Mined from the notebooks, Sunday morning, December 30, 2018. Posted Saturday morning, January 5, 2019.
So, here we are, down in the territory of the Philadelphia Eagles---or as it’s pronounced and even spelled not just on fan posters but in newspaper headlines, Iggles---and I have no idea how the Iggles did this season. I know they’re struggling to defend their Super Bowl championship. II know they’re still contending for a playoff spot. I knew that before the fans I met at the bagel shop clued me in. I didn’t know what seed, where they stand in their division, or even who they’re playing today in the game that’s going to decide their post-season fate. I haven’t followed them this season. I haven’t followed any football this season. Not for reasons you might think. I’ve had no trouble keeping up with basketball. In fact, basketball has helped keep me sane all along. Baseball did too, but not to the same extent, which those of you who know me might find out of character. But the start of baseball season last April coincided with Mrs M’s diagnosis and as you all can guess I didn’t have much room in my thoughts for baseball, even though the Mets started out doing pretty well. They went to pieces in May but by then Mrs M was in the hospital and they probably couldn’t have provided any distraction or solace even if they’d been scoring runs for de Grom. But basketball did. Provide both distraction and solace, that is. Probably because the playoffs were underway already when Mrs M’s rounds of surgery began.
It still seems strange that I have mostly good memories from that time. Of course there were many scary and heartbreaking moments, many days and nights when I was depressed and on the point of despair. But thanks to Mrs M’s wonderful doctors and nurses and aides and the courage and faith and help of the Mannion guys, the bolstering of friends and family, the support and love we got from all of you through Facebook, Twitter, and the blog, and my own determined self-delusion, I was able to carry on as if life was close to normal. And part of that normalcy was watching basketball.
Just about every night of the four weeks Mrs M was in the surgical hospital we watched a game. “We.” I. Mrs M was pretty much out of it for three weeks. But I like to think she was aware and trying to follow when I had the games on in her room. And she was aware enough come the finals to make a bet with me. Through hand squeezes and thumbs up she let me know she was rooting for the Warriors---well, she was rooting for Steph. She loves him.---and she was taking them over the Rockets. I still owe her a dinner out.
It took me a couple of weeks after she came home from the rehab hospital in mid-July to remember there was a baseball season going on but as soon as I did I had no trouble getting into it and following it right through the World Series. (I was rooting for the Red Sox but I didn’t like it they won it so fast. I always root for the Series to go all seven games.) And as soon as the Series was over I got right into basketball and have been keeping up with it all along. So it’s not sports I’ve had no time for or interest in.
It’s football.
I think of it as just one of those things. But Oliver Mannion has a theory.
It’s the NFL I’m not following, and it’s because I’m too wrapped up in following...the USFL.
He and I have been listening to Jeff Pearlman’s “Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL” and he thinks I haven’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in the fall of 2018 because I’m having too much fun following what happened in the springs of 1983 and ‘84 and ‘85.
The posts I’ve written on “Football for a Buck”----“Donald Trump is not the worst person in this book” and “Donald Trump is still not the worst person in this book”---focused on the characters associated with the United States Football League in its fleeting days of near-glory and the comedic ups and downs of their personal stories, mostly brought on by their own bad behavior. But just as important to the book’s overall story, in fact intrinsic to it, are the football stories Pearlman tells. Pearlman makes sure we know that as much craziness was happening off the field and often on the field a lot of high-quality professional football was being played. He intersperses the comedy with excellent sports reporting, not a surprise if you know his previous work but a real challenge considering that he’s reporting on games that were played when he was ten years old. So while the Iggles have been working their way towards the post-season I’ve been “following” the Los Angeles Express as then rookie and now NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young leads them into the divisional playoff game with the Michigan Panthers…
[Los Angeles. Saturday, June 30, 1984.]
In Los Angeles...the Express and the visiting Panthers played one of the most remarkable football contests in the sport’s history. Trailing 21-13 with less than nine minutes remaining the Express took over on their own 20. On the first play of the drive, Young dropped back, found no open receivers, then darted up the field. As Michigan linebacker Kyle Borland approached, the quarterback---a stubborn nonslider---rammed headfirst into a man who outweighed him by twenty pounds. “He hit me so hard I nearly lost consciousness,” Young recalled. “I land out of bounds right near Coach Hadl’s feet. I wobble when I try to stand up.”
Young refused to exit the game, and a few plays later scrambled for a first down on fourth and 1 while being drilled by Ron Osborn, the Panthers free safety. “My right arm goes numb,” Young recalled. “I hold it up with my left hand. I’m pretty sure my right hand is broken.”
