Philadelphia is a tough town, I've been there enough to know. When the Flyers won the Stanley Cup, that gang of thugs was known affectionately as the Broad Street Bullies.
I was in The Spectrum in Philadelphia a number of times as a sportswriter, covering hockey and college basketball. First time there I was warned to not lean forward in the press box. You see, it butted right up against the seats, where the night before, some fans turned around and took a swing at a sportswriter. And, he was from their hometown.
I remember wandering through the bowels of the old JFK Stadium a couple of times -- once for a football game, the other for a Rolling Stones concert. The rats were as big as small dogs. The locker room attendants simply shrugged them off as pets.
Veterans Stadium, where the Eagles and Phillies once played, was the first sports complex in the nation with its own jail where rowdy fans would be incarcerated until the paddy wagon scooped them up or they sobered up -- whichever came first.
I would hardly call these people wussies.
But, I'm sure most of them would have at least thought twice before venturing out in a blizzard Sunday night to watch the Minnesota Vikings and their beloved Eagles tangle. The wind was whipping at 50-60 mph. Snow was being removed from the field and parking lot by the foot instead of inches. And, even by Philadelphia standards, it was cold.
Which is why the NFL wisely postponed the game until Tuesday night.
Nobody seemed to mind except for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who ripped the NFL for its decision and America in general.
"We've become a nation of wussies. The Chinese are kicking our butts at everything. If this was China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? The people would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked and they would have done calculus on the way down," he told a Philadelphia sports talk radio station.
Now, if you really expect anything of substance to be heard on a Philadelphia sports talk radio station, I suggest you put down that spliff you've been sucking on and step back into reality. Sports are cool, games are fun, but the fate of the free world does not lay in the balance every time 22 guys decide to strap on massive gear and hard hats and beat the hell out of each other on the "frozen tundra" -- an ignorant redundancy, by the way, if ever there was one.
NFL officials are also hip enough to realize that Eagles fans are a lot like turkeys -- too stupid not to gawk skyward in the rain with their mouths open to the point of drowning in the process.
Of course, Philadelphia's proximity to New Jersey could have something to do with that, too.
NFL officials were more than justified in their decision to postpone the game.
There would have been an elevated element of danger had they allowed some 50,000 fans to try to negotiate the roadways before kickoff then, after swilling a bellyful of beer and whatever else they partake of in the stands in Philly these days, try to dig their way out of a parking lot where the snow would have piled on a foot or so of snow while they rooted on their beloved Eagles.
I know I would have stayed home to watch the game from the comfort of my living room. Of course, I much prefer the tropical clime these days and would rather that my home was along the beach in Baja California, where a snow shovel is about as useful as a shirt and tie and you can set your TV on the veranda beneath a swaying palm tree on a moonlit night while the whales dance and sing in the nearby Sea of Cortez.
I've heard the Rendell types say that Vince Lombardi must be spinning in his grave.
I doubt that. Lombardi may have been a martinet to his players, but he was also a smart man. You don't win that many games in the NFL if you don't have an IQ higher than that of a Pennsylvania governor. It takes considerably more brain power.
Lombardi, I think, would have been fine with the league's decision. And, why not? It would have given him one more day to drill his team on fundamentals and to further fine tune his game plan.
Perhaps Rendell was right about the Chinese, though. Maybe they would have marched to the stadium.
After all, because of rigid Internet censorship laws, they might not have been able to learn that the game had been postponed.
