By GORDON GLANTZ

Gordonglantz50@gmail.com

@Managing2Edit

GORDONVILLE — I have a sports bucket list, which certainly varies from my overall bucket list of life and how I’d like to live it here on the back nine (rare golf reference, so call the papers that are actually still in business).

Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, is aware that the Eagles winning a Super Bowl sits atop this list and is looking way down on all others. I would venture to say it laps the field so much that it occupies the top three spots.

The thing is this – I’m not a greedy dude.

I don’t need a dynasty. I don’t need three titles in four years or anything of the sort. My blood pressure probably couldn’t take it anyway.

Just give me one and I’m good.

And unless they are living under a curse, like the annoying Red Sox fans used to think they were under for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees, it’s really not outlandish.

It’s like a kid just listing one nice toy for Santa to bring on Christmas, as opposed to 171 stocking-stuffers.

The Eagles have been around since 1933 (rising from the Depression-created ashes of the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who won the NFL title in 1926). Before we had Super Bowls, they reached the title game in 1947 and came back to win it all in 1948 and 1949.

And they have the distinction of being the only franchise to beat a Vince Lombardi-coached team in a championship game when they captured the flag again in 1960.

That’s all well and good. I can do book reports on all those teams that would be so detailed that would make my naysaying schoolmarm teachers from grade school jump out of their orthopedic shoes – not to mention their graves.

But there is a problem.

I’m old, recently turning 50, but not that old.

I was born in 1965.

That’s five years after Glory’s Road underwent construction.

The odds are really in my favor, as long as my health holds out. The Eagles have been to the playoffs a lot of times, and to the Super Bowl twice – once with me watching live – but until it happens, it seems like a dream for someone in a rent-a-city like Tampa Bay to enjoy.

I often wonder what my reaction would be if the seemingly impossible happened. Would I spontaneously dance an Irish jig, jump so high that I’d land on the moon, scream until my larynx became dislodged or run down the street seeking out high fives from strangers until I found myself at the Lehigh Valley Airport (I guess I’d jump in a plane and – despite having no clue how to fly one – I’d pilot it back home)?

Well, I had a test run Saturday, as one of the other items on my sports bucket list came to pass.

Temple beat Penn State – 27 to freaking 10! — in football for the first time since 1941.

There were 39 meetings in there, with one tie.

This was personal, very personal.

My father had Temple season tickets, so I was at a lot of those as a tyke. At the time, I was also a Penn State fan, leaving a stench I still can’t wash away, but I put that allegiance off to the side in honor of a family tree where most of the leaves blossom as cherry and white.

There were some games that Temple — where I attended myself, choosing it over Penn State and Kent State, and met my future wife — stayed in the same zip code on the scoreboard but really had no shot to win. There were some where the Owls were completely smoked, and Joe Paterno – great humanitarian that he was – ran up the score.

But there were others – including very recently — where Temple not only could have won, but should have won.

Just like EagleQuest, it only seemed like a matter of time.

And like EagleQuest, there was no greed involved. Just one Temple win, creating sadness in Happy Valley, and I’d be set for life.

But time was ticking, and not in my favor.

With Temple in the ever evolving American Athletic Conference and Penn State plummeting to the middle of the pack in the Big 10, there was no guarantee that this semi-annual Pennsylvania waltz – that always ends with the same dance to the same sad dirge – was going to go on forever.

I worried that it may not be in Penn State’s best interests to tempt fate and schedule a non-league game with a cross-state rival that treats the tilt as its Super Bowl when it could play the likes of Akron and Toledo.

There was a sense of urgency this time around. I secretly felt the Owls had a shot. Despite “Temple football” always spoken like a punch line to a joke and with a roll of the eyes, the Owls were 6-6 a year ago and had a lot of returning players. Penn State was 7-6, the extra game by virtue of a bowl appearance that should not have been (but don’t get me started on that).

Plus, it was the first game of the year. Weird things happen in Week 1. There are always upsets, and near-upsets, at all levels (prior to Saturday, Division III Ursinus beat Division II Millersville and Division 1-A Villanova hung tough against Division I Connecticut).

Why not us?

