So it is with "good riddance" that most Philadelphia sports fans bid Terrell Owens adieu. And the saga of another unhappy parting between Philadelphia and one of its superstar athletes is repeated.
The list of sports stars that have either jilted or disappointed us seemingly could reach from here to the moon. Del Ennis and Richie Allen of my youth to Randall Cunningham, Charles Barkley, Eric Lindros, Ricky Watters, Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen all departed Philadelphia as fallen heroes. The acrimony fans heaped upon them was like some scene from "War of the Roses" played out over and over again.
While the reasons for their fall from grace differ, the result is almost always the same. Philadelphia always seems to be in the curious position of believing that getting rid of a superstar will bring us closer to the championship of our dreams. But the dream always eludes us. Our history proves we are always wrong.
How could this happen to us?
We pride ourselves on being a dynamite sports town. We like to think we deserve a championship. We are loyal, dedicated and fanatically faithful to our teams. Why does fate play us so dirty? Could it be "the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves?"
Philadelphia is known as a "blue-collar" town. We insist our athletes adhere to our lunch-pail credo – we prize effort even over great talent, perhaps especially over great talent. We are even suspicious of great talent. Great talent always disappoints us. Great talent doesn’t always seem engaged enough in proving to us how much they care. To fans in other cities, Bobby Abreu is a multi-talented ballplayer who performs almost effortlessly. But that’s what bothers us about Abreu, just as it bothered us about Mike Schmidt – it all comes too easy to them. We don’t like easy. We like our athletes exuberant, but not flamboyant. We like sweat and grit. We hate laid back. The problem is the grinders we fall in love with are not enough to win championships today. To win a championship, you need a dominant player and dominant players don’t seem to fit our comfort zone.
It is an axiom of sports that today’s star athlete is quite different from the athlete of yesterday. Philadelphians have never adjusted to this simple fact of life. We are all Larry Brown, who is not satisfied to just win a championship; we have to do it the right way. And as great a coach as Brown is, he has won only one championship and he did it with mainly a team that already had the talent in place to win it all. We say all we want to see before we die is a Philadelphia team win a championship, but are we willing to coexist with people we might not like in order to do it?
In the bizarre case of Owens, no one questioned his dedication and work ethic. The painful rehab he went through to be able to play effectively in the Super Bowl last season could have been the stuff of which legends are made. But even Owens admits his greatest strength turns out to be his greatest weakness. His super-sized dedication and talent comes with a price – a fragile, super-sized ego. T.O. magnified his salary disagreement with the organization into a personal slight. The organization and we, the fans, were somehow surprised when Owens turned on his quarterback and coaches, as if that wasn’t his modus operandi when he came to the team. In order to fit Owens dispute with the Eagles organization into our personal morality play, we began to see his dedication and talent as just a reflection of his selfishness. Soon, the organization and we the fans convinced ourselves the team would actually be better without him. It is easy to justify the Eagles decision to part ways with Owens (I argued in a previous column if they were going to do it, they should have done it before the season), but it is another thing to delude ourselves into not realizing an opportunity for a championship has slipped away.
Perhaps what is most ironic is that our reputation as blue-collar fans is really mostly a myth. While it was certainly true at one time, like most cities our fan base has changed. Soaring ticket prices mean fans attending games are more likely to be stockbrokers, sales people, accountants and assorted professionals. The blue in their collars is now blue oxford. It is no secret, in moving to the new stadium, one of the goals of owner Jeffrey Lurie was to rid the team of the rowdy 700-level fans – the very blue-collar fans the team pretends to worship.
Philadelphia fans have changed over the years, but they don’t want their athletes to change. Until we adjust to the new reality, our relationship with our superstars is likely to be bumpy. And our dreams of a championship will likely remain just that – dreams.
