Pigskin Zen 1.24.09

F-U-C-K-I-N . . . EAGLES
By Gary Zeidner

It’s eerily familiar, this feeling of hollow, angry dejectitude. I guess that’s what happens when your team makes it to the Conference final — a mere one game away from the Super Bowl — five out of eight years and only manages to get to the big game one time (and lose that game by three points at that).

At least my boys and I can endure the Dark Time with clear conscience. We did everything we could to help the Birds get over that championship hump. We drove our asses 14 hours to Arizona and represented in the very last row of the Cardinals’ beautiful stadium surrounded by asshole Cardinals fans who probably thought “football” meant soccer until three weeks ago. They were the kind of fans who left in throngs even before the Halas trophy had been wheeled out and presented. You want to talk about “front runners?” These miserable pricks were the very definition.

As cock-punched as I am by yet another almost-but-not-quite, always-a-fucking-bridesmaid Eagles season, the trip to AZ was a shining example of the journey being the destination. A road trip with my brothers through some of the most beautiful country in the U.S. to see our favorite team live exists of its own inertia and volition. The fact that the Birds couldn’t hold on in the fourth to oust the Cards and get to the Bowl sucks giant, hairy donkey balls, but it can’t diminish the experience; it could only have enhanced it.

Now, with one game standing between us and the torpor of the Dark Time, the future spreads her legs wide. If the Eagles keep Andy and Donnie around, replace the key weapons they’ll lose (like Runyan and Dawkins most likely) and add some top 1 percent talent in essential slots, they have a legitimate shot to finally get to and win the Bowl next year. If, instead, they drop Reid or McNabb and start the Great Rebuilding of Ought Nine, then the window that’s been open for the past eight years (through which the Eagles simply refused to climb) will be closed, and it may be another half-decade before we can expect our shot. For me, at least, hope springs eternal, and I will greet every year flush with the belief that my beloved Birds will finally get their rings. I just wish I would’ve been right about it this year. (Thanks, Santa, for making the effort. How about making it all the way to the end zone next year, you fat fuck?)