Philadelphia Eagles

Let me explain something about being an Eagles fan that people outside Philadelphia consistently misunderstand. The passion that this city brings to its football team — the intensity, the volume, the occasionally terrifying emotional investment — is not dysfunction. It is devotion expressed in the particular accent of a working-class city that has never trusted anything it couldn't earn the hard way. Philadelphia does not hand out love. Philadelphia makes you prove you deserve it. When the Eagles prove it, this city responds with an outpouring that shakes buildings.

February 4, 2018 is a date I will carry for the rest of my life. Nick Foles. The Philly Special. Malcolm Jenkins and Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham strip-sacking Tom Brady in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl against the greatest dynasty in NFL history. That night on Broad Street — the noise, the strangers embracing, the sheer release of a city that had waited 57 years for that moment — was the greatest collective experience of my life. Nothing has touched it. And the beautiful thing is that it will always have happened. They cannot take that away.

We have booed our own players. We have been merciless with underperformance. We have held our team to standards that make the national media uncomfortable. But nobody — and I want to be emphatic about this — nobody shows up more consistently, more vocally, or more completely than Eagles fans. The Linc is the loudest stadium in the NFC. Our road contingent takes over opposing venues. We are everywhere, in green, in every corner of the country. Fly Eagles Fly is not just a fight song. It is an identity statement. E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles.