-ups – when one has already materialized in front of them.
One only needed to watch the playoffs after the Eagles were eliminated to see quarterbacks deemed to be of a more exotic species of signal caller who made a multitude of mistakes – some mental, some forced by defenses who happen to have a say in the matter sometimes – but weren’t judged as harshly.
There are some in the media, even though they should know better, who lob the same slow-pitch softballs at Kelly about Foles’ long-range future over center. Exasperated with the same laborious line of questioning, Kelly gives underwhelming responses that only fuel more speculation.
Maybe Kelly needs to learn the rules of NFL coachspeak and realize that the quarterback is different from, say, the long snapper. Instead, probably as he did at Oregon, he makes it known that all jobs are open and does not expect to have answer the same question a zillion times.
And then there are the sexy names coming out of the college ranks this year. Three quarterbacks – Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater, Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and Central Florida’s Blake Bortles – are likely to go well before the Eagles pick at No. 22 in the first round. Two other big-name guys – Fresno State’s Derek Carr and Clemson’s Tajh Boyd – have seen their stock drop and could easily be there.
Would they pounce if a top guy slid? Would they mortgage other picks and trade up? Would they take Carr or Boyd at No. 22?
It’s kind of like asking if they would take a running back, even though they have McCoy.
Anything is possible.
But it’s highly unlikely, given the Eagles’ other needs heading into a season when a tougher schedule means a replication of 2013 is anything but assured.
If you subscribe to the belief that it was a lot of smoke and mirrors in 2013, then luxuries at skill positions where they are set are something they cannot afford.
After two years of getting no bounces or breaks – at all – the Eagles seemed to get their fair share this past season. There were some injuries, but nothing reaching the obnoxious level of the previous two years that made one wonder if the team was placed under a curse the day vagabond quarterback Vince Young called them the “Dream Team” prior to the 2011 season.
The most significant injury was to Vick. It was a pulled hamstring that he could have played with – at half-speed – if there were no other alternatives.
But there was an alternative.
It was Nick Foles.
Sorry if he is St. Nick and not Jax Teller.
Just a reality.
Here are some others.
Foles is playing this year at $750,880, which equates to fast-food pay for someone we can conservatively call an up-and-coming quarterback (Note: Even if the Eagles’ brass wanted to take his contract and tear it up so they can negotiate a long-term deal, they are prohibited from doing so.).
This is where common sense meets dollars and sense. Even if Foles isn’t the quarterback Kelly ultimately wants for his system, the NFL is a business. He can’t just go recruit three more quarterbacks and let them all battle it out in spring practice.
Even if Foles weren’t coming off a near-perfect season, it would be bad business to add another high-end quarterback prospect when there are holes that need to be filled – in free agency, but mostly the draft – for the Eagles to rise to next year’s set of very real challenges.
If there is a step back in Year 2 of the Kelly Era – even cosmetically, because of the tougher schedule and/or some bad breaks and torn ACLs – it likely won’t be because of Foles.
He makes too many right decisions and not enough wrong ones, on and off the field.
And in the unlikely event that a decline is his fault, go ahead and clamor for that bumper crop of quarterbacks – UCLA’s Brett Hundley, Florida State’s Jameis Winston and Oregon’s (and Kelly’s) Marcus Mariotta, as well as others who don’t yet have the national profile – awaiting in the 2015 draft.
Who knows? Maybe one of those guys has “it.”
The column originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics. com
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — When a twister blows through a small town in Tornado Alley, the whole community rallies.
They are hoping — and expecting — outside help, but they don’t wait on it.
They galvanize, and take action — as a whole — as soon as the storm passes.
They do it themselves.
A slow, silent and subtle storm has left the Norristown Area School District leveled.
The once-proud athletic tradition is a shell of its former self.
And with the athletic director and head football coach jobs up for grabs, the community has been put to the apathy test.
The good news is that there are positive signs.
On Monday night, there will be a meeting to plot a course about where to go from here.
And when you have suffered to ignominy of losing football games to schools — like Springfield-Montco — that once were deemed not even fit to take to the same field as Norristown, you can’t shrug it off.
When private and parochial schools are picking the bones of your home-grown talent and leaving only a skeleton behind, it’s time to act.
Monday’s meeting will not be a pleasant gathering over tea and crumpets, nor should it be.
The tornado has left devastation in its wake, and it can’t be more of a mess when the meeting adjourns.
The encouraging sign is that many former athletes who gave blood, sweat and tears into sports at the school are among the loudest voices.
Let’s hope that the power brokers — that being the school board — are there, listening, with open minds.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — Heading into the 2013 NFL season, there wasn’t much talk about it lasting until 2014.
Not for the Philadelphia Eagles.
That was only for the few, the proud and those fortunate enough to catch breaks and avoid broken bones.
