“Isaac Sopoaga — aka “Soap” — we hardly knew ye (or saw ye, for that matter. Thanks for memories, bra.”
-In case you missed, nose tackle Isaac Sopoaga was traded to New England at yesterday’s deadline for a fifth round pick in 2014 and a bag of jock straps in 2017.
Josh Culbreath, above, clears a hurdle while running for Morgan State at the Penn Relays. The Norristown native will be inducted in the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame Nov. 26. Dinner tickets are $60 (tables of 8 are $440). Mail checks to: Montgomery Coaches Hall of Fame; 803 Northview Blvd., Norristown, Pa., 19401. For more information, call 610-279-9220 or e-mail Gordonglantz50@gmail.com or tleodora@aol.com.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
When Josh Culbreath came out for the Norristown High track team as a sophomore, he faced a bit of a conundrum.
The spikes needed to run on the cinder track at Roosevelt Field were property of the school and only handed out to those already on the team.
Any hopeful for legendary coach Pete Lewis’ squad had the challenge of out-pacing an existing letterman while wearing the familiar Converse basketball sneakers that many in the working class community bought at a local pawn shop.
He walked away, in silent protest, vowing to clear the figurative hurdle being laid in his path.
In 11th grade, Culbreath – after already running for track glory in middle school events at the Penn Relays – decided to take matters into his own hands.
Or feet, that is.
He decided to run barefoot on the cinders.
Culbreath – who also played basketball and football at Norristown High — made the team, and the rest is track and field history.
“I knew I was capable,” said the 81-year-young North Wales resident. “I paid the price, but I proved my point.”
The hardware in Culbreath’s trophy case includes a bronze medal from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and two goal medals from the Pan American games.
On Nov. 26 — at Westover GC in West Norrition, Pa. (ticket information at bottom of article) – Culbreath will be inducted in the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame, just miles from where it all began on the East End of Norristown.
Along the way, he always remaining a fierce but friendly competitor. Well-traveled and interested in other cultures, Culbreath would speak to foreign rivals in their own tongue and then say “I’m gonna whip your butt” in English, while they still smiled and nodded.
And he continued to fight injustice in his own way.
Sometimes he paid the price, but he kept on proving his point.
Such was the case when he was summoned from the campus of Morgan State in Baltimore for the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico and met up with the team in Houston.
Culbreath and his fellow black teammates were not allowed to stay in a fancy hotel, instead being put up on a local Army base.
When the same hotel arranged for the athletes at the to have steak dinners brought in, Culbreath refused.
“They said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that,’ … I said, ‘Oh, yes I can, and you don’t what to get me started,’” he recalled, shaking his head from side to side, still displaying a combination of disbelief in the scenario and pride in his stance.
“And they didn’t,” he added. “They knew better.”
When he went on to win gold in Mexico City, pictures of him collapsing after crossing the finish line prompted him to enroll in law school at the University of Colorado so he could train in high altitude.
He paid the price once, this time for not being prepared enough to win with dignity.
He was going to prove his point the next time around.
That chance came in 1959, taking gold again at the Pan American Games in Chicago.
Before scoring a scholarship to Morgan State, Culbreath was hoping against hope to use athletics as a springboard to a college education, but was prepared to follow his older brother into the Navy.
Culbreath did serve in the Marines after college, where he was a three-time national champion, and was the first active-duty Marine duty to both participate – and win a medal – in the Olympics.
He taught and coached in the Norristown School District, getting a Masters’ degree in education from Temple University, often using unconventional methods to get across to students labeled unteachable.
He moved on instruct young people around the world in track and field.
In 1988, Culbreath took the job as head track and field coach — for men and women — at Central State in Ohio.
Winning 10 NAIA titles – men and women, indoor and outdoor – had him and his team at the White House Rose Garden, being honored by President Bill Clinton.
Again, like that high school junior running barefoot on a cinder track, Culbreath was willing to stay true to himself.
Known as “Pop” to his athletes, he was willing to pay the price to prove a point.
When Deon Hemmings, a female runner from Jamaica, said she didn’t want to run anymore at practice, Culbreath offered to help her to pack her bags.
She stayed, and went on to win a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (where three of his other athletes also competed) and two silver medals at the 2000 Sydney Games.
A male runner with Olympic pedigree, Neal de Silva of Trinidad and Tobago, was actually sent home but welcomed back when he “became a man.”
De Silva, who placed seventh at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, paid the price.
Culbreath, his coach, proved a point.
Yet again.
Dinner tickets are $60 (tables of 8 are $440). Mail checks to: Montgomery Coaches Hall of Fame; 803 Northview Blvd., Norristown, Pa., 19401. For more information, call 610-279-9220 or e-mail Gordonglantz50@gmail.com or tleodora@aol.com.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — What do we all have in common?
Aside from being mere mortals, we all like pizza and we bleed when we are cut by sharp objects.
And if we are normal – or at least semi-normal – and are able to hear, we at least appreciate the music of The Beatles.
And we all have our favorite songs and albums. My Fab Four favorites – despite 50 percent hearing in my left ear – tend to come from the Rubber Soul, Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour albums.
But, top to bottom, I consider their best album to be what is known as The White Album (actual title is The Beatles). A double-album, it includes the likes of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Revolution 1” and “Dear Prudence.”
There are so many others – “Blackbird” and “Mother Nature’s Sun” and “Sexy Sadie” – that I don’t know where to stop myself.
But you can’t argue this point: The White Album is without a dud.
Well, almost.
There is this pesky “song” – lasts 8 minutes and 22 seconds – that comes second to last amid the long and winding sequence of classics. It is called “Revolution 9.”
