Sunday, February 7, 2010

There is nothing you can say that will make this picture okay

Philadelphia fans have long memories. We may forgive, but we don't forget. Actually, that's a lie. We have very little capacity for forgiveness when it comes to sports. Bitterness warms our black hearts. Y'know Reggie White? One of the most legendary and beloved figures in football history, Philadelphia or otherwise? I'm still mad at him for defecting to Green Bay in 1993. The fact that the man has been dead for five years does nothing to ameliorate this. It's like that.

But not everyone in Eagles Nation shares my view on that particular point. What we can universally agree on is our shared hatred for our former wide receiver, Terrell Owens. He of the showboating, whining, driveway ab-crunching, locker room disrupting, general prima donna-ing that ultimately ended with him leaving town after two years and rendered his jersey as the doormat of choice for sports bars throughout the Delaware Valley. We hated him for saying bad things about our quarterback, Donovan McNabb, which is remarkable, because Eagles fans LOVE to hate on D-Mac. But criticism from Terrell cannot be tolerated. He must be abhorred for it. Abhorred with extreme prejudice. Forever.

Which is why this picture from this week's Super Bowl hype in Miami is so disconcerting:

I mean, what are we supposed to do with this? It tears at everything we know to be true. It undoes years of careful indoctrination by my parents that through all of life's ebbs and flows, football grudges are forever. We can't have Donovan and Terrell palling around in Miami. It's unnatural. It's wrong. It's unseemly.

I don't even know what to think anymore. I think I'm going nihilist.