The Philadelphia Eagles Are Bums.
OK, let’s review the Philadelphia Eagles for a few minutes, shall we?
Here’s a team that last won the Super Bowl… oh, right. They’ve NEVER won a Super Bowl.
The head coach embarrasses our city with his “family in crisis”, his home characterized as a “drug emporium” by the judge handing down sentencing. Later, one of the kids, britt, was busted for violating his bail violation…wait for it…”after police said they found 33 pills, including the painkiller hydrocodone, on him.” The other, Garrett, got sent up to the state pokey for smuggling 81 pills into the county lockup.
We all know that Philadelphia loaned the Eagles $8 million bucks when their chips were down. But when it came time to pay back, the Eagles came up with all sorts of excuses:
The grace period is done, but the Eagles have never ponied up. A judge has said the city is entitled to 70 percent of the revenue from those boxes. That’s about $9.6 million, plus interest.
But when the city sued for that money in Common Pleas Court in 2004, the team made a counterclaim. They seek to be made whole from a 2001 preseason game that was canceled when the new artificial turf at the city-owned stadium was so ragged and uneven that the NFL said it was unsafe to play the Baltimore Ravens.
Eagles president Joe Banner put the losses at $7.8 million for that one game, figuring what the team missed in revenue from ticket sales, TV and radio broadcasts, and concessions.
And as we all know, with the City that saved their can’t-win-a-superbowl-asses facing a huge deficit, the Eagles had a response that I can identify with one finger:
That didn’t go over so well: last week, ACORN had a tailgate party on Lurie the Loser’s front lawn:
About 50 people passed around grilled hot dogs – chanting “Pay, Eagles, Pay” to the tune of the team’s fight song – in front of team owner Jeffrey Lurie’s Llanfair Road mansion yesterday to urge him to fork over the millions of dollars that the team owes the city.
Before leaving, participants propped up against Lurie’s padlocked fence a large “Past Due” notice for $8 million, which cops later took down.
[Incidentally, I walked over to see the fun but arrived a little late. It's no wonder jeff lurie doesn't give a shit about paying back Philly: for starters, he doesn't even live here, but on the tail end of a private road in a ritzy burb. Why should he care about poor kids losing a library, when he lives in a neighborhood filled with personal tennis courts?]
A week or so ago, the Eagles decided to release Brian Dawkins, arguably the city’s most popular player. He was released with all the style and class you’d expect from a bunch of bums like Lurie the deadbeat and Reid the neglectful father, ie none.
But it gets even better: not content to be deadbeats, management decided to see what it was like to be total fucking assholes by (are you ready?) firing a physically handicapped employee and major team supporter who by all accounts worked his ass off for the team despite the obstacles he faces. His offense? Commenting on Facebook about how upset he was that dawkins was released:
[Dan] Leone grew up in the shadow of Veterans Stadium in a red-brick rowhouse near 10th and Oregon. As a kid, he’d walk over to see his beloved Birds play. The trip was never easy. Leone has a neurological disorder called transverse myelitis. Because it causes muscle fatigue and limits the range of motion in his limbs, Leone was sometimes forced to use crutches as a child.
When he grew older and the Linc opened, Leone crossed his fingers and filled out an application. The Eagles hired him almost immediately.
And boy did the Eagles work him:
On game days, Leone served as the west gate chief. The gig required Leone to hustle to different areas of the stadium as needed. That was tough. His left leg is weaker than his right, and standing for too long gives him severe pain in his right knee and hip because that’s where he shifts all his weight. While on duty, he sometimes needed a wheelchair to get around.
“They had me running all over the place like a nut, but I didn’t care,” Leone said. “I was so proud to work for them. It was my dream.”
But the minute their asset becomes a little difficult…
Like a lot of Philadelphians, Leone was upset when Dawkins became a Bronco. So he did what a 32-year-old does these days: He vented on Facebook. “Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver. . .Dam Eagles R Retarted!!”
It was a rash, stupid thing to do, and Leone regretted it almost instantly.
“I shouldn’t have put it up there,” Leone said. “I was ticked off, and I let my emotions go, but I didn’t offend any one person or target a specific individual. I was just upset that we lost such a great guy. Dawkins was one of my favorite players. I made a mistake.”
Less than two days after posting the Dawkins remarks, Leone said, he was contacted by Leonard Bonacci, the team’s director of event operations. According to Leone, Bonacci said they needed to talk about Leone’s Facebook page, and Leone agreed. Leone – who deleted the comment – figured that the two would sit down and that he could apologize to Bonacci in person. But Leone said Bonacci never got back to him after that.
Two days later, Leone said, he received a call from Rachel Vitagliano, the team’s guest services manager. Leone said she fired him over the phone. The conversation lasted less than 10 minutes.
No warning. No suspension. No face-to-face meeting. Just a quick call to tell Leone he’d been terminated.
“I tried putting in my case to Rachel,” Leone said. “I told her I worked there for six years. I did whatever they asked. I only missed one Eagles game the entire time I worked there, and that was because I’m a Mummer. I told her it was my dream to work for the Eagles and that I’d never do anything like that again.”
Leone said Vitagliano didn’t want to hear it. He said that she told him he couldn’t be trusted, that the post made the team look bad, and that the only way to resolve the situation was to fire him.
Yes, it’s clearly the comments of a guy with bad legs who loved the Eagles so much that he didn’t mind “running all over the place” that make the team look bad. It has nothing to do with their deadbeat owners, addict-enabling coach, and heartless trades that everyone in Philly, even a fair-weather fan like me, objects to. No, it’s all Dan Leone’s fault, so he had to go.
“I apologized for it,” Leone said. “I apologized 20 million times. I never bad-mouthed the organization before. I made one mistake and they terminate me? And they couldn’t even bring me into the office to talk to me? They had to do it over the phone? At least look me in the eye. To get done dirty like this, I can’t believe it. I’m devastated.”
I can believe it. The Eagles are the team that doesn’t care. Thanks for the $8 million Philly, now go fuck off. Hey Dan, thanks for making us look good for six years and working your ass off even though your legs are messed up, now go fuck off. Thanks for the stadium taxpayers, too bad we can’t actually win anything, so fuck off.
Bums. Nothing but a bunch of bums.
March 10th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
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