I ventured into the literal den of the Lion to watch the game – my next-door neighbor’s house. He is not only a Penn State alum, but from “up there,” having been a high school teammate of Jay Paterno. His oldest daughter goes there, and the whole family was born and bred on Penn State. My other neighbor, also a Penn State guy, came over and pronounced that it was “just a preseason game.”

I was all Templed-up, in terms of dress, and had my enthusiasm dashed early, as Temple’s stout defense was gashed for a long touchdown run and the seemingly overmatched Owls fell into a quick 10-0 hole.

“Gordon, you didn’t really think Temple was going to win, did you?” one asked.

Actually, I did.

“No,” I answered, explaining that I thought Temple had to hold its own in the trenches, where it was at a size disadvantage, to prevail.

Something happened. Temple got its equilibrium and started to own the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

A 10-0 deficit after one quarter didn’t feel so good, but 10-7 at halftime was a sign of life. Then it was 10-10. Then 17-10, Temple. Then, 24-10. Then, 27-10.

The minutes ticked down, but I still braced myself for the great collapse of 2015. Maybe Temple would turn it over. Maybe Penn State would score on special teams.

They all laughed when I said I been there before.

They had no idea how many times, or how painful.

Even though my neighbor was waving the white flag – and grudgingly giving Temple credit instead of pinning it all on Penn State failing to deploy a strategy to exploit Temple’s “inferior” talent – I needed to see Christian Hakenburg get sacked a few times and the clock hit zero.

I was told my wife was outside on the back deck, irritating the Penn State neighbors on all sides by banging celebratory pots.

My neighbor, who joked that he was going to call Homeland Security on me from running around his TV room yelling “Go Jahad, Go Jahad, Go Jahad” when Temple’s Jahad Thomas ran for a touchdown, followed me home and told my wife –jokingly, I think – that I wasn’t welcome to come back to watch any more games.

“Fine with me,” I said. “I got what I came for.”

I got to scratch one off the bucket list.

And I got a real taste of what it would be like if the Eagles won the Super Bowl.

After I got back into my house, I sat down on the sofa and removed my Temple cap. I buried my head in my hands and sobbed tears of joy for about five minutes.

I could not help but think of my dad.

If it were the Eagles, it would be longer. A lot longer.

But now I know.

And now I believe the seemingly impossible can happen.

I woke up Sunday morning with as much of an epiphany that a secular humanist who was raised Jewish could have.

Reunite the Monkees. I’m a believer.

I sat down worked out my NFL predictions for www.phillyphanatics.com.

And I picked the Eagles to win it all.

Why not?

Gotta happen sooner or later, right?

By GORDON GLANTZ

Gordonglantz50@gmail.com

@Managing2Edit

GORDONVILLE — There are jobs, and then there are callings.

And some people were made to fill roles, lest they not be self-actualized and the world a little bit a lesser and lonelier place for not having them there.

Imagine Shakespeare having never written a word.

Imagine Sinatra never singing.

Imagine Springsteen never picking up a guitar.

Imagine Spock not on the Enterprise to provide logic when others were losing their cool.

Here’s another example: Imagine me not in a NFL front office.

I was made to fill the type of role recently vacated by Howie Roseman, who was unceremoniously demoted into a promotion by being forced to trade in his stop watch used for the scouting combine in exchange for an updated salary cap computer program that is compatible with Windows 8.

Roseman was the GM, but now he is the executive vice president – and he even gets to oversee the training staff, equipment and hot dog vendors.

In his place, will be more of a “football guy” to, in theory, work more harmoniously with head coach Chip Kelly.

Who will it be?

Who knows?

For the record, I am using this missive to formally throw my hat – and I have many now, since there is a burgeoning bald spot to cover – into the proverbial ring for consideration.

I know I have no shot, which is kind of shame.

It’s a shame for Eagles Nation, which remains starved for a Lombardi Trophy. The last time the Eagles won the NFL title, it was against Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers in 1960, five years before I was born and seven years before there even was a Super Bowl.

And it’s a shame for me, because it would be more than just a job.

It would be a calling.  I would not be some mercenary building his resume so I can move to another position with another franchise.

So far, and it’s not because I’m midnight green with envy or anything, the list of interviewees for the job has been a bit underwhelming.

