Also this issue: A Fan's Diary -John Gambetta

January 23-29, 2003

cover story

The Longest Day

FOURTH AND GO: Fans react with dismay during the first quarter to Andy Reid's decision to punt with the ball on Tampa's 33-yard line.

Pictures from a demolition: a journey from boasts to bewilderment in the final hours of football at the Vet.

Photos by Michael T. Regan
Text by Howard Altman

It is half an hour after ignominious defeat and they are gone now, the face-painted and the half-naked, the inebriated and the puking. They are gone, the denizens of the infamous 700 level who, for 31 years, inspired so much fear and loathing. They are gone, never to return. And they've left the building like their Eagles, whimpering.

"I am so disappointed," moans a wobbly David Bolger, a college student from Allentown who has watched the Vet's last football game shirtless in section 717 despite the numbing cold. His right elbow is cut and bloody from falling so much. "Usually when I suffer, the Eagles win. But today I suffered for nothing."

By the time the Philadelphia Police Department swarmed onto the field in a flurry of light-flashing motorcycles and prancing, braying horses with two minutes left on the clock, the show of force was anticlimactic. The fans they were so concerned about -- who began arriving (and drinking) 12 hours before -- started streaming out of the cement bialy on Broad seconds after Donovan McNabb ended all hopes for a trip to San Diego with an interception on the Tampa 10-yard line.

THE BUCS DIDN'T STOP HERE: Pre-game scenes from the parking lot.

All those pre-game worries about souped-up souvenir-seekers raging through the stadium, ripping up seats and other would-be memorabilia, were for naught. McNabb and crew sucked so badly that they sucked the life out of 66,713 fans, who left with little more than a sad story to tell their descendants about being there the day the music died.

The last day begins on a much different note.

"Honey, they are going to freeze, but that's good for us," says Sylvia Clarke, a cloud of steam escaping from her mouth as she talks in the frigid darkness. It is just past 6 a.m. and Clarke is standing on the platform at the Allen Lane train station, eagerly awaiting the inbound R8 that will take her to her job at the post office. Later, at a seat at Doyle's Bar, she will watch her beloved Eagles take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

"It may be cold," she says, bracing against a stiff wind. "But this weather is going to take us to the Super Bowl. The Bucs will get two field goals, that's it. This is the Eagles' year."

Mike Horn tempting fate in his Tampa jersey.

As the R8 pulls into its final destination, 30th Street Station, there are more signs of glory. The sign on the PECO building is flashing "Fly Eagles Fly, On The Road To Victory." And on the Market Street El and the Broad Street orange line, Eagles mania is omnipresent, as the few passengers up at this time of the morning are wearing shirts and jackets emblazoned with the silver image of the carrion-feeding fowl.

The orange subway train speeds south, stopping to pick up more green-clad hopeful along the way, until the journey ends at Broad and Pattison as the sun rises over the Vet, bathing the doomed building in an eerie, diffused dawn light.

While TV techs hustle back and forth between their trucks and the stadium, moving quickly to avoid exposure to the cold, Tyrone Ferguson greets passersby with a smile.

THE BUCS DIDN'T STOP HERE: Pre-game scenes from the parking lot.

Ferguson, a security guard assigned to watch over the TV equipment parked on the sidewalk outside the Vet, says he was here the last time the Eagles hosted an NFC championship game.

"I was out on the field when they scored," says Ferguson. "I just looked up and it looked as if fans were cheering at me. I associated them winning with me being a security guard there. Hopefully, I am the good-luck charm. Nature has a way of repeating itself."

Looking around at the slowly unfolding bedlam, Ferguson says he is pumped.

"It is just so quiet around now compared to later on," he says. "It is going to be euphoria. It is going to be a beautiful day."

Over in a parking lot on 10th

FIRE AND ICE Hopeful Eagles fans set fire to a Tampa jersey.

Street, Terry Farrell and his sons, Terry Jr. and Todd, are among the first tailgaters to arrive. The Farrell boys, from Runnemede, N.J., have been coming to this same spot for the last three years, but Terry Sr. has been doing this for decades.

"I go back with my father and my brother to Franklin Field days," Terry Sr. says. "I was here in 1981 during the last championship game."

Unloading their special game-

Searching for an answer after McNabb's first fumble.

day grill, the cooler of Heinekens -- "green for the green team," says Terry Jr. -- and the beef stew, chili, wings and cheesesteaks they will cook up during the long, cold ramp-up until kickoff, the Farrells give off a vibe of confidence mixed with sadness.

Confidence about the game's outcome, and sadness that the Eagles will no longer have the Vet as a "12th Man."