Not only is “Revolution 9” my least favorite song on my favorite Beatles album, but it is my least favorite Beatles song.
Heck, it might be my least favorite song, period.
Basically, it is a bunch of noise – with the line “number nine, number nine, number nine …” repeated endlessly – that is passed off as an “experimental sound collage” that reveals the influence that Yoko Ono was unfortunately having on John Lennon (even though George Harrison, who penned some of the albums best tunes, was reportedly roped into helping create it).
As forgettable as it may be, “Revolution 9” was kind of stuck in my head at, of all places, a football game last Sunday – about 45 years after it was released.
While the Philadelphia Eagles played as if the turf at Lincoln Financial Field were quicksand and the end zone they were pursuing was protected by a mystical force field, preventing one of the league’s top rated offenses from threatening to score against one of its worst defenses, that irksome phrase began ringing in my ears.
Number Nine.
Number Nine.
Number Nine.
It was like a bad trip, man.
Paul wasn’t dead.
Forget about 6-6-6.
Turn it upside for the real pre-Halloween fright.
The Eagles were, for the ninth straight home game, coming out on the losing end, this time against the rival Dallas Cowboys, 17-3.
And the quarterback, with a chance to be anointed the successor to the throne, was performing like the song “Helter Skelter” was blaring in his helmet instead of the plays from the sideline.
That quarterback, second-year man Nick Foles, happens to wear what number uniform?
You got it.
Number nine.
Number nine.
Number nine.
While it was not fair to deem Foles the face of the franchise based on winning one game in relief and another as a starter against two teams with one win between them, it is not fair to send him packing to the Arena Football League after last Sunday.
Nonetheless, when asked if the Eagles had a worse quarterback performance in a single game, I could only think of one: Pat Ryan.
What was his jersey number during that ill-fated stint of four games, netting a QB rating of 10.3 (for real)?
Not No. 9, but No. 10.
Whether or not you believe in numerology, it is a reminder that it can only get more dismal.
If the Eagles lose again this week, the well-worn “Rocky” movie clips on the big screen might have to give way to the movie “10.”
Instead of piping in all the AC/DC and Rocky soundtrack songs into the Linc, they ought to use “Revolution 9”until further notice.
It would be odd, but you reap what you sow.
The repeated “number nine” would be reminder of the torture the Eagles are putting their fans through with this ongoing home-field disadvantage, and also encouragement that a “Revolution” ought to be in order.
I am a season-ticket holder. I am not a big fan of a lot of the fans, to be brutally honest. Too many seem more interested in drinking in the parking lot than thinking about the game on the field, but I almost can condone cheers drowned by beers.
It has been more than a calendar year since the Eagles prevailed at home. It is the worst example of at-home futility in professional sports, and the worst in the team’s rather sordid history since the 1930s.
Even the Temple football team, which also calls the Linc home, has won a few times there during this span. And the Owls are not exactly the Crimson Tide of Alabama.
How and why is this happening?
A fluke? A byproduct of a team that was terrible last year and has only played three games at home this season, one which hangs perilously in the balance between contending and pretending with nine – yes, there is that number again – games left of a 16-outing slate?
We could get into the Xs and Os, but it is about a suddenly lost culture where coming into town to play a Philadelphia team – particularly the Eagles – once carried some level of mystique.
The feeling is gone and we just can’t seem to get it back.
It might be time to look for rational reasons, beyond the paranormal.
Philadelphia is a sports town, for all its teams. The Phillies are beloved, the Flyers have a cult following and the Sixers get what they give whenever they decide to be good. Even the Union, the soccer team, is developing a loyal base.
But it’s all about the Eagles, first and foremost.
This is a football town.
Sociologists can research the reasons, pointing to Philly’s blue-collar proletariat work ethic, but it can’t be that complicated.
It goes back to 1960 – the year The Beatles started making their mark in Hamburg, Germany.
That is when the Eagles last won the NFL title.
To put it in perspective, that’s more than half a decade before the league champion was crowned after the Super Bowl. It was just called “the championship game” and the players wore crew cuts.
It has been 53 years, and one look around The Linc on game day reveals beer-guzzlers who were not even born in 1960 and might have a hard time naming five Beatles songs, let alone five stars from the last team to put a meaningful banner up in the rafters.
The Phillies are professional franchise with the most losses in the history of American sport, but this is a “what have you done for me lately?” society. They won the World Series in 2008 and also 1980. The Sixers won in recent memory, going all the way in 1983. The Flyers captured the Stanley Cup twice, in 1974 and 1975 and have been in the finals six times since.
The Eagles? Two Super Bowl losses, and a whole lot of ups and downs, since 1960.
That puts them under the microscope; in a fish bowl.
In other cities, where the desperation does not run as deep, a team can play loose in front of a crowd that is not clapping and cheering with clenched fists and teeth.
And during this nine-game swoon at home, the common denominator is a roster with a talent level that needs that added pressure like former coach Andy Reid – whose current 7-0 record in Kansas City includes a win here – needs another doughnut.
It could be said that the Linc lacks something that Veterans Stadium had, in terms of intimidation, and that might be true. But the saccharine environment can turn sweet in a hurry with a win against another rival, the one-win New York Giants, this Sunday.
Or even more bitter with another loss.
What song will come to mind?
“Ten” by Jewel?
“Ten Little Indians,” the nursery rhyme, or the versions by the Yardbirds or Nilsson?
“Ten Thousand Fists,” by the Disturbed? Probably a little too disturbing.
“Ten With A Two,” by Kenny Chesney? Uh, no. Sore subject in that stadium.
