This past weekend, visiting friends in Milwaukee, I was woken up each morning with a sports related text message. One brought an old friend, Mickey Morandini, back into my world for the fleeting seconds it took to read the message, the other soured my entire taste for the sport of football. Brian Dawkins has signed with Denver.
Why is it so easy to destroy, and so difficult to create? The pleasant memory of 1993 and Mickey and loving a city and a sport had nothing to hold on to compared to the free-fall of all my hopes and dreams knowing Dawkins was gone. We get over these things, of course, as I got over losing Reggie White the first time free-agency made me question the relationship of business and loyalty.
The mechanical and methodical functions of the Eagles’ businessmen is by now an old story. They are statistically sure of themselves (and, to their credit, have so far been proven correct) that loyalty contracts do not translate to on-field success. Their financial model has always been focused on the future, and not the past, and Bob Ford capably makes the case that this was the right decision. Despite my annoyances with the smug cap masters, I’m willing to trust their business acumen. Dawkins, however, presents a different case, and should be noted as the exception to the rule. Statistics are not infallible; they aren’t capable of measuring the human factors.
Les Bowen, whose columns I’ve cared less and less for over the years, puts it very simply:
There are two jerseys you see worn most at Lincoln Financial Field when the Birds are playing: No. 5 and No. 20. And No. 5 is not the guy who carries with him the passionate soul of the fan base.
Not since McNabb scrambled (circa 2002) could he be considered the heart of this team. After Dawkins was criticized for his week 2 performance against the Cowboys, admittedly weak, he responded against the Steelers by flying through the air, chopping his massive arms like a tomahawk, and stripping the ball in a marquee moment of defensive dominance. It took the team far too long to pull itself together, but that singular image kept fans afloat through the stormy middle of the season. No other player will deliver that.
Philadelphians need that player, and now they don’t have him. With all due respect to McNabb, who can become that player if he continues to stand up to management, Dawkins was the only person on that team who could do that. I feel like I’ve been suddenly banished to the Rich Kotite-Ray Rhodes era of Eagles, who lacked a standout character, and consequently produced awful to lukewarm to decent seasons of football.
Our fan base is justifiably insane because we identify with players and expect them to empathize with us. To outsiders, Philadelphia sports fans seemed disporportionately demanding. A failure to grasp this reciprical expectation will confound outsiders and doom our players who ignore it.
In John Berger’s essay “The Storyteller”, he talks about the story as the focal point of identification for a village. The analogy only becomes more clear when it is expanded in magnitude for the city:
The function of these stories… is to allow the whole village to define itself. The life of a village, as distinct from its physical and geographical attributes, is the sum of all the social and personal relationships existing within it… what distinguishes the life of a village is that is is also a living portrait of itself… constructed, not out of stone, but out of words, spoken and remembered.
Being an Eagles fan has a distinct meaning. The flying body of Brian Dawkins is one of the great images, the great stories, that we’ve told. If I had children who asked me, what is it to be a Philadelphian, I’d say simply to focus on your task and approach each day as Dawkins does each down. Show some clips on youtube, and figure out how you need to be spiritually read to throw yourself at the controlled chaos.
Now someone else will have to show how.
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