After a two-year downhill slide into the abyss of the league’s landfill, there should have been modest expectations under first-year coach Chip Kelly.
For starters, Kelly was coming out of the college ranks with new approaches voted by pundits as most likely to be boom-or-bust; revolutionary or revolting.
And it was with a roster of players held over from a team that finished 4-12, a mark even worse than face value when one considers the team started off 3-1.
The Eagles played it close to the vest in free agency, opting for some players salvaged from the league’s recycling bin.
Some in Eagleville not only predicted another 4-12 year, they wanted one. The somewhat misguided thought being the team could use another high draft pick. But the empires that are NFL powerhouses – unlike in the NBA and NHL – aren’t built that way.
It takes a village to win a Super Bowl, and one player doesn’t make a village.
Most predictions ranged in the 6-10 to 8-8 range. It was believed that, if the NFC East didn’t have a dominant team, it was there for the taking with a mark above .500.
But the reality was that this season was about changing the culture. The wins, likely in the second year of Kelly’s tenure, would follow.
Lo and behold, they came a lot sooner. The Eagles were 1-3 after four games and 3-5 after eight before finishing on a 7-1 tear that concluded with that NFC East-clinching victory, down in Dallas, over a Cowboys’ team that entered the year with much higher expectations.
After Brandon Boykin’s interception sealed the deal, and splattered egg whites on Jerry Jones’ face, the Eagles said all the right things about not being done.
The reality, though, was that game was this year’s pinnacle. It was their Super Bowl. They won. An unlikely banner will join the others at Lincoln Financial Field, where the rabid fans would trade all the division and conference flags for a championship one.
The Eagles took on the New Orleans Saints, just a few years removed from a Super Bowl title, in round one of the playoffs. The game was at the Linc and the Saints had never won a road playoff game – except the Super Bowl, of course – in their history.
Didn’t matter. The Eagles fought back from a 20-7 deficit to take 24-23 lead, but lost on last-second field goal.
Many were left agonizing over the loss – tossing and turning, crying out “if they had done this instead of that, that instead of this, they could and should and would have won.”
But then the realization of all that was accomplished takes hold.
The magical mystery tour lasting a bit longer would have been cool, but the reality is that this is not a Super Bowl team.
But it was a playoff team, one that became relevant again. They were the talk of the league, stumbling upon a franchise quarterback (Nick Foles) who led the circuit in QB rating and a running back (LeSean McCoy) who led it in rushing.
After the indignity of having no players make the Pro Bowl a year earlier, they had two (tackle Jason Peters and McCoy) make it this year. Three players (Peters, McCoy and guard Evan Mathis) were selected first-team All-Pro.
Those were the types of things that used to ring hollow when Andy Reid’s Eagles repeatedly came up short of Super Bowl expectations, but they are indicators that we have been officially greeted by a new dawn.
While presumptions that the Eagles have been cleared for takeoff to future Super Bowls might be premature, as the NFL graveyard is laden with cautionary tales of first-year coaches who never matched their rookie-year successes, there is a sense that this was more than happenstance.
If the Eagles had gone 4-12, it would have raised more questions than answers.
Instead, the players – from veterans to young bucks – bought what the coach was selling.
The culture was changed.
Shortly after the loss to New Orleans, probably the best team the Eagles faced since getting pounded by Peyton Manning at the Denver Broncos in what seemed like a lifetime ago, owner Jeffrey Lurie put his hurt aside and placed the loss in the proper perspective.
“When you make a coaching change, you have to transform to a new culture,” Lurie said. “These players and the coaching staff just formed an incredible bond, ability to prepare and an ability to win. That can take years, and they did it in six months. That is what is so great here.
“We are all crushed to be eliminated. We are in this because we love it so much. But I have no doubt that we will be back and that we are more confident than ever, now that we know what we can accomplish.”
Some of that is spin, but most is truth.
They say the truth hurts.
This team – to borrow from John Mellencamp – made it hurt so good.
This column originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com
By GORDON GLANTZ
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE – We all live with regret, and sometimes it’s the little moments – the seemingly innocuous choices to put the left foot in front of the right – that rise to the top of the list as the calendar unmercifully flips from year to year.
Let us board a time machine and travel back to the summer of 1986. My father had rented a house in the mountainous woods of Vermont for the summer.
After taking advantage of the freedom of no parental supervision for weeks on end, my sister and I went there for a week in late August.
It was a pretty cool place, with the feel of an old-fashioned log cabin but modern amenities that included a Jacuzzi the size of a small swimming pool.
I remember being at a creative peak as a songwriter – and guitar player (something I have since given up) – and using the long car rides to plays at places like the campus of Williams College and shopping outlets as fodder for whatever deep thinking a 21-year can have (brains don’t fully develop until the ages of 24 and 30).