“Ten Times Crazier,” by Blake Shelton, keeping it country, without touching a nerve?
Sounds like we got a winner, assuming we get another loser.
This column originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com
GORDONVILLE — On Oct. 8, 2011, the sports world lost an iconic figure.
Al Davis, whose “just win, baby!” approach made the Oakland Raiders – the team for which he was the principal owner and general manager – a one-time powerhouse in the old American Football League and then the merged NFL, died at age 82.
But perhaps he did not die.
Perhaps his spirit morphed into that of another man with a similar background and similar story, that being one Edward M. Snider.
Although not internationally recognized, like Davis, Snider is well-known as the chairman of our Philadelphia Flyers.
Like Davis, Snider’s guidance and achievements with the Flyers have earned him a pass – at least locally – during tough stretches and regrettable missteps. After all, he brought a winner to a town that had become used to losing and booing away the angst.
And winning became addictive for Snider. It remains his primary objective.
Like Davis in the NFL, Snider is not exactly Mr. Popularity around the NHL. Like Davis, he not only doesn’t care how he is perceived, but enjoys it. And that scores more endearment points here.
But the parallel, unfortunately, is taking a more ominous turn.
Davis, toward the end of his storybook run with the Raiders, had pretty much written the textbook on how and why impulse decisions beget more of the same in a business where the opposite is needed. He left the Raiders in a shambles, hiring and firing coaches and front-office types as if it were a Burger King.
Snider, with a vice-like grip on the Flyers, seems to be doing the same.
At the end of last season, one shortened by a lockout, Snider and Co. gave a tepid vote of confidence to head coach Peter Laviolette.
After a one-win preseason, which included some silly team-bonding shenanigans in Lake Placid, N.Y., the Flyers seemed to be hoping for their own miracle on ice when the rubber hit the ice for real. Instead, they remained cold as ice, dropping their first three games with an anemic offense and defense lacking the necessary cohesion.
And then, in a move ripped the playbook of the latter years of Al Davis’ reign – one which morphed from terror to error – Laviolette was axed, only to be replaced by assistant coach Craig Berube.
The move may have sent shockwaves through the league, but the necessary culture shock within the “organ-I-zation” was not felt.
There’s no “just win, baby!” when you put a coach on a learning curve. Berube, a 17-year NHL enforcer, is being set up to fail, but the turnstiles at the Wells Fargo center keep on churning.
It doesn’t even trickle across the goal line as a short-term fix.
How is a guy who sat in coaches’ meetings with Laviolette – plotting flawed strategies and square-peg-in-a-round-hole system – going to kick-start this team?
We got our answer.
No honeymoon period here.
Berube has one win – 2-1 over the Florida Panthers, not to be confused with the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers of yore – and that was only because goalie Steve Mason, one of the few bright spots this season, practically stood on his head to secure the lone highlight of the season. Beyond that, it has been more of the same.
The Flyers, who were granted a week’s reprieve by the league’s schedule-makers, enter action again Thursday against the New York Rangers with a 1-7 record.
It has gotten so bad that this respite is being billed as time to replenish and begin anew, but seven losses in the first eight games can haunt you in the quest for a playoff berth as much seven losses in the last eight.
It has gotten so bad that they come away from losses feeling like they are just about to turn the corner.
Bottom line: That’s loser talk, and that’s the culture now bred in the Flyers’ locker room.
And the water is carried from that poisoned well to the public by the team’s beat writers, who are taking spin control to a new low.
It took media outside of that small circle of friends to hit Snider with the necessary hard question – the elephant in the room – after Laviolette was canned.
It was about the propensity to hire from within – to the point of it being a sports equivalent to incest – considering that Berube spent a chunk of his 17-year “playing” career in orange and black.
The culture, and the need to change it, was called into question.
Snider snapped, responding that the team has been to the finals repeatedly – six times – since winning Stanley Cups to cap off the 1973-74 and 1974-75 seasons.
It sounded good.
It had that “wow, he told him” feel to it.
But Snider – like a later-era, cartoonish Davis – has lost his mojo. He just came across like a grumpy old man.
The fact is that in those six trips to the finals, which puts the Flyers atop the list of active teams in major sports in the area of futility when comes to the final showdown in the town square, reveals a different picture.
In 1975-76, when the Flyers came up short in their bid for a hat trick, Fred Shero was still at the helm. The next time, 1979-80, the coach was Pat Quinn. He had played over 600 games in his NHL career, but not one in a Flyers’ uniform. He became an assistant under Shero, apprenticed in the AHL and ascended to the top job during the 1978-79 season.
The next trip, again ending without champagne, was the 1984-85 season. The coach, Mike Keenan, was a fresh face from the Canadian collegiate ranks, replacing an “organ-I-zational” hack, Bob McCammon. They got there again under Keenan, in 1986-87, and came
agonizingly close to the Holy Grail, falling in seven games to that Gretzky-led Oiler juggernaut.
The next time, sigh, was in 1996-97. The coach was Terry Murray, who spent most of career as a NHL/AHL tweener with the “organ-I-zation,” but cut coaching teeth for five seasons behind the bench in Washington before “coming home.” After taking the Flyers from their franchise low point to the finals in his third year, Murray was fired and made a scout before resuming his coaching career.
There was no improvement.
It wouldn’t be until 2009-10, with Laviolette running the team, that the Flyers would make a wacky run to the finals before losing in six games to Chicago. He came here with no ties, a fresh perspective and a Stanley Cup (2005-06) on his resume.
Maybe it was time for Laviolette to go, as the spring of 2010 playoff run was really the peak of his time here. But shouldn’t that move have been after last season when there were seasoned coaches – other than an untested assistant – out there for the taking?
