Screw You, Sad Eagle Fan

Today in Rubbing It In, some psychiatry honks posited that Philly Fan is the most depressed in the NFL, right up there with Atlanta Fan. They cooked up some index about being So Very, Very Close, how we care too much, have not enough psychiatric support, yada yada yada. I'm not going to link to the story, because I think it's bull squat, but there are two main points I'd like to address here.

1) Is Eagle Fan actually sad, and if so, why?

The team is incredibly watchable. The rest of the division is in tatters, as it has been for most of the Reid Era. The salary cap has been managed to the point where the club never loses a player they truly want, and the club rarely, if ever, gets painted in a corner by keeping stars until they are falling down and sad. Yes, I get that Reid is maddening in the game management points, and you've been to enough playoff games now that you are convinced that it's never going to end happy, but, um... you do realize that there are only a handful of fan bases that have had it better than you in the past 10 to 15 years, right? And that there is actually some benefit to having a team you can watch every year, rather than a boom-bust club that gives you years of cover-your-eyes misery. (Go ahead, root for the Rams. I think I got a better deal out of my club.)

And...

2) Life's too short to be made miserable by your football team, people. Or, well, anything.

Maybe this is just that I came into this year with low expectations. Or maybe I'm getting old enough where a certain amount of wisdom is starting to creep in. But let's just say it -- happiness is a choice. An intellectually indefensible choice that makes you seem like a pollyana or worse, a plainly difficult choice that requires a certain stubbornness and self-delusion, and a choice that you have to make, over and over again. But a choice.

If and when the Eagles win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, there will be a portion of the fan base that won't be happy. They'll be annoyed about the personnel or management, bent that it didn't happen earlier, when they had a chance to witness it in person, or instantly concerned about defending the title.

Count on it.

And be happy anyway...