On Sunday, Feb. 4, the Philadelphia Eagles won the team’s first Super Bowl Championship. I am not a huge football fan, I prefer my boys in Orange and Black over the Eagles. This game, however, was historic, so I watched it. Tom Brady was going for his sixth Super Bowl, which would have broken his tie with Charles Haley.
At the end of the game, something irked me.
Disrespect
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After the Eagles, led by backup quarterback Nick Foles, won the game, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady stormed off the field, like a petulant child denied his lollipop. He did not, as tradition holds, congratulate the winning quarterback. I sat, stunned, by the disrespectful, childish behavior of the man called the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.
That one action, right there, is why my heart belongs to Lord Stanley and the athletes that live for the pursuit of his Cup. The Flyers have lost the Stanley Cup in the Finals six times. Each time, every member of the team has lined up for the handshake. Every player, every time. After the final game of each round, even after the most heated of rivalries has ended.
The Shift
Go back to the 2012 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals between the Philadelphia Flyers and their cross-state rivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins. A hard, nasty series, featuring a childish move by Sidney Crosby, to flick Sean Couturier ‘s glove away from him.
It saw huge comeback win by the Flyers in Pittsburgh, a win by the Pens in Philadelphia, and numerous allegations of embellishments to garner power plays. Game Six featured what will forever be known as The Shift, wherein Claude Giroux deposited Crosby on his behind and scored, all in the first thirty-two seconds of the game.
When the clock ended on that oh-so-sweet Flyers series win, Crosby stood in that line and shook hands with every member of the Flyers, a team he admitted to not liking at all. An admission, by the way, that inspired tee shirts printed with “We don’t like you either” that were handed out to attendees of the next Flyers home game.
Why didn’t Crosby just storm off the ice? Because it would not have been tolerated in hockey. I have almost negative tolerance for Crosby as a player. I do, however, have far more respect for him than I do for Brady.