Impulse decisions beget more of the same. In the world of sports, the results are 1-7 starts.
Just win, baby?
Ghost of a chance, Ed – courtesy of Al Davis.
Happy Halloween, Flyers Nation.
By GORDON GLANTZ
@Mananging2Edit
GORDONVILLE – And in Switzerland … the government is voting on whether to give every citizen $2,800 a month in guaranteed income.
Go ahead and yodel.
I’ll wait.
Key word there, for all you anti-immigration types, is “citizen.”
Sounds like enough motivation to get on the path to citizenship.
But we are talking about a government that is not dysfunctional. Switzerland, after all, is ranked in the top 10 in happiness and in several key economic areas.
The reality is that our alleged democracy — from which Switzerland strays a bit with a federalized yin and yang that gets more democratic on the local levels, where it really matters – features “leaders” who let we the people suffer while they can’t agree on the time of day.
Even with Swiss Army watches.
Can you handle more?
Good.
Time for some more bad medicine (Don’t worry. The pills are on the house here in Gordonville, where we have single-payer, socialized medicine.).
What Is: There is a lot of vitriol out there, blaming President Barack Obama for the shutdown.
And What Should Never Be: Straying from the point.
Only the House, not the president, has the power to shut down the government.
And that is what happened here.
They are the ones who put people out of work and kept World War II veterans from their monument in Washington, D.C.
The haters will point to Obama’s 37 percent approval rating.
Let us point to the 28 percent approval rating of the Republicans that have conspired to block him at every turn since Day Uno (yes, the bastardized Spanish is intended to annoy).
That is one percentage point more than those of who believe Sasquatch — slave name Bigfoot – might be a for-real dude.
Sounds crazy, but I actually had more belief his wandered around the forest – I saw him with my own eyes on that episode of “The Six Million Dollar Man” – than I ever approved of the modern-day GOP.
And that goes back to before it was hijacked by the Tea Party.
What Is: Yawn … They are still playing baseball.
And What Should Never Be: Anyone caring.
I mean, if you live in those metropolitan areas with teams still involved, fine.
Here, in Philly, where the Phillies were pretty much caput when they went into the tank right after showing a pulse before the all-star break?
Nah.
I know none of our teams are much to write home about, but we have three others going.
We have college football and college hoops on the horizon.
I can understand loving baseball, even though I only like it as a friend, but I don’t get all these Philadelphia people getting so hyped up about the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Seemed like there was more of a need for suicide watch hotlines in the Delaware Valley than the western part of the state, where they are rightfully more football-obsessed, when the Bucs got bucked from the field by St. Louis from the playoffs.
If the shoe were on the other foot, do you think anyone in the Pittsburgh area would be losing sleep over the Phillies?
What Is: One of the sad byproducts of the shutdown is that real issues, namely gun control, are not being addressed by our misleaders.
And What Should Never Be: The eye off the ball, kind of like it is when the Second Amendment is misunderstood.
There he goes again? Yep, there I go again.
This is one of those issues I won’t debate for the sake of it and walk away agreeing to disagree. I was always for gun control, but the massacre in Newtown, Conn. – which miraculously prompted GOP leaders with NRA monies in their war chests to suddenly to take note of black kids in Chicago and Baltimore – is where I drew the line.
Put this in your pipes and smoke it: We account for 5 percent of the world’s population but 80 percent of the deaths in the planet’s 23 richest countries.
Rich, despite our current recession/depression? Yes.
Morally bankrupt? Affirmative.
What Is: Many who call themselves “Christians” (said with a southern twang for effect) weigh down the GOP with “morals” issues.
And What Should Never Be: Conservative Christians.
I’m mean, they can be. It’s a free country. Just don’t be in my face.
The two concepts – Christianity and conservatism — just don’t equate.
It’s like that short dude from “Game of Thrones” trying to play center for the 76ers.
OK, they could probably use him down low. Bad analogy, but it’s early in the morning and I’m a night person.
You get the point.
It’s like stating that all men are created equal and then having to pass a Civil Rights Act to start to make it happen nearly 200 years later.
OK, that happened.
But you get me here.
How about this one? These conservative “Christians” are among those standing firm against Obamacare (also the Affordable Care Act for the ignorant among us).
Forget the supernatural stuff about dying and being resurrected. Take the historical Jesus and what he is purported to have represented.
Ask yourselves, did he heal for profit?
If the answer is no, you are “Christians” in name only.
What Is: A chap named Peter Baker has a book coming out claiming that George W. Bush, presidential disgrace that he was, had a tepid relationship with Dick Cheney that turned completely cold after Bush refused to pardon Scooter Libby (no one called “Scooter” should be pardoned, just on principle).
And What Should Never Be: Thinking anyone is all evil.
I guess Bush has some redeeming qualities after all, as Cheney is all evil.
If the book is accurate, that is.
Baker, a reporter for the New York Times, did work in Moscow. They could have brainwashed him and sent him back as a spy.
What Is: John McCain was quoted as saying his party, the GOP, has done the American people a “disservice.”
And What Should Never Be: Finding a GPS that helps you back to being yourself.
Once upon a time in America, I used to say that McCain would be that one Republican I would consider voting for as president.
I didn’t agree with everything (whisper: I don’t agree with everything Obama stands for, either), but he was a maverick.
And that label, while sounding cool – and American – is not something to be taken lightly.
Those were stripes he earned.
But then, after W. backstabbed McCain out of the way in the 2000 primary, he did himself a “disservice” once he got the chance to run for president in 2008.
