Philadelphia Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles are a National Football League team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Eagles, along with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Reds, joined the NFL as 1933 expansion teams. The team is regarded as a second incarnation of the defunct NFL team Frankford Yellow Jackets, who folded two years earlier due to financial hardships brought on by the Great Depression.

Fan Behavior

Philadelphia fans are renowned as among the most passionate and devoted in all of professional sports. Their devotion to the Eagles is reflected by team ticket sales: games are invariably sold-out and the waiting list for season tickets is reputedly well over 70,000 names long.

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Eagles fans are usually well behaved, good-humored and law-abiding but poor judgment and alcohol have occasionally led some to transgress the boundaries of civilized behavior. Most such behavior is familiar to anyone who has attended professional sporting events virtually anywhere in the world, but Eagles fans have had the misfortune to misbehave in numerous high profile moments, many on national television. As such, Eagles fans have a reputation in many quarters as being unduly rowdy, or even dangerous. This reputation is exaggerated, but some instances of fan misconduct stand out for their sheer outlandishness, and (due to the fanatical devotion of the Eagles fan base) the atmosphere at Eagles home games bears greater similarity to the intense atmosphere at European soccer stadiums than it does the typical American sporting event.

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The most (in)famous example of fan impropriety at Eagles games is the so-called "Santa Claus Incident," in which a few angry fans, furious at the conclusion of yet another wasted season under Joe Kuharick, booed and threw snowballs at a man dressed as Santa Claus during a December 1968 halftime show. The legend, however, is a bit overstated and has been exaggerated with time. The original Santa had been drunk and unable to perform, leading the club to draft skinny 20 year-old Frank Olivo from the stands as an ad hoc replacement. As Olivo recounts, a handful of fans threw snowballs at him after he reached the end zone, shouting that he made a poor Santa. Olivo, in turn, laughed the snowballs off and pointed to the few culprits, instructing them that they'd have empty stockings that Christmas. This, as might have been expected, led to more snowballs. Subsequently, Howard Cosell exaggerated the tale in an attempt to illustrate the general depravity of Eagles fans, and a legend was born.

Related Topics:
Snowball - 1968 - Howard Cosell

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Cosell's grandstanding aside, exaggeration is unnecessary, there being many real examples that serve to support such an argument. Recent examples include:

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• A 1997 Monday Night Football game against the San Francisco 49ers in which, infuriated by a series of controversial calls by the officials and poor play by the Eagles, fans engaged in a number of highly visible, large-scale brawls on national television. In the last quarter, one particularly aggrieved fan fired a flare gun at the 49ers sideline. Fans entering home Eagles games have been subject to pat-down searches at entry by stadium security ever since.
• A contingent of Eagles fans traveled to the 1999 NFL Draft in New York for the sole purpose of jeering the selection of Donovan McNabb. Local radio hosts had recruited the boorishly behaving crew to protest the selection of McNabb over Ricky Williams. McNabb stayed composed during the incident, and the thirty or so fans who booed him were subsequently derided as the "Dirty Thirty," while the radio hosts in question were widely criticized for their roles as instigators. McNabb has since become one of Philadelphia's most beloved sports icons.
• During a 1999 game against the hated Dallas Cowboys, Cowboys wide receiver (and bete noire of Eagle fans) Michael Irvin was knocked unconscious by a hit from Eagles safety Tim Hauck. As Irvin lay prostrate and immobile on the turf, Eagles fans cheered the injury. Making matters worse, Irvin's teammate Deion Sanders attempted to placate the crowd by gesticulating and dancing, leading most of the crowd (unaware of the severity of Irvin's injury) to jeer what they perceived as typical grandstanding by the notoriously egomaniacal Sanders. When a trainers' cart was sent on the field to carry Irvin off the field, the roar of the fans increased. Irvin was ultimately diagnosed with a broken neck, and the injury ended his career.

Sporadic acts of violence by Eagles fans against fans of visiting teams, combined with ongoing difficulties relating to public drunkenness, prompted Philadelphia municipal judge Seamus McCaffrey and the Philadelphia Police Department to establish a small, in-stadium courtroom at the Vet in 1997. Additionally, plainclothes officers, dressed in the colors of the visiting team, were dispatched to sit in sections known as being dangerous to opposing fans, most such sections being located in the Vet's notorious "700 Level" at the top of the stadium. The success of the program was widely noted and has continued to the present day (Lincoln Financial Field includes a built-in prison facility and courtroom for such purposes). Overzealous Eagle fans caught by such sting operations are arrested, charged and taken to the courtroom, where McCaffrey usually sits in judgment. Such efforts have made the inside of the stadium much safer for opposing fans than was previously the case, but the stadium parking lots (and subways to the games) are still notoriously anarchic places. Such behavior aside, the majority of fans are well-behaved, if vocal.

Related Topics:
Seamus McCaffrey - Philadelphia Police Department - 1997

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Traditionally, the club has enjoyed large numbers of traveling supporters that join the team on road trips: in recent years, contingents of Eagles fans have overwhelmed their hosts in cities as far away as Miami and Dallas. At its essence, support for the team is an expression of civic pride by the greater Philadelphia community.

Related Topics:
Miami - Dallas - Philadelphia

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