Yesterday, what I thought was a funny aside about deciding to become an Eagles fan after all these years – something I thought would have come with "Phinally" and "welcome to the club, loser" comments – was admonished and crucified. Vilified even.
So, is fandom a birthright? Is it ever possible for someone to change their allegiances or have no allegiance at all and be a casual fan of the sport in general? At what age is that fandom written in stone? Is it pre-natal or is there a test-run period of time when kids get to try out the fandom to see if its a compatible situation? Can you ever change the team you root for or are you stuck dancing with the one who brung ya?
There were some angry comments yesterday about my E-A-G-L-E-S chant reference at Phils games. Surprisingly angry. So the follow-up question to that is: do you have to bleed Green in the fall just because you bleed Red in the summer and Orange in the Winter (and Red, White, Black, Blue and Gold in the winter too)? I'm not trying to be a smart ass. People brought up these questions in the comments and I thought it made sense to get everyone's opinion on this. And to the commenter who stated that the chant is more about the city than the Eagles; on the road, sure. Around town, maybe. But not at a Phils/Flyers/Sixers game. If it was about the city, the chant would be P-H-I-L-L-Y PHILLY! Which isn't half bad.
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LINKS:
•My guy John Gonzalez looks deeper into this Donovan McNabb situation, explaining that if you don't want to talk about the tie anymore, you don't go home and blog about the tie. Gonzo also dissects the Tim Tebow-esque charity work of Tony Romo, and throws in a Dexter reference because Gonzo is the man.
• Don McKee invoked the name of Jim Edmonds to patrol left field for the Phils. He's another lefty bat, and while his argument may be compelling as well, it doesn't make sense to get another lefty bat in that lineup.Here is a list of the 2009 free agents.So unless there's a trade out there, one of these players will be in left next season. Kevin Mench, anyone? People love Rocco Baldelli, but I'm not sure he's played on back-to-back days consistently in over three years. If he can stay healthy, he's perfect, but he's never been healthy in his career.
• The NYT looks at advertising at the Olympics and how the residual Post-Olympic benefits never materialized for corporations spending millions at the Games. The Beijing Bounce, as they called it, became the Beijing Flop.
News
• So how about this mess Browns GM Phil Savage got into by sending a one line email to a badgering Brown fan? Deadspin has the latest, with a link to the full emails and an interview with the fan who started it all. The fan feels worse than anyone. Lesson: when a shark tries to bite you, punch him in the nose. He'll stop. You can always apologize for the punch, but you can't apologize for letting the shark eat you.
• The Mighty MJD has a list of teams who can win the Super Bowl. Giants and Dallas are on there. So are Green Bay and Arizona. And, gulp, Baltimore. Oh, he also takes Warren Sapp to task for taking Donovan McNabb to task.
• Welcome to the Phlogosphere Big Five Post.
• For college hoops you can also always visit Soft Pretzel Logic. JT told me yesterday he didn't feel like his blog is MSM. He works for Philly.com, so I told him he's nuts. But he can use the hits and the site is good. Especially the weekly Schuylkill 16 weekly poll.
• We were linked in the links post over at Doug Glanville's House (or at least a house he built), which I think is next door to Mondesi's house, and around the corner from Animal House, Pee Wee's Playhouse and Tyler Perry's House of Payne. He is not of big fan of a certain contributor on this site (hint: it's not Clare) but he's a good guy and I'm sure would be happy if you clicked this link.Sorry, sorry... THIS link.
• Everyone keeps linking to the new Life Magazine photos that Google has up. If you missed the post yesterday, here's a reminder. I hope Sam Dalembert sees this link.
• One more note about this daily mash-up. We've tried to take this Extras and make it more than just links from around the internet. Sometimes its been a more in-depth look at a play, a game, a star athlete or a topic around town. Sometimes it's been whatever pops into the head at 5:00 a.m. that in some haphazard way tries to continue an on-going conversation on the site, the comments, the water cooler, sports talk radio or the internet in general. If anyone has been offended by anything written in this space, I'm sorry for that. If anyone thinks its a giant waste of self-absorbed time, I'm sorry for that too. And you can skip the post if you feel that way. But for the rest of you, thanks for reading and being a part of the conversation, even if you want to beat me up and steal my lunch money every once in a while.