He picked Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate, letting the Tea Party genie out of the bottle.
Now he is trying to stuff it back in.
It’s nice that he sees the errors of his ways, but once it’s out …
Good night, John Boy.
What Is: Haven’t heard much from Syria lately, have you?
What Should Never Be: Forgetting to knock wood.
Seems like the process of quelling the violence and eliminating chemical weapons, without putting one American in harm’s way, is working.
Give Obama some credit, or would you rather harp on the murky Benghazi scenario some more?
As for what happens in Syria, and these other Arab countries allegedly going through spring, I’m not overly interested.
Let’s say I’m neutral.
Like Switzerland.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — Is there a silver lining to getting routed, 52-20?
The majority would say no.
But I say it is so.
Call me a lone wolf howling at the moon, but there is a bright side from the drubbing the Eagles took at the hands of the Denver Broncos last Sunday.
Yes, it was their third loss in a row. Yes, it was the first of those three losses where they were not in the same hemisphere as their opponent.
Not going to say it’s a good thing, or a fun experience to endure, so don’t reserve me a padded cell someplace.
It’s just not as bad as some are making it out to be.
And this is neither spin control nor nit-picking to say that this player or that player made an isolated play here or there to be excited about.
I’m not an Eagles cheerleader.
My name isn’t Dave Spadaro.
It’s about the overall picture, and the quest to get to where new coach Chip Kelly and Co. project to be down the road. “Down the road” could mean by the end of the season of change and experimentation, or 2-3 seasons down the road.
It is said, wisely, that we learn more from our losses than our victories – even if we don’t realize it.
And there was much to be learned from Sunday’s loss, and not just that we should wave the white flag and purposefully finish 1-15.
After the Eagles stunned the Washington Redskins in the first half of their opener and held on for dear life in a 33-27 win, they fell by three points to San Diego, 33-30, and by 10, 26-16, to former coach Andy Reid and his Kansas City Chiefs.
And the largest public outcry, along with losing a media-created revenge game with Reid, was that the Eagles have gone more than a calendar year since last winning at home.
Within the team, from the front office on down, was an outlook that was equally off-point and unfocused.
There was the sense that the San Diego game was wrought with opportunities to win, and that Reid’s Chiefs merely took advantage of mistakes – namely a barrage of turnovers – to eke past the Birds in a game that was actually tighter than the final count. And in both contests, as in Denver, suddenly ineffective placekicker Alex Henery missed a field goal that could have changed momentum.
Surely, a lot of the Eagles’ players, wearing badges of invincibility while sipping their smoothies and trying to rejuvenate their bodies from playing three games in 11 days, were telling themselves – and each other – that they should and could and would be 3-0 after three games if they weren’t their own worst enemies.
In reality, they were looking in the mirror and running a con game on themselves.
If they lost those games, it was because the other team was better.
It could be argued that if the Redskins didn’t “beat themselves” in the first half of the opener, the Eagles could have lost that one.
San Diego’s offense did what it wanted whenever it wanted. That’s why the Eagles lost, plain and simple. It wasn’t Henery’s missed field goal at the end of the first half, or even them having to settle for a game-tying field goal before the Chargers came back and easily marched for the winning field goal.
The truth was that if San Diego needed a game-winning touchdown, instead of a field goal, they would have gotten that as well.
The Swiss cheese of a defense, which any wearing glasses that were not rose-colored knew was not going to stop anyone this season, was making Philip Rivers look like Peyton Manning as much as Peyton Manning looked like himself this past week.
Against Kansas City, the hard truth is only one of the myriad of turnovers was unforced – meaning the Chiefs’ defense made plays to take the ball, and the momentum, away from their revved-up hosts.
The Eagles went into Denver 1-2 because they were a 1-2 team, not a team that was a few plays shy of being unblemished.
News Flash: Every team that falls in the NFL can point to this play or that missed opportunity or a bad call by an official as turning points. It’s just that when the home team wins, we don’t look at it from that perspective.
So how does this all make what happened in Denver a good thing?
Because there are no more delusions of grandeur. The Eagles took on an upper echelon team and saw just how far away they are from being in the conversation.
They are not there.
Not even close.
As in life lessons, we learn in sports that hitting rock bottom is sometimes the best cure to a chronic illness that we pretend isn’t there.
There is no more pretending.
After an initial first four games that almost cry conspiracy, the schedule begins to moderate. The next two are on the road – at the New York Giants and at Tampa Bay – but both of those teams are winless and struggling even more than the Eagles in terms of getting it together.
Moreover, we are talking about Sunday games at 1 p.m. that are under the radar. No Monday night, like the Redskins. No Thursday night, on a few days of rest after a tough loss, like the Chiefs. No “game of the week” at 4:25 to be foils for Manning’s mastery.
The Eagles, with their issues no longer obscured by excuses, will be punching in their own weight class for the next few weeks.
And they have a puncher’s chance of getting themselves turned around, even with that porous defense that cannot be addressed until the offseason, because they are no longer looking in the mirror and seeing somebody they are not.
Even if they don’t get to that 9-7 or 8-8 that might win the NFC East, at least in theory, they can begin the process of improving and changing the culture and showing slow and steady improvement as the season progresses.
And when they look for a turning point, it will be easy to say it was a win they snatched from the jaws of victory or a game where the defense started to find some modicum of mediocrity and made a game-saving stand.
But the real starting point – the ground zero – will really be the game they don’t want to talk about, which is last Sunday’s pounding in Denver.
This column originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com
I know it was an ugly loss in Denver, but Eagles’ coach Chip Kelly gave a brilliant quote:
“Ninety percent of the people don’t care about your problems and the other 10 percent are glad you have them.”