I half expect the next guy to come through town to be the former assistant to the former assistant personnel/promotions guy for the Chicago Bliss in the LFL (Lingerie Football League).

Actually, I fully expect it – if they happen to have a surname with NFL royalty, like Polian.

And that ain’t me.

I ain’t no fortunate son.

But I am qualified.

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated with drafts. Any draft. Any sport. Any time.

But the NFL draft is king.

I always purchased every reputable draft publication necessary, and the Internet has provided supplemental information.

Before you LOL (or is it “ha ha” these days?), don’t write me off as just another Draftnik.

My track record is pretty good.

I don’t take any one single publication or site as gospel, but I draw a consensus and match them up against the Eagles’ short- and long-term needs – and schemes – to lay a yearly strategy.

This may sound a bit sophomoric, but the sad truth is that I could have sat in a locked room with my information and easily done a better job than the Eagles, through different coaches and personnel “geniuses,” over the passage of generations (and three owners).

Imagine my crude approach if you gave me a few scouts – and a few “football” guys, namely coaches and an assistant with a draft track record (the Eagles employed a chap name Phil Savage a few years back as an adviser  and netted some results) – to bounce names off of first.

This would be my main selling point in an interview. Teams are built through the draft. Period. You sign free agents to put you over the top after the foundation is built via the draft.

If the Eagles asked me what I would have done differently in the Kelly-Roseman era, I would tell them.

And tell them and tell them.

Not to go too deep into it now – I will lay out my full 2015 plan if and when they hire someone else for my job – but imagine Kelvin Benjamin, the guy who made two circus touchdown catches for Carolina against Seattle’s all-world secondary, as an Eagles instead of Marcus Smith (zero tackles all season).

However, I would also tell the Eagles I didn’t think Roseman was a bad GM, and certainly not one who should have been X-ed out of the equation after the second consecutive 10-6 season (after the Eagles were completely off the radar at 4-12 in 2012). He made mistakes in the past, particularly in what was an increasingly dysfunctional situation with the last coach, but I was always taught that mistakes are not mistakes unless one doesn’t learn from them.

Only a fly on the wall could tell who was to blame for what recent miscue, but I have a hunch it was a team effort.

It usually is.

For whatever reason, Roseman was pushed out – and Tom Gamble was escorted out – and a spot, the one seemingly tailor-made for me, has opened up.

I’m not a former player, at least not in the traditional sense. Yeah, I did play briefly in college, if special-teams duty in flag football counts (something about chasing after another dude, trying to pull a flag from his waist kind of ended that career).

Even though my preferred sport was hockey, a football game – touch, rough-touch, tackle in the snow – tended to break out more often than not. In Northeast Philly, one kid with a Nerf football emerging from his house was more realistic than two nets and two sets of goalie equipment – let alone enough sticks and a ball.

I was pretty good, though peaking in my middle teens. Couldn’t get deep too often as the years passed, but I hardly ever dropped a pass (picture Gregg Garrity with a Jewfro).

Every Friday after school, we used to play the same black kids in football – until the spring, when it was basketball – in some classic down-to-the-wire encounters. This was far from a race riot. We were all friends, often sticking up for one another in the hallways. We would bust on each other during the week about the previous week’s game and playfully trash talk during the games.

If the Eagles were to hire me, more on the merits of my innate personnel skills, the fans would be able to know I once knocked heads so hard with a kid that we both had concussions. In the ER, they had to give me a butterfly bandage around my swollen and discolored eye to stop the bleeding.

This battle scar, which can still be seen, left me having to convince members of the fairer sex that I had not been beaten up over the weekend.

I guess this would help me earn some street cred with the E-A-G-L-E-S hard-hat types, especially if they learned that my migraines – above this same eye – were worse ever since, leading to a seizure in 2005 that left me with a separated shoulder.

Personally, I still don’t quite get the wherefores and whys behind the need to have some oft-concussed ex-player sitting in the GM’s chair. Not knocking it, if it works out, but the front-office graveyard – in all sports – is littered with ex-jocks while those wearing those rings we find elusive often do not fit the mode.