And now, for that moment of regret.
It should have been when I lost my temper when everyone in the car – father, step-mother and sister – mocked Suzanne Vega’s first “tape” after 10 seconds into the first song, but I’m still proud that I defended Suzanne’s honor (even though she rightfully looked at me like a stalker when I was first in line and babbling like an idiot when we saw her at the Sellersville Theater a few years back).
Plus, the joke was on them when Vega had a big hit a year later with “Luka.”
No, it came when my sister and I went to a concert in whatever nearby sign of civilization that served as the pseudo-downtown area.
The featured act was Woodstock hero Richie Havens. We walked into what was basically a glorified barn with a bunch of benches laid out in front of a stage.
While the latent hippie types malingered, we went straight to the front row.
I briefly noticed a few homemade cassette tapes that had the name “Rod MacDonald” written on them in magic marker, but gave it no real thought — other than my own musical endeavor, The Last Wave, was not much different (except we weren’t warming up for Richie Havens and never made it out of my basement, except to record some songs in my guitar teacher’s basement).
MacDonald took the stage with an acoustic guitar and rolled through a set of well-written songs that he set up with poignant and witty stories.
I had him pegged as either a 1960s has-been or wannabe who, through bad luck, had been nothing more than a regional New England act.
Then he finished his set with what he jokingly said was his “hit song.”
Actually, as benches began to slow fill with earth-shoe-wearing refugees from New York City and Boston, there seemed to be some measure of familiarity with the song – “Stop The War” – in the audience of less than 200.
As a songwriter type myself, I listened intently and was spellbound by the lyrics.
I was expecting a leftover Vietnam-era song, but it was one of those songs that can fit like a hand in a glove at any place in time.
Through the years, the words of the chorus managed to stick:
“Stop the war, Stop War
Stop the War within yourself
And you won’t have to fight with anyone else.”
After MacDonald was done playing, I ventured to the back of the “theater” to locate a bathroom and maybe grab a snack.
I noticed the tapes still there, and figured that I would wait until after the Richie Havens performance and pick one up.
Havens then played, and I was enthralled at his unique guitar style that I have later learned was due to him being self-taught.
He ran through a bunch of songs – including plenty written by Bob Dylan, who I was all about that summer (even more than Bruce Springsteen) – and brought the crowd into a bit of a frenzy with “Freedom,” the song he rocked a much larger throng with at Woodstock.
The show had ended and we exited into my father’s waiting car out front.
It didn’t hit me until halfway home that I never picked up MacDonald’s tape.
Maybe it was because I was riding a buzz that both Havens and his backup guitar player acknowledged me with winks and nods for appreciating the performance with such intensity. Maybe it was because my sister wasn’t feeling well (or at least that it what she said).
Or maybe it was that underdeveloped brain of mine.
The following morning, back in town, MacDonald was in the same diner eating breakfast with his manager. The G2 of today would have approached, heaped platitudes upon him, told him I was an aspiring songwriter myself and asked about buying a tape.
But I was more timid back then.
It left me with regret.
I thought I had read somewhere that MacDonald had died, but I must’ve Googled the wrong dude.
He is not only alive, but his career has gone well from those days of selling homemade tapes. He was not really the 1960s leftover I imagined, as he was just building his reputation in the 1980s as key cog in the folk revival in Greenwich Village.
And his under-the-radar music has come a long way, in terms of availability.
Just about all of his songs – many of which have been covered by a plethora of quality acts – are available on iTunes.
Including not one, but two versions of “Stop The War.”
First verse about a general. Second verse about a stock brocker.
You get the picture.
A lot of people are busy making New Year’s resolutions, and I usually do the same.
A few years back, I decided to make them more inward than outward (losing weight, exercise, etc.).
In 20I1, I tried letting things slide.
LOL.
Come 2012, I tried not caring what other people think about me.
More LOL.
In 2013, there was the old attempt at not worrying about what is out of my control.
LMAO.
Well, in 2014, I’m going to raise the bar.
And really, when I look in the mirror at the well-meaning but flawed being glaring back, it’s not a laughing matter.
I’m going to stop the war.
The war within myself.
So that I don’t have to fight with anyone else.
To Rod MacDonald, thanks.
I may have forgotten to buy your tape back when my brain was not fully developed, but I never forgot your words.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — To know me is to know that I have been known to be a sore loser.
And having Blood Type G-negative – as in green, with a glass-half-empty view – I don’t take losses by the Philadelphia Eagles well.
Never have, never will.
The only salve in a gaping wound that began with a small-but-decisive cut in 1970, when I went to my first game at Franklin Field (a 34-20 loss to the then-St. Louis Cardinals), would be bearing witness to a Super Bowl title before my eyes develop cataracts and my ears go completely deaf.