True is football, and in life.
I have actually been in situations where 10 percent of the people around me didn’t care about my problems and 90 percent were glad I had them.
Tough way to live, work and play.
Life is too short to be in those situations.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail,com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE — Are you ready for some … hockey?
Shoot, I am.
Haven’t been this fired up about the puck dropping on a new season in a while, and for two connected reasons.
The first is personal, as the sport as always been close to my heart.
A lifestyle change now allows to me to be home at night, watching games. I might even get to see some live action, and nothing hits my sports soul with more impact than walking through a tunnel of an arena and seeing a hockey rink.
The second reason is an extension of the first. Born in 1965, I grew up at a time when the Philadelphia teams were bad going on worse.
If you could scratch and sniff the sports scene upon which I was weaned, you would have gagged.
I learned to read the agate page of the newspaper by looking up the baseball standings every day to see if the National League East cellar-dwelling Phillies at least had a better record than the pathetic San Diego Padres in the NL West.
It was years before I actually saw the Eagles win a home game (my dad had season tickets, but only brought me to a few each season when I young). I remember going to a game during the ill-fated, nine-win 1972-73 76ers season and taking heart that at least they led after the first quarter of a blowout loss to the powerful Boston Celtics.
It was a pitiful introduction to sports.
But just when the inferiority complex was about to be cemented, the Broad Street Bullies came along and changed everything, winning the Stanley Cup in 1974 and again in 1975.
I joined the rest of the near-world in playing hockey. Ice rinks were few and far between, and most didn’t last long when they did open. But we always had the street – or a schoolyard — to pretend you were Bobby Clarke or Bernie Parent or Rick MacLeish or any of the others who were loved so much here and hated elsewhere in the civilized world.
With Clarke as my primary role model, I found a formula that made me successful. I just hustled and always tried to be around the puck/ball and good things tended to happen.
While the success of the Flyers gave me pride as a young fan with not much else to cheer for in this region, my personal success gave me self-confidence.
Fast-forward to the present.
It’s not exactly the same scenario, but it is close enough to hang on to the hope that history can repeat itself (even though you won’t see me outside with a Bobby Clarke, orange-blade street hockey stick).
All you have to do is survey the Philadelphia sports landscape with an objective eye.
The Eagles, in spite of their fast-break offense, are a work in progress. Success will be measured more by changing the culture from the humdrum that marked the end of the Andy Reid era than by a won-loss record or doing a blind squirrel routine and finding some back door to sneak into the playoffs.
The Sixers, well, they are purposefully tanking the season – trying to replicate 1972-73 — to get as high of a draft pick as possible for next season’s front-loaded draft. That should tell you all you need to know about the upcoming campaign in which one of the prized rookies, Nerlens Noel, may not even play.
The Phillies, in effect, saw their season unceremoniously end by stumbling out of gate when the bell rang after the all-star break. Next year, with an odd mix of post- and pre-prime players, they will be working under the guidance of a manager, Ryne (not Ryan!) Sandberg. At best it will be a transitional year to get where they want to be, so keep your fingers away from that window as it slams shut.
It has been a while since a Philadelphia team has even made the postseason, which is the vital first step toward even catching a whiff of a coveted championship.
The Flyers are about to start playing for keeps, and they enter the season with some questions that need to be answered. Nonetheless, the immediate future does not look as bleak as their brethren in the City of Brotherly Love.
Truth be uttered, all that kept them out of the playoffs a year back was the lockout. For whatever reason, they hit the ice skidding and were chasing that sluggish start the rest of the way. Whenever they seemed to gain traction, the injury bug would rear its ugly head.
It was just one of those vicious cycles that might have been broken with those extra 30 games to get it together, but the shortened slate did not have mercy on slow starters.
And then there was the other problem, the goalie with the inconsistent play and bizarre quotes that filled up the notebooks of smirking beat writers but divided the locker room of the players laying it on the line each night in front of him.
Illya Bryzgalov is gone. The team swallowed a bitter pill by eating his onerous contract. Instead of “Bryz” backed up by a non-option, the Flyers will now have a healthier situation with the tag team of Steve Mason and Ray Emery.
However it shakes out in terms of opening night, the max – barring injury – will be a 60-40 split in starts. Two quality/sane goalies staying fresh by not being overworked means addition by subtraction on any sports calculator (except in the Flyers’ business office, where they still have to cut checks to the currently unemployable Bryzgalov).
The other killer last season, beyond the goaltending and endless stream of injuries, was the infectious nature of the dreaded sophomore slump.
Sean Couturier, Brayden Schenn and Matt Read failed – at varying degrees – to pick up where they had left off the prior season.
Logic would dictate that the primary cause was the lockout, as the younger players had a harder time keeping themselves focused and ready to go when it was suddenly announced that a season – more of a sprint than a marathon – was going to start.
This talented trio will be counted on to support to top guns – Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, newcomer and one-time standout Vinny Lecavalier, Scott Hartnell and Wayne Simmonds – to pick up the pace on an offense that sagged last year.
Meanwhile, on the blue line, Braydon Coburn appears healthy and ready to resume bump-and-grind action at 18-20 minutes a night (instead of 22-24). Newcomer Mark Streit takes some pressure off veteran Kimmo Timonen as a mobile defenseman. Luke Schenn, Brayden’s older brother, seemed to be coming into his own – as younger larger-sized defenseman often do after a few seasons and a change of scenery – by season’s end. While upstart Erik Gustafsson is a viable wild card, the real success of this group hinges on the health of Andrei Meszaros and Nick Grossmann.