Again, the coaches demanded he leave. Again, he refused. A 22-yard pass to tight end Darren Long and a pass interference call helped get Los Angeles to the Michigan 12. There were now 59 seconds left in regulation. It was third and goal. Young dropped back, pump-faked, ducked beneath a missed tackle, and sprinted wide and left toward the end zone. As he approached pay dirt Young lowered his shoulder and was pulverized this time by cornerback Oliver Davis. He landed out of bounds at the 1, and on the net play---fourth and goal---halfback Kevin Nelson dove in for the score. It was now ]Michigan] 21-[Los Angeles] 19.
The USFL instituted the two-point conversion for this very reason. The ball was placed on the 3. The Express offense lined up. Young faked a handoff to halfback Tony Boddie, rolled to his left, pointed downfield, sprinted for the end zone, crossed the goal line, and was immediately hammered by John Corker, the ferocious linebacker. Both men writhed in pain on the ground, but the crowd went crazy....
...The game went into overtime, then another overtime, then a third overtime. It was the longest professional football contest ever played. Young was brilliant and physically broken. Panthers kicker Novo Bojovic was merely broken---he missed two short field goal tries that would have ended things...Finally, on Los Angeles’s 100th offensive play of the game, rookie halfback Mel Gray took the handoff, cut to his right, and dashed 24 yards into the end zone. Wrote Ralph Wiley of Sports Illustrated: “Flat on his back, in obvious pain, but with the ball clutched in his left hand, [Gray] hazily saw an official signal touchdown---and then dropped the ball…”
The Express had won 27-21
They lost the conference championship the next week to the Arizona Wranglers, 35-23. The Wranglers lost the league championship the week after that to the Philadelphia Stars.
I’ll probably watch the game. Some of it at least. I won’t be able to avoid it. The Blonde Family Cottage is going to be full up with Iggle fans and the TV will be on. I don’t expect it to be anywhere near as exciting as that Express-Panther game but at least I’ll know what’s at stake, thanks to my fellow customers at the bagel shop. There were three of them huddling with Oliver and me, two men and a woman. The men were white, the woman was black. I’m including that fact for descriptive purposes only. So you can relax and not worry this post is going to veer off into politics and I’ll start ranting about the current occupant of the White House who is determined to ruin football for everybody the way he’s determined to ruin everything. Ruination is the story of is life. We were all about the Eagles at the bagel shop. Now, to get back to my story.
One of the men shared our table. He was a square-faced, chisel-featured, white-haired old man in his early seventies, wearing a classic black and gold Notre Dame warm-up jacket buttoned up to his chin. Lots of Notre Dame fans in this quarter. Lots of Irish Catholics. Old Father Blonde was a big fan. Bigger fan than my brother-in-law who actually went there. Father Blonde went to Villanova. But this fellow wasn’t one of them. The jacket was a gift from his granddaughters who’d gone out to Penn State to root the Fighting Irish on against the Nittany Lions. He’s a college football fan, though, but generally not specifically. He doesn’t root for any school particularly. He just likes watching the games. He thinks the style of play is more exciting than the pros. He was, however, put out that the NCAA championship looks like it’s coming down to the game between Alabama and Clemson. He wishes neither team was in the mix. He likes both programs but he’s tired of them.
The other man was sitting at the next table. He was about 40, big, heavy, balding, long-nosed, and wearing a navy blue v-neck sweatshirt with his name stitched in white and “Firefighter” in red above it on his breast pocket and his company’s insignia patch sewed on the shoulder. He didn’t seem to be a football fan at all but had a conversational knowledge and appreciation of the Eagles. So I really didn’t learn much about the Eagles’ season and prospects from him or from the other man. It was the woman who knew what was what.
She was standing at the counter waiting for her bagels and coffee to be ready. She was in her thirties, with short hair she wore in a bob, tall and wearing boots that made her taller so she seemed to tower over the counter and little wizened old Russian woman who working behind it. Her manner was matter-of-fact as she clued me---and the two men---in on what needed to happen to today.
The long and the short of it is that the Eagles need to beat Washington and the Vikings have to lose to the Bears for the Eagles to reach the playoffs.
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Updated Sunday night: The Eagles won! Twenty-four to nothing.
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Updated again, Monday morning, December 31: Getting my coffee from McDonald’s I heard a gruff male voice coming from across the joint announcing, "Line is Eagles are five points underdogs." The speaker sounds like he thinks that's good news but it doesn't make him especially hopeful.
“Football for a Buck” by Jeff Pearlman is available in hardcover and for kindleat Amazon and as an audiobook from Audible.
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