But in Philadelphia’s blue-collar town, guys like Roseman – with a voice than sounds like it was created by deep inhale of helium – are trying to swim upstream with a cinder-block attached in the court of public opinion.

When the Eagles do well, it’s all Chip. When they fall short of expectations, Howie takes the fall.

Honestly, though, I would not be another Roseman. I would probably agree more with Kelly and his vision for building a long-range winner than with a bottom line that would create a turnstile at the locker room door at the end of each season, leaving the team safely under the cap and always able to retain a few targeted players, but not good enough to maintain the culture required for titles and … for matching the right people with the right callings.

Imagine that.

The column also appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com

By GORDON GLANTZ

GordonGlantz50@gmail.com

@Managing2Edit

GORDONVILLE — When Jim Fenerty was first invited to tour the Fort Washington campus of Germantown Academy, the then head basketball coach at Bishop Egan was a reluctant visitor.

Though not winning much in Bucks County, he was content where he was — often pinching himself that he was a head coach, matching wits against legends, in the storied Philadelphia Catholic League – but still made what he figured was a polite courtesy call to a school whose athletic department had been impressed with his style during a holiday tournament.

But during the visit, something strange happened.

“I felt like I had died and gone to heaven,” said Fenerty, who is going to be inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame two nights before Thanksgiving at Westover Country Club (For more information, call 610-279-9220 or e-mail Gordonglantz50@gmail.com or tleodora@aol.com).

“There were 10 to 12 in a class. I thought, ‘this would be a great place for my kids to go to school.’”

And in the intervening years – dating from the 1989-90 season to the present, which have netted 13 Inter-Ac League titles in 23 years for a program that was previously often the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters of the circuit — his initial instinct was correct.

Almost too correct.

In the winter of 2012, Germantown Academy was almost where he died and went to heaven.

And it was his daughter, Erin, who may have saved his life.

Fenerty was teaching his senior-elective class in constitutional law when he went numb on his right side.

“I tried to teach the class,” he said, which is held around a big round table. “We had a big game that day with Malvern Prep. I thought it was just nerves.”

But for those in the class – specifically Erin and fellow history teacher Peter McVeigh, who likes to sit on the discussions for edification purposes – something serious was going on.

“My daughter broke school rules, but if she didn’t, I might not be here,” said Fenerty. “She texted the school nurse, saying ‘something is wrong with my dad.’”

Although some of the feeling had returned enough for Fenerty to finish the class, he found the nurse, Lori Andress, waiting for him at the bottom of a set of stairs.

She took his blood pressure, which was “off the charts.”

Fenerty protested any talk of going to the emergency room, citing the big game with Malvern Prep, but was told the rival school had already been called and agreed to a postponement.

At Abington Hospital, initial suspicions of a stroke were ruled out.

“They said something was wrong with my blood,” recalled Fenerty.

As fate would have it, a specialist Dr. Peter Pickens, was in the building, teaching other doctors about rare blood disorders.

And now they had a live case on their hands.

The diagnosis was Polycythemia Vera (PV).

Fenerty’s blood was tested at 19.8.

“Pickens said that if you get to 20, you’re not going to see the next day,” said Fenerty, who then underwent four hours of treatment and spent four days in the hospital before the wonders of insurance dictated that he then be treated as an outpatient.

At the time, Fenerty’s win total sat at 499.

Obeying doctor’s orders not to coach “under any circumstances,” Fenerty sat behind the bench while loyal assistant, Mike Hannigan, guided the Patriots to a one-point win.

The following day, a Saturday, was Senior Day. Erin, the team’s scorekeeper, was among those to be honored at halftime of a non-league game against the Peddie School.

Fenerty decided to coach.

“The next day, while at church with my family, the same thing happened,” he lamented. “My wife, Mary, and kids knew, right away, what was happening.

“This time, I was in Abington for a week.”

And when he exited the hospital, he agreed to take a coaching hiatus.

“My part of the deal was that I couldn’t coach the rest of that year,” said Fenerty, who has his doctor’s blessing to keep on coaching, as long as he follows the protocol of having his blood checked every week during the season and every two weeks the rest of the year.

He is back in the saddle, back in heaven.

“(God) wasn’t ready to take me,” he said. “I feel very fortunate.”