While the defense still lack that No. 1 stud worthy of 22-24 minutes game, like a Chris Pronger, the potential depth almost makes up for it.
On paper, the Flyers look like a solid team. Good enough to make the postseason, which, in our city’s current sports funk, will almost be parade-worthy, even if they get swept in the first round.
On the ice, we will have to take a wait-and-see approach.
Given the options in this town, that’s an upgrade.
It’s a reason to believe that as it happened before, it could happen again.
It all starts Wednesday against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Game on.
This column originally appeared at http://www.phillyphanatics.com.
By GORDON GLANTZ
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
GORDONVILLE – In 1970, John Lennon gave us a song called “Instant Karma.”
He said it was “gonna get you, gonna knock you right in the head.”
Came across as a positive song, but here we are – more than four decades down the road – and it sounds more like a warning.
While “karma” seemed like a cool word, with its groovy Age of Aquarius thing going on, it might be the word “instant” that resonates as a negative.
We have instant messages, instant food and instant replay.
In the sports world, we have something more insidious.
We have the scourge of instant glory.
Good athletes are dubbed “great” and, in some cases, instant cases are made that they are among the greatest of all time at their given craft.
Greatness, in the sports context, really shouldn’t be a matter of boiling some hot water and pouring into a powder of instant oatmeal.
But it is.
And it cheapens the definition. It equates to erecting a golden calf in lieu of instant answers while the obvious rules of law on these matters are etched into a tablet for posterity.
Halls of fame purposefully build in a waiting period, as they are designed to store only the legacies of the greatest of the great. Time – with hindsight, reflection and some meditation – needs to pass.
Individual sports franchises, however, can operate with a lowered bar and more gray area. They can go more with their gut, and do with increasingly mixed and sordid results.
Franchises grant immortality to their icons is by retiring uniform numbers. Many also have their own versions of halls of fame. And, without much rhyme or reason, they can do what they want within their fiefdoms.
If that means honoring a player who recently retired, which gives current fans instant attachment without having to search their memory banks or page through history books, so be it.
Time, and its natural portals and passages, gets snubbed.
Which brings us to Donovan McNabb, the longtime Eagles quarterback who perfected the art of getting his team to the big dance – often while looking spiffy in a tux and limo – only to stand in a corner and become a wallflower once there.
On Thursday night, largely based on McNabb’s statistics – accrued in a pass-happy offense in a pass-happy era – he will be honored at halftime before what will likely be a tepid crowd.
Why now, when the ink isn’t even dry on his official retirement papers?
Instant marketing, that’s why.
His old coach, Andy Reid, is in town as the first-year guide of the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s on national television.
It’s an event.More Broadway than Broad Street.
It gives Eagles Nation something to cheer for after a 4-12 nightmare of a season; something to make them feel the emptiness of instant joy during what looks to be two or three more years of rebuilding in the wake of what Reid left behind.
McNabb, based on his tenure – 1999 to 2009 – and aforementioned stats, which include 14 franchise passing records, deserves a halftime ceremony at some point. He did get the team to five NFC title games and one Super Bowl, even though he came up empty in the Lombardi Trophy department.
But now? In 2013?
Tastes like instant coffee instead of brewed.
Moreover, they are not just bringing him out onto the field to be recognized, followed by a place in the team’s own little Hall of Fame, which is a rather harmless waltz.
They are going one step beyond, and across the line.
They are going so far as retiring McNabb’s No. 5.
It is a major stretch that borders on embarrassing.
When you go into any stadium or arena in this sports-crazed town, one common thread is that the retired numbers hanging from the rafters are beyond reproach.
Even with the passage of time. Even when Timmy Jr. has to ask Timmy Sr. who the player is or was and what that player accomplished. The father-son exchange happens with a lump in the throat and goose bumps.
Consider the names:
And Donovan McNabb, the first quarterback of the bunch.
Not Norm Van Brocklin (1960 championship). Not Tommy Thompson (1948 and 1949 championship teams). Not Ron Jaworski, the signal-caller on the other Super Bowl team that came up short.
Just McNabb.
Rings hollow, like a riddle that fails to rhyme.
Cull together a 10-person panel – drawing from national and local media, Elias Sports Bureau numbers crunchers and fans ranging from old to young and casual to intense – and you will get 10 viewpoints on McNabb’s legacy, whether it is fair and just to retire his number and if he is even a remote candidate for Canton, Ohio’s Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Just the fact that that opinion would be split should tell you all you need to know on whether he is worthy.
Could you imagine the same vibe when the Phillies retire Chas Utley’s number one day? If the answer is no, then it should be no to McNabb.
To be fair, Donovan McNabb was a good quarterback. He was the NFC Player of the Year in 2004, the same season the Eagles went to the Super Bowl, where he threw three interceptions in a 24-21 loss. He was in six Pro Bowls, although several appearances were as an alternate in place of quarterbacks who advanced deeper in the playoffs.
He had his chances to be great and, like so many others whose numbers are never even on the radar to be retired, and let a lot of people down. His penance should be an acknowledged legacy a step shy of a retired number.
But that’s not what is happening. We are in an era of instant everything, so we are being forced to swallow a microwaved legacy that has yet to be digested.
In an 80-year franchise history, one quarterback whose admirable physical toughness – his willingness to take a hit or play hurt, failed to match his mental toughness when it came to big moments – is not to blame for the 53-year drought since the last championship.
But he should not be honored without the proper passage of time.
Too much bitterness lingers.
And no instant recipe can make it taste sweet.