Therefore, it should go without saying that I have been taking Sunday’s figurative failure to disembark from the team plane in Minnesota – and the subsequent 48-30 setback – pretty tough.
But I still slept tight Sunday night.
And awoke Monday morning to smell the gravy.
Because the rest of the season, as I see it, is just that.
Gravy.
While taking the post-game temperature of the Eagle Nation, I found myself at peace. My usual subjectivity on the Eagles was wrestled to the ground and forced to tap out by overwhelming objectivity.
Falling to Minnesota was, in a vacuum, a bad loss.
But as a bad losses go, I’m kind of enjoying it.
Some of it has to do with the Dallas Cowboys doing their December Dane and choking against Green Bay – falling, 37-36, to remain a game behind the Eagles in the NFC East.
The end of the game was more humorous than an old episode of “All In The Family.”
Quarterback Tony Romo remained a Santa figure for opposing defenses each holiday season, with his smirk transformed into a dazed gaze. Head coach Jason Garrett looked like he lost his best friend. Owner/emperor Jerry Jones was mortified. Diva/receiver Dez Bryant left the sideline and walked up the tunnel – to cry, he claims, in the locker room – something that would have made Eagles’ fans go ape-sugar had DeSean Jackson done the same thing.
The reality is that the one-game edge on the Cowboys is just window dressing because it can be erased in the season finale, with the tie-breaker for the division going to Dallas.
Of the four scenarios, only one – a Dallas loss to Washington and an Eagles’ win over Chicago – would end the division battle a week earlier than expected.
That means there is a 75 percent chance it will come down to the finale.
Me? Nervous?
I am the good humor man for reasons beyond Dallas’ possible implosion that may make the Eagles the team to beat, even on the road, in that showdown.
It is because the Eagles, in head coach Chip Kelly’s first season, are even in this position.
My perception – forming my reality – is that the season is already a success. Anything that happens now is gravy.
Other than my ultra-optimistic older cousin Alan, who was more of an aware follower than a fan when the franchise plummeted off the radar after the 1960 title and didn’t reappear until Dick Vermeil turned it around nearly two decades later, no one thought a record of above .500 – and a division title – was realistic.
Most of us were braced for a transitional season.
In my season preview for PhillyPhanatics.com, I was Captain Hedge. I said that if everything went wrong, like in 2012, expect 4-12. I conceded that with some bounces and breaks, maybe a ceiling of 8-8. I added that if one or more NFC East rivals completely fell apart – like the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants ended up doing – maybe 9-7. But, given the Eagles’ nightmarish schedule – first three games under a new regime in 11 days and no bye until Week 11 – the most we could hope for was 6-10.
And 6-10, with a sense of direction, was going to feel a whole lot better than the 4-12 while wandering aimlessly through the desert like the previous season.
If and when the Eagles hoist the Lombardi Trophy, I can cross off the top item on my bucket list. Temple beating Penn State in football and the Flyers winning another cup after six straight losses in the finals can then move up.
I’ll think of my late father, who took me to my first game – and countless others – and excuse myself from the room and shed more than a tear.
And then I’ll take out a second mortgage and buy myself a replica Super Bowl ring and wear it every day on my right ring finger, just as I wear my wedding band every day on my left.
The Eagles are two good seasons away from being a serious contender. That’s when I will take losses like last Sunday a little more to heart again.
If the Minnesota game taught us anything, it is that the defense is not where it needs to be. The ongoing struggles on special teams show a lack of overall talent and depth.
And that’s fine. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but there was the confidence that it would be.
This season was more about a change of culture than wins and losses.
And the culture has changed, and beyond expectations.
Listen to sports-talk radio. It’s about all of this – the present – not who they might sign in free agency in February or draft in April.
Turn on the TV, to ESPN or the NFL Network. On a national level, the Eagles are intriguing. They are relevant. Back from the dead.
The Eagles are in the discussion again, and on the screen with their little playoff graphics.
Speaking of which, if the season ended now, the Eagles would host the San Francisco 49ers. That’s the same 49ers that were in the Super Bowl last season.
That doesn’t sound like a favorable matchup. It sounds like a loss.
It might be tough to swallow, at least for a night, but it’s all good.
They were somewhere no one – except my cousin Alan – thought they would be.
We were lamenting Sunday’s loss – as we should be, to a certain extent – but look at the calendar. It’s mid-December, and the Eagles were playing a meaningful game.
A year ago, we were either shrugging off late-season losses or hoping for more to get a higher pick in the first round. That’s a long way to come in a short period of time.
Change of culture might be a tame way to put it.
This has been a stone cold culture shock.
And I’m enjoying every minute of it, even after the losses.
Originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com
ingordonville 