Son of a Bird Lover
As we reach Super Bowl weekend, Roger Cormier finds that the journey of sports fandom is inextricably intertwined with the journey of life at large
My sister made my mother gasp. For the Super Bowl, my niece's pre-K class is asking that every little one wear a jersey.
"Oh no."
"No, don't worry."
She was worried it would be a Philadelphia Eagles jersey.
My father was an Eagles fan, even though he was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Don't worry, it never made sense to me either.
When he was a kid, Joe Cormier decided to root for the worst team because it would "mean more" if they ever won it all. He also claimed he didn't like that the Jets and Giants played in New Jersey. The latter reason falls under the slightest bit of scrutiny: the Jets and Giants did play in New York when he was a youth. As far as the first reason goes, I never thought to ask my father why he would punish himself and root for the worst team. I only figured out years later doing some rudimentary research that the Eagles finished with the worst record in the NFL only once (1968), and they shared the distinction with the Atlanta Falcons. 16-year-old Joe chose … correctly, it turns out, if you want to compare this timeline with the one where he rolled with the Falcons, but as you will see shortly, it wouldn't have mattered.
The Eagles first made the Super Bowl in January 1981. My maternal grandfather died weeks earlier. He did not like that my father bet on football, so my mother "knew" that the Eagles were not going to beat the Raiders in the big game. She warned my father, who sometimes referred to himself as "Joe Eagle," not to bet on the game.
He bet on the game. The Eagles lost by 17.
I was still an NFL fan free agent at 10 years old. To stop being so damn weird, I decided to shit and get off the pot, and grant my allegiance to someone. My unoriginal ass followed in my old man's footsteps and became a fan of … the New England Patriots. They went 1-15 and were undoubtedly the absolute worst franchise. Through Bill Parcells magic they reached the Super Bowl when I was almost 14. My father couldn't hide his jealousy. I don't want to say he was happy that the Pats lost to the Packers, but he wasn't not happy.
By the time Tom Brady showed up, my father was no longer living with us. It wasn't his decision. I don't know what he thought about the ridiculous 2001 season. I don't think I would have cared. I just knew the whole narrative of my sports fandom life changed with Super Bowl XXXVI's result of Patriots 20, Rams 17. It never occurred to me that a team I rooted for can take the entire cake. I thought I was my father's son, destined to cheer on the eternal underdog, believing myself to be thus more dignified than the next man somehow.
I dropped out of college and was kicked out of my mother's place and pretty much forced to live with my father in his new tiny Ridgewood, Queens, basement apartment a month after that "life changing" win. I spent a year with him. I wasn't in a good place mentally. I didn't dare bring up the Patriots, particularly when the Eagles were playing and he was doing what he always did — imploring the defense to blitz. I wasn't happy about the Super Bowl champions anyway, because I wasn't happy about anything. I learned that just because your favorite team wins the championship it doesn't mean all or most of your problems are solved. I wish I was able to articulate this to pops. But I couldn't articulate much of anything then. Instead, we binged The A-Team and M*A*S*H. FX promoted the shit out of airing the series finale of the latter on its 20th anniversary. I watched it "live," my father taped it. When he got home, drunk, he started watching, then through some combination of stopping and rewinding and pressing record on the VCR inadvertently taped over it. He had missed "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" the first time it aired back in 1983, preoccupied with his one-day old firstborn, me1. Our already frayed relationship pretty much disappeared after I packed up and left one day while he was at work.
God only knows what would have happened if I was still there for the Patriots-Eagles Super Bowl in 2005. I do remember thinking that since the Patriots already won two Super Bowls, the Eagles can have this one. As if it would just be given away. Pretty condescending on my part. I also remember thinking there was no way the Eagles were going to win. I was proven right, of course.
The last time I saw my father alive was in September of 2007. We went to Shea to watch the Mets lose to the Phillies. Their NL East lead would disappear at a historical clip soon after. Did I mention he was a Mets fan? Sometime after that he moved to Colorado to live near his sister and brother-in-law. He was their problem now, forever.
After Spygate, I vowed to take a year off and root for the worst team again. The Detroit Lions went 0-16. True love. Yet I always had soft spot for the Patriots, which is to say I didn't hate their fucking guts and hoped they all fell down a sewer, like most New Yorkers. I didn't realize how little of my Pats fandom disappeared until Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson. When that happened to "finally" give New England their fourth title after losing to the Giants twice, I screamed of joy. Pure instinct. And I lowkey rooted for them when they came from behind down 28-3 to the Falcons. It's not like the Lions were grabbing my attention in January and February.
Joe died in April of 2017. I don't remember ever crying about it. I think I figured nothing would change, that I would just continue to not think about him. I was proven wrong when the next Super Bowl came around. Patriots vs. Eagles. There was no way the Eagles would lose. I was proven right, of course.
What's tragic to me is that if there was a heaven, and my father was there, and he was informed the Eagles won their first Super Bowl the first chance they got after he dropped dead, he wouldn't be happy. Joe Eagle would take it personally. Oh of course they don't win until I'm no longer alive. (And he would have assumed the "Philly Special" was some sort of exotic blitz.) I want to tell him what I learned in 2002 but couldn't say. Even though I doubt he would believe me.
Here we are five years later, and the Eagles are back on their big game BS. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I just know that I'm thinking about my father, the martyr, again. How confused he would be to see the Eagle colors on the Empire State Building. Worrying if my mother would "curse" the game so the Eagles would lose, something she did whenever she was angry at him for allegedly 20 seasons until they somehow won a game in Dallas that she hexed2. Hell, what would he think about gambling being legal in New York? How much would he bet on his Iggles? Would he bet on Kansas City to reverse jinx himself (he tried this once in a regular season game; the Eagles won)? Would he be too scared to wager at all?
I don't know. The man was complex, constantly tripped up in the own rules of his self-made narrative. I do know that when Tom Brady re-retired, ESPN2 didn't run a marathon of the ESPN+ 10-part Brady miniseries like they did the first time he retired. That time I watched all of it, again, except for the last installment, since that covered his time with the Buccaneers, so who cares. It brought back a lot of good memories. I know that my dad was never afforded such a luxury as to have an all-day marathon full of euphoric sports memories to watch whenever he wanted. I think my dad would have screwed it all up somehow. He would complain that all of the winning overloaded the Eagle bandwagon. Like a tape with the series finale of M*A*S*H on it, he would erase it all.
Visiting hours at the hospital ended at 8. The famous episode ran from 8:30-11. I don't know how Joe Eagle missed it. My best guess is he was freaking out about being a father for the first time and wondered the streets aimlessly, ducking into a couple of random bars.
My father was so happy and relieved and my mother was so shocked that their argument ended. The power of a divisional victory on the road.