Gordonglantz50@gmail.com
@Managing2Edit
The unrelenting sports news cycle, which keeps its head on a swivel runs a 4.4 40 in the world of the NFL, got some mileage out of Monday night’s sideline skirmish between Eagles’ wide receiver DeSean Jackson and Redskins’ corner D’Angelo Hall.
Not only did Hall draw a mindless personal foul penalty for a late hit that was – both literally and figuratively – well out of bounds, but it came after Jackson had left Hall in the dust on a touchdown that was the centerpiece of the frenzied scoring spree that sent the Birds into halftime of their eventual 33-27 road win with a 26-7 lead and made them the source of league-wide buzz.
Jackson bounced right up and shoved back, but drew no flag.
The two notoriously impulsive players, known more for being temperamental than temporal, continued to jaw during and after the next play, exchanging another shove while Jackson allegedly took time to flash a gang sign at the same player who taunted him prior to a 2010 Monday night game that ended in a huge win for the Birds.
A bad sign.
For those who sit on their high horse and look down in disgust at such unsportsmanlike behavior, perhaps it was.
But this is Philly, the home of long-suffering fans impetuously waiting to end a 53-year championship drought of the franchise they would most like to see win a championship, if only because it is the team that has gone the longest without one.
If an opponent got under Jackson’s skin last year, it was because the Eagles were losing and he was frustrated. And because of the negative karma swirling around the team, like flies to you-know-what, he would have surely been flagged for retaliating.
This time around, the Eagles were winning and nobody was going to break his stride. Not even the official dared.
When Jackson got into Hall’s face, it was a statement: You may have pushed us around in the recent past, but not anymore.
Cast in that light, it was all good.
As Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane proclaimed to the rain-soaked throng at Woodstock: “It’s a new dawn.”
The Eagles are coming off a 4-12 season, the last of the unnecessarily prolonged Andy Reid era.
They have been that bad, record-wise, before. And they probably will be again. Who knows? Maybe even this year, meaning that Monday’s barrage was a mirage.
But last season was played with no heart, no soul.
It just wasn’t Philly, watching abominations like tacklers being dragged into the end zone and opposing receivers prancing across the middle like carefree kangaroos in the Outback.
This is supposed to be the place where the fictional Rocky Balboa was so believable because of the backdrop. Instead, it was like having a cheesesteak with tofu instead of whiz.
The Eagles were getting knocked down, and not getting back up.
They were throwing in the towel.
And the coach, Reid, uttered one-word answers and acted like the long-suffering fans wouldn’t understand the devilish details if he did care to explain.
He was canned on the last day of 2012.
Chip Kelly, after initially turning down the job, was hired a few weeks into 2013.
New Year, new life.
At his introductory press conference, the wunderkind from the University of Oregon, by way of New Hampshire, said he had spoken with a gracious Reid and declined to take the bait and say anything negative.
Owner/Whatever-Else-He-Calls-Himself Jeffrey Lurie spoke glowingly about Reid as well, talking about a day – certainly not next Thursday night, when Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs come to town – when the coach who went 1-4 in NFC Championship Games and 0-1 in Super Bowl appearances during his 14-season run would be honored by the franchise.
And then all hopeful, albeit skeptical, eyes turned toward the future.
There was a solid draft (on paper), post-workout smoothies, racial epithets at a country concert, a quarterback controversy, a 2-2 preseason and peculiar final cuts that left us with as many question as answers about an overhauled roster and new schemes on both sides of the ball.
In reality, it was a way to pass the time until the season-opener against the Redskins, which the rest of the nation saw as more of a return of Robert Griffin III from offseason knee surgery, with a cute sub-plot about Kelly’s fast-break offense that probably would come up short on the scoreboard but would be fun to watch.
And then came game time, and the clear signs that this Eagle team under Kelly couldn’t be any different than Reid’s.
Introductory press conferences and first days of mini and training camps aside, it marked Kelly’s arrival. And Reid’s departure.
The ghost of Big Red was officially put to rest Monday. Call it an exorcism.
Post-game, holdover players talked about having pure and unadulterated fun for the first time in their pro careers.
If that was enough of an indictment of Reid, and how stale of a soft pretzel with no mustard his approach had become, Kelly inadvertently kicked dirt on the grave of his predecessor with a comment in a post-game press conference in which he said more of substance than Reid probably did in a season.
“It is still a game. I think sometimes we take ourselves too seriously,” said Kelly, whose fast-talking – in full sentences, no less – is earning him the nickname “Machine Gun.”
He then added that he, like the players, had fun as well.
Reid, as we know, took himself way too seriously to have fun coaching what is a game. The players are professionals, not kids at recess, but it was still obvious they were following his dour lead in the way they went about their business.
Make no mistake, winning helps.
And the Eagles won Monday.
But the change in culture, which is probably more important than the won-loss record this season, is alive and real.
The standard prediction for the Eagles this season falls between 5-11 and 7-9, and Monday’s win – which was way closer than it needed to be – really shouldn’t change that gut feeling.
This team is much like the 1986 Eagles, which went 5-10-1 in the first year of Buddy Ryan’s coaching tenure but laid the groundwork as holes were filled to fit the new personality.
The year before, they were a boring 7-9 under Marion Campbell (technically 6-9 under Campbell, as they won the final game under interim coach Fred Bruney), but no one dare argue they were better off.
“You got a winner in town,” were Ryan’s first official words when introduced as the new coach.
Despite a step back on the tally sheet in the first year, no one dared to doubt it.
There was a new attitude, a new pride, a new sway.
They were young and tough and opponents, even more talented opponents, were not thrilled about having them on the slate.
The Eagles were getting their groove back.
What goes around generally comes around.
And it’s coming around again.
Enjoy.
ingordonville 