"I anticipate it being somewhat more civilized, unfortunately," says the elder Farrell of life in the still-under-construction Lincoln Financial Field. "The stigma of Philadelphia may be drawn away slightly with all the new enhancements."

"Look at the difference between the Spectrum and the new FU center," Todd Farrell chimes in. "The atmosphere there is totally different."

At 8 a.m., the Linc is indeed very different from the building it will replace.

A dead seagull, pierced with an Eagles banner and attached to an RV, is an omen of trouble to come.

For one thing, even though the place is under construction, it still seems more functional than the Vet, where pipes leak, elevators take eons and there are never enough toilets.

Another difference is that unlike the circular Vet, where the 700 level is a ring of fire crowning the entire stadium, the upper reaches of the new football palace are separated into four distinct sections -- minimizing the spread of mishegoss and allowing Philadelphia's finest easier access and quicker containment.

But what is most compelling about the Linc is its intimacy and its sweeping view of Center City to the north, the Walt Whitman Bridge and the red and black stacks of the SS United States to the east and the belching smoke of the refineries to the west.

"This is just beautiful," says 78-year-old Linwood Burke, an operating engineer who, seven days a week, tends to the jet-engine-looking propane burners that keep the pipes from freezing, like they did when the FU Center was under construction.

A police officer on the 700 level contemplates a placid Veterans Stadium.

Burke, who exercises every day by walking the ramp leading to the Linc's east side upper deck, offers to brave the cold and give a visitor a tour that includes a stop at the new Eagles' locker room.

"You can almost hear the energy that will be in this place," he says.

By noon, the parking lots are full of manic fans who have turned expanses of blacktop into their own personal Thunderdomes. One RV is festooned with a dead seagull, which is pinned to the windshield by a wiper. An Eagles pennant is jabbed into its carcass. A few spots away, a pig's head is stuck on a stake. Everywhere, inebriates bash into each other as rap music blares from a speaker.

THE END OF IT ALL: A dejected McNabb leaves the field after the game.

It is a bacchanal complete with alcohol, burning joints and, apparently, sex.

"See that van over there, the one with the flags," one gargantuan fan offers. "Well, there was this hot chick there and a friend of mine was fucking the snot out of her. The van was really rocking."

Aside from the copulating couple, who were presumably unclothed at the moment of coitus, nearly everyone is wearing green.

Everyone except Mike Horn, a hulking dude from Hainesport, N.J., who is wearing a bright red Tampa jersey.

Alone fan (bottom), also wearing #5, leaves the stadium.

And not just any jersey, but that of No. 99, hated motor mouth Warren Sapp.

Though Horn is a big man, his size doesn't matter to a group of Eagles fans who come up to his RV to offer some good-natured taunting. And it really doesn't matter hours later when, even more drunk and emboldened, hordes of Eagles fans douse Horn with a 30-pack of Coors Light.

"He's been our good-luck charm," says one of Horn's companions. "Every time he has come with us to a Tampa game, he wears his jersey. And each time, the Eagles have won. The streak will continue today."

For a few moments, it looks like it will. Future Hall of Famer Brian Mitchell takes the opening kickoff 72 yards and Steve Fodor, who has walked up to the railing near section 324, is so excited that he starts hugging strangers and the big bag of pistachios he carries splits open in the bedlam.

Two plays later and running back Duce Staley rumbles into the end zone from the 20. Fodor is even more excited, hugs even more people and now there are pistachios flying all over section 324.

The euphoria, however, is short-lived. Just minutes later, Tampa QB Brad Johnson rips the heart out of the Eagles' vaunted D with a short dump-off pass to Joe Jurevicius, which the Tampa Bay wideout turns into a 71-yard gain that leads to the Bucs' first TD. It's early, but it is the beginning of the end for the Birds, who stumble and fumble away their chances.

By the time McNabb blows it for good with just under four minutes left, the fans in section 717 have already surrendered. As the Eagles continue their three-and-done offensive offense, the only action comes from the antics of the fans. And even that is mild, according to the police who are waiting for trouble.

There is a guy who passes out after puking all over his neighbors. There is the distinct aroma of pot. But no real disturbances.

In fact, some of the loudest fans are wearing blue uniforms.

"It's really pretty mellow today," says one officer.

"Must be the score," says another.

The instant Tampa's cornerback, Ronde Barber, crosses the goal line to make the score 26-10, the dejected begin an all-too-orderly escape, mouthing the occasional despondent expletive as they file past Channel 3's Tamsen Fadal.

A half-hour later and the 700 level -- like most of the rest of the Vet -- is empty.

"See all those lights out there in the parking lot?" says a police officer on his way downstairs to put in for overtime. "We won't have any trouble tonight. It's too cold. And people are too sad. It's been a really long day."

Also: